Nicholas Witkowski
Monasticisms | Empire, Caste, Gender, Law & Labor in South Asia | Buddhism, Virtuality & Death-tech | Familiality & Fascism | PhD @Stanford | Asst. Prof.
University of San Diego: sandiego.academia.edu/NicholasWitkowski
- Reposted by Nicholas WitkowskiOn March 6th, I'll be speaking at Harvard about recent upheavals in Japan and why we must attend to religion to fully comprehend realignments now taking shape within Japanese politics. Thanks to Paula Kolata for making this event happen: rijs.fas.harvard.edu/events/relig...
- Friends, Feb 6, 1PM PST please join Prof. Jessica Zu @jessicaxzu.bsky.social for a virtual discussion of her recently published _Just Awakening_ (purchase here: cup.columbia.edu/book/just-aw...) Sign up for virtual conversation with Prof. Zu below!
- come join my bookchat with Joy Brennan and Brook Ziporyn, Friday, Feb 6, 1pm PT. calendar.usc.edu/event/levan-...
- Reposted by Nicholas WitkowskiI co-wrote a book on a popular #Jain #textile #art form…and now it’s out! Visualizing #Devotion: Jain Embroidered Shrine Hangings. Order via the University of Washington Press, and now through Jan 2, it is 40% off with free domestic shipping with code: Winter25 uwapress.uw.edu/book/9780998...
- Reposted by Nicholas WitkowskiThe latest issue of JAOS has been published, #145.4 (2025). This will be the last one under the old name. Starting next year, the journal will appear under its new name, JASPA: Journal of the American Society for Premodern Asia. lockwoodonlinejournals.com/index.php/ja... @aspa1842.bsky.social 1/
- Reposted by Nicholas WitkowskiThere isn't much of 2025 left, but Susanna Elm's new book promises to be the book of the year!! The Importance of Being Gorgeous: Gender and Christian Imperial Rule in Late Antiquity That cover is gorgeous, and it's open-access so you can just download it!
- A new and powerful volume on #Ambedkar's view of #caste and #Buddhist philosophy - my review of Pradeep Gokhale's _Classical Buddhism, Neo-Buddhism and the Question of Caste_ in the Journal of Buddhist Philosophy. www.academia.edu/106577235/My...
- Please join Adeana McNicholl and myself for the inaugural Buddhism and Caste Seminar at the American Academy of Religion Annual Conference in Boston (November 22-25) Panel 1: Sat. 3:00PM - 4:30PM | Sheraton, Tremont (Third Floor) Panel 2: Mon. 5:00PM - 6:30PM | Sheraton, Boston Common (Fifth Floor)
- Join us - starting now!
- Friday Nov. 7 (9AM PST, 12PM EST, 6PM CET, 1030PM IST), please join us for an exciting AAR #online #symposium on _Buddhist Feminist Historiography_ in celebration of Prof. Stephanie Balkwill's tour de force, _The Women Who Ruled China_ Register here: aarweb.org/event/buddhi...
- Friday Nov. 7 (9AM PST, 12PM EST, 6PM CET, 1030PM IST), please join us for an exciting AAR #online #symposium on _Buddhist Feminist Historiography_ in celebration of Prof. Stephanie Balkwill's tour de force, _The Women Who Ruled China_ Register here: aarweb.org/event/buddhi...
- Friday Nov. 7 (9AM PST, 12PM EST, 6PM CET, 1030PM IST), please join us for an exciting AAR #online #symposium on _Buddhist Feminist Historiography_ in celebration of Prof. Stephanie Balkwill's tour de force, _The Women Who Ruled China_ Register here: my.aarweb.org/event-inform...
- Oct 29, 1PM friends at Harvard and Boston more generally, do attend @amyparis.bsky.social berg's lecture on Buddhist nuns at @harvard.edu!
- Reposted by Nicholas WitkowskiFor 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...
- Webinar beginning now!
