Jason Protass
Assoc. Prof. of Religious Studies at Brown Univeristy; Chinese Buddhist stuff
- Reposted by Jason ProtassKare 11 local news just read, in full, this statement from Michael and Susan Pretti, the parents of Alex Pretti. "Please get the truth out about our son."
- Reposted by Jason ProtassJob Opportunity! We're looking for a Graduate Trainee Archivist. #archives www.trin.cam.ac.uk/vacancies/gr...
- Reposted by Jason ProtassWe've got ISSUES. Literally. We scraped >100k special issues & over 1 million articles to bring you a PISS-poor paper. We quantify just how many excess papers are published by guest editors abusing special issues to boost their CVs. How bad is it & what can we do? arxiv.org/abs/2601.07563 A 🧵 1/n
- CBETA is a place on floor eight.
- Reposted by Jason ProtassKierkegaard:
- Welcoming 2026 in Taipei 祝福馬年吉祥，諸事順遂， 祈國泰民安
- Reposted by Jason ProtassYomama is a Christmas movie
- Reposted by Jason Protassall stilled. Jane Hirshfield
- It’s been nice to hear from colleagues and friends. One of the strange parts of this experience is noting the world slowly move on, get back to normal. Our world is frozen. Campus is a crime scene. Offices inaccessible. And the grief. The grief. It’s good to not feel alone.
- Reposted by Jason ProtassVery rarely does a post warrant all caps, but: SEARCHABLE INTERIM MANUSCRIPTS CATALOGUE. At long last! searcharchives.bl.uk
- Everyone in Religious Studies checked in as safe. If student reporting at BDH holds up, it sounds like it was a section of the big freshman econ course, folks gathered for a review session before the final. So so sad.
- “Rachel Friedberg said the mass shooting happened in a review session for the final exam of her Principles of Economics course.” Yeah, this the biggest class at Brown. Between 400 and 500 students. At least 80% of the class are freshmen. These are kids in their first semester of college.
- “[Prof. Friendberg] learned what happened from a teaching assistant who led the session. … Friedberg visited Rhode Island Hospital, where she said she spoke with her teaching assistant, who had traveled there to support several of their injured students.”
- Reposted by Jason Protass"Friedberg visited Rhode Island Hospital on Saturday night, where she said she spoke with her teaching assistant, who had traveled there to support several of their injured students." Wow, the TA was present at the shooting and then went with students in the class to hospital to support.
- I am safe. All my grad students are safe.
- Reposted by Jason ProtassI want to be sad, but who has the time? Xin Qiji, tr. Jon Hansen
- Reposted by Jason ProtassAre you an environmental humanist? Do you like hanging out with other smart environmental humanists? Would you like to do so for a week this summer in Maine? Then I highly recommend Colby's Summer Institute in the Environmental Humanities! (app due 2/6/26) cah.colby.edu/initiatives/...
- Reposted by Jason Protass"ChatGPT is Bullshit" has now been viewed one million times! @hikemix.bsky.social link.springer.com/article/10.1... #PhilTech #PhilSky #ChatGPT #Bullshit
- Rots on Vietnam whale worship: “how it is possible that residents of an island choking in plastic engage in ritualized littering. Why do animists who worship deities residing in nature pollute the very environment that they—according to the academic theory, at least—should perceive as sacred?”
- Richard Davis’ memoir is spicy.
- Reposted by Jason Protass'we write the best history when the specificity, the novelty, the awe-fulness, of what our sources render up bowls us over with its complexity & its significance. Our research is better when we move only cautiously to understanding...' CWB 'Wonder' AHR 1997. Thanks to @hagenilda.bsky.social
- Reposted by Jason ProtassThis is powerful. An Autobiographical Essay by Caroline Walker Bynum. 'That very summer, with unpacked boxes all around me, I wrote the article that became the title essay of Jesus as Mother and I filed papers to adopt a child as a single parent.' www.ias.edu/sites/defaul...
- Reposted by Jason Protass🚨 journo job! 🚨 Replace me! - after 13 years at the Guardian and six years on the incredible China team, including five in Taiwan, I’m leaving at the end of this year. I’ll get sentimental about it later but for now: Here’s the job ad. I recommend it! workwithus.theguardian.com/job-search/e...