- REMINDER: Oct 3, my ONLINE Khyentse Lecture at Northwestern: “Comparative Subalternities” as a New Framework for the Study of Indian Buddhist Traditions: Locating the Outcaste Monastic within Plantation Geographies 8:30PM IST/8AM PDT/10AM CT/4PM GMT/5PM CET LINK: northwestern.zoom.us/j/97705400388
- REMINDER: Oct 3, my ONLINE Khyentse Lecture at Northwestern: “Comparative Subalternities” as a New Framework for the Study of Indian Buddhist Traditions: Locating the Outcaste Monastic within Plantation Geographies 8:30PM IST/8AM PDT/10AM CT/4PM GMT/5PM CET LINK: northwestern.zoom.us/j/97705400388
- Reposted by Nicholas Witkowski[This post could not be retrieved]
- Reposted by Nicholas WitkowskiOct 3, Nicholas Witkowski @nwitkowski.bsky.social “Comparative Subalternities” as a New Framework for the Study of Indian Buddhist Traditions: Locating the Outcaste Monastic within Plantation Geographies 9:30PM IST/9AM PDT/11AM CT/5PM GMT/6PM CET LINK: northwestern.zoom.us/j/9140886463...
- Reposted by Nicholas WitkowskiDear friends and colleagues, I'm trying to compile a list of upcoming events on South Asian religions that will be live-streamed for students in my S. Asian religions class this quarter. If you are speaking somewhere or know of relevant events please drop a link below! Cheers! :D
- Reposted by Nicholas WitkowskiEveryone in academia should read this piece about our dear, brilliant colleague @durba.bsky.social www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...
- Reposted by Nicholas WitkowskiMy book, The Future That Was, is about the extraordinary rise of global research on women. It also about the attacks on & starvation of gender research today by universities who leave only the shell intact, dismantling entire fields of knowledge built by women press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...
- Reposted by Nicholas Witkowski#PhilosophyJobs #Philosophy Richard Charles and Esther Yewpick Lee Chair in Chinese Thought and Culture (deadline: October 7, 2025): jobs.utoronto.ca/job/Toronto-...
- Reposted by Nicholas WitkowskiExcited to announce that after a lot of editorial work our volume "Writing, Enslavement, and Power in the Roman Mediterranean, 100 BCE - 300 CE" is out now. @jeremiahcoogan.bsky.social @illdottore.bsky.social academic.oup.com/book/60683
- Reposted by Nicholas WitkowskiHelp me find a wonderful new colleague for our department! Specialty in religions of South Asia or Southeast Asia. #religiousStudies #tenuretrackjobs jobs.sandiego.edu/cw/en-us/job...
- SEPT 15 JOB DEADLINE: Assistant Professor in South/Southeast Asian Religions (w/ focus on Hindu Traditions, defined BROADLY) in my department at the University of San Diego (PLEASE SHARE WIDELY). jobs.sandiego.edu/cw/en-us/job...
- Sept 11 - Friends in Buddhist Studies and beyond - @rhcraig.bsky.social will be speaking at the Ho Center at @utoronto.ca on Dharma preachers of the Indian Buddhist Mahāyāna and the Dharma preacher Tina Turner! buddhiststudies.utoronto.ca/events/inspi...
- Reposted by Nicholas WitkowskiUniversity of Oregon is planning to close dept and lay off faculty—incl many *tenured* faculty—& among those impacted are Religious Studies, Jewish Studies, and Holocaust Studies. Here is a link to a petition asking the president to reconsider actionnetwork.org/petitions/fi...
- Reposted by Nicholas WitkowskiU Chicago "has undertaken extraordinary quantities of leveraged spending in ways that benefit select units, while others, who have achieved high international ranking with little aid, have instead suffered from a withdrawal of operational in order to finance those endeavors"
- JOB: Assistant Professor in South/Southeast Asian Religions (w/ focus on Hindu Traditions, defined BROADLY) in my department at the University of San Diego (PLEASE SHARE WIDELY). Apply here: jobs.sandiego.edu/cw/en-us/job...
- Friends in #BuddhistStudies, do read Oliver Freiberger's fabulous new piece, "Qualities of Distinction," here, the author argues that we need to seriously reconsider what practices were foundational to early Indian Buddhism. Free for download here: www.academia.edu/143337761/Qu...
- According to the American Historical Association @historians.org, "Banning generative AI is not a long-term solution; cultivating AI literacy is." You can download the report here in which they explain all the ways they claim that AI can be useful in the classroom.
- Reposted by Nicholas WitkowskiIf the authors (including @letteney.bsky.social) are right about the pervasiveness of incarceration in the ancient Mediterranean world, then this book will require a paradigm shift in how we think about coercion and social control in antiquity. Not often that the historiographic stakes are so high!
- Reposted by Nicholas WitkowskiSome more teasers for After Transformation, and a discount code for 30% off if you pre-order through Duke UP. The code is: E25KTRST See here: dukeupress.edu/after-transf... #classicsbluesky #byzantinebluesky #ancientbluesky
- Reposted by Nicholas WitkowskiI’m behind on all of my planned reading these last couple of months, but I’ve taken peeks at the three of these because I just can’t wait. Mandatory reading, all of them.
- Fabulous Fall Buddhist Studies Lecture Series line up presented by the National University of Singapore Buddhist Studies Group!
- Reposted by Nicholas WitkowskiThrilled to announce a new volume I've co-edited with Benjamin Brose: Inner Worlds: Individuals and Interiority in Chinese Religious Life. It’s out now from Brill and you can find it here: brill.com/edcollbook/t... ✨ #NewBooks #ReligiousStudies #BuddhistStudies
- Now downloadable w/o paywall @dukepress.bsky.social in #CSSAAME: my most recent study which attempts to answer the question, What does it mean to talk about #Buddhism as a #subaltern religion? tinyurl.com/2zu4pe4m
- Reposted by Nicholas WitkowskiWorking on humanistic approaches to premodern Japanese law? Apply to come see us at UCLA! ⬇️ Share widely with colleagues around the world! Presentations can be in either English or Japanese.
- Japan Past & Present (JPP) is pleased to invite paper proposals for a symposium on the theme “Humanistic Approaches to the Study of Premodern Japanese Law,” to be hosted bilingually in Japanese and English at UCLA on Sept 26-27, 2025. ⚖️ japanpastandpresent.org/en/news/call...
- Reposted by Nicholas WitkowskiAcademic friends, I am in touch with a prospective PhD candidate who is looking for potential departments and supervisors - could you please share this and/or hit me up with any suggestions? It is outside of my areas of expertise, really gary.donnelly@manchester.ac.uk
- Reposted by Nicholas WitkowskiReally excited to see my and @ardenthistorian.bsky.social 's pieces on the nerdy fascism of Palantir up @religiondispatches.org -- give it a read, those people are weird and awful. religiondispatches.org/fool-of-a-to...
- Reposted by Nicholas WitkowskiDharmamitra got a significant update: We now feature fast OCR for Sanskrit, Tibetan, etc. powered by Gemini. You can upload images and PDFs. We also added an option to translate from files directly, instead of needing to go through OCR manually first!
- Reposted by Nicholas WitkowskiThe linked article lists Classical Studies as one of the departments at Indiana University that "could lose its main offerings." This is a major US university with a distinguished tradition in Classics. Dire news.
- This is very, very bad. A new state law will likely force the closure of hundreds of low-enrollment programs at Indiana University. The cutoff is 15 graduates/year for undergrad majors, 7 for Masters programs, and 3 for PhD programs, averaged over 3 years. wfiunews.wordpress.com/2025/06/24/h...
- Reposted by Nicholas Witkowski[This post could not be retrieved]
- Reposted by Nicholas WitkowskiVideo up of my Milk Tea Alliance pub day event at JF Books (the reborn in DC version of