- Reposted by Jason ProtassHanding back student work that’s been written by ChatGPT with a 0 followed by the comment “This essay will never stand in authentic wonder before the Beauty of God’s creation.”
- Reposted by Jason ProtassLooks like they have created a roadmap to reboot the NRC/FLAS/Hays grants? Makes the wave of layoffs that is currently flowing through area studies and language education programs seem especially meaningless: www.state.gov/releases/off...
- Reposted by Jason ProtassACLS is now accepting applications for Graduate Internships on the Spiritual Infrastructure of the Future: summer 2026 opportunities for PhD students studying religion to work with leading nonprofits and apply their research beyond the academy. Apply by Jan 14, 9 PM ET: acls.org/GISI
- Reposted by Jason Protass[This post could not be retrieved]
- Reposted by Jason ProtassRemember: they used thousands of academic books too! If you’re a scholar, check for your books too. This isn’t just novelists and pop writers, it’s academic books too!
- Somehow, somewhere, somewho
- Reposted by Jason ProtassThis reminds me of another poem from the Book of Songs《詩經》國風：王風 · 黍離 知我者、謂我心憂， 不知我者、謂我何求。 悠悠蒼天、此何人哉。 Those who know me, whisper I bear sorrows; Those who don’t know me, ask what I seek. O distant Heaven, tell me what man (has brought us to this despair).
- Reposted by Jason ProtassSo this reminds me of one of my favourite WTF moments in heritage bureaucracy, which was the 2018 archaeological excavations just outside the chapel of St Peter at the Tower of London. nobody could decide who, apart from the king, could legally sign off on the project
- MDPI Religions asked me to review what sounds like a very good essay. Teachers don’t let students submit essays to MDPI. Friends don’t let friends submit essays to MDPI.
- Reposted by Jason ProtassOh wow, major work of interest to #MedievalSky #GlobalMiddleAges #EnvironmentalHistory. A new special issue devoted to "Environmental Challenges in Premodern Eurasian and Mediterranean Narratives": journals.uio.no/JAIS/article.... Kudos to the editors for bringing this work so quickly into print!
- A colleague is teaching a course on internet and digital religion. She asked about essays she could teach on internet / digital religion in Asia? I thought of, eg, those Thai “cryptoamulets” that were popular a few years ago? Was just reading about the mainstreaming of Etsy Witches in the US.
- That last thought about Etsy witches, just happened to be what I was reading this morning over coffee, right before I started posting.
- Thinking about 生態詩學 as a misprision-ing translation for “ecopoetics.” Is ecopoetics about “life”? Is a focus on biota be “bio-poetics”? How to emphasize “the environment” in the more-than-human natural world? Anyway, thinking about: 環境史與生態詩學之間 (Whats between environmental history and ecopoetics)
- English grammar is hard
- Reposted by Jason ProtassThese terrifying bats are looking forward to #Halloween 🦇🦇🦇😱 Bodl. Library MS. Ashmole 304; 13th century; England, St. Albans; f.47v @bodleian.ox.ac.uk
- Reposted by Jason ProtassHow did U.S.-led aid transform Taiwan's forests from a site of natural riches to a problem to be solved? 🌳 Come join the Harvard S&T in Asia seminar series for this upcoming talk by historian and geographer Kuang-chi Hung! Zoom: seow.scholars.harvard.edu/STinAsia #histstm #histsci #envhist 🧪
- Reposted by Jason Protasspostdoc in Buddhism: protestantstheologischeuniversiteit.recruitee.com/o/postdoctor... #SanskritJobs #PhilosophyJobs
- Reposted by Jason ProtassThe Faculty of Arts and Sciences slashed the number of Ph.D. student admissions slots for the Science division by more than 75 percent and for the Arts & Humanities division by about 60 percent for the next two years. www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...
- Reposted by Jason Protasscheck out this amazing piece about Yogācāra relational metaphysics, tif.ssrc.org/2025/10/01/f...
- Reposted by Jason ProtassMy new article, co-authored with Li Yumeng (Fudan university) on new manuscripts collecting Confucius' sayings. Key take-away from this evidence: the core of earliest narratives about the formation of the Analects are accurate. 👇 www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
- Reposted by Jason ProtassEliot Weinberger, “The Life of Tu Fu” #smallpoemsunday @tomsnarsky.bsky.social
- Reposted by Jason ProtassYou can now pre-order my forthcoming book ‘Fairies: A History’ with a discount code at @waterstones.bsky.social! 📚
- Reposted by Jason ProtassFor the Mid-Autumn Festival, I translated the 17th century failson, epicure, and memoirist Zhang Dai's account of the annual Mid-Autumn singing competition on Tiger Hill in Suzhou. www.burninghou.se/p/mid-autumn...
- Reposted by Jason Protasspublication day for my *Documents géographiques de Dunhuang*, a social and cultural history of geographical knowledge, and probably one of the only medieval history books published in France during the ephemeral Lecornu government, which you can freely download here: books.openedition.org/cdf/20307
- Reposted by Jason ProtassComing (quite) soon reaktionbooks.co.uk/work/sons-of...
- Reposted by Jason Protass“It’s not about nostalgia; it’s about making sure we remember.” Photographer Song Zeyi visits the abandoned factories of Mao's Third Front—a movement that had consequences for generations of Chinese workers, including Song's own family. At @sixthtone.bsky.social.
- Reposted by Jason ProtassCfP for an exciting animal panel at the upcoming Association of Art History Conference (University of Cambridge, 8-10 April 2026). A great opportunity for Chinese animal / art scholars! 🎨🐝🐸
- Reposted by Jason ProtassCall to submit papers to the Environmental Graduate Symposium at Yale University! Link to submit: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
- Reposted by Jason Protass12 Phd/ 17 Postdoc positions (fully funded) in the new Cross-Cultural Philology Cluster at LMU Munich: www.lmu.de/crosscultura... (apply by Oct 21).
- Reposted by Jason Protass[This post could not be retrieved]
- One of my posts started to attract weird interactions. I deleted it.
- Reposted by Jason ProtassOne of my favorite poems since childhood, and a poem I share every #autumnequinox. By the 12thc warrior poet Xin Qiji 辛棄疾, sidelined during peacetime, demoted, drifting through a decade of minor posts in remote lands. Poetry, then, is that which is left unsaid. “My, what a cool and lovely autumn.”
- Reposted by Jason ProtassMy department is hiring! Apply to join me in Oslo :) www.jobbnorge.no/en/available...
- Reposted by Jason ProtassMy tribute to Paul Cohen as historian & mentor to many www.asianstudies.org/in-memoriam-... cc @lmansley.bsky.social
- Reposted by Jason ProtassMy review of Ayoush Lazikani’s ‘The Medieval Moon’, in the latest @historytoday.com
- Reposted by Jason Protass"drastic plans to halve the intake of humanities students at one of China’s most prestigious institutions, Fudan University, divided opinions among scholars." Has anyone seen more on this?
- Reposted by Jason ProtassThe Fourth Middle-Period China Humanities conference in Hong Kong, summer 2026. Hope to see many of you there!
- Updated question : can the garden in China provide ways to think about the environmental ethics of Buddhist temples in Ming-Qing southern China? Now gathering essays on Buddhist estates as / in / and gardens. End of a research and writing week.
- Reposted by Jason ProtassFrom Sanmenxia and Three Gorges to the Yarlung Tsangpo Dam, China has long relied on monumental hydropower to prove state capacity. @zenel25.bsky.social and @pguer.bsky.social show how such projects, while promising development and security, often deepen the very insecurities they claim to resolve.
- Just cracked open four double-yolk eggs in a row. If the odds of one are 1-in-1,000 …. should I buy lottery ticket?
- How do aesthetics connect to environmental ethics? Has anyone written a study of how Buddhism is figured in early Chinese photography? End of a long research day.
- Reading poetry; collecting old photographs; writing; and writing; to not get sucked into the discourse.
- The most useful (and only) thing I found is this blogpost by @sudasana.bsky.social about the old photograph collection at Bristol.
- Back at it this morning, and remembered this short essay by Allen Hockley about John Thomson’s photographs, which focuses almost entirely on religious subjects in Thomson’s lens. visualizingcultures.mit.edu/john_thomson...
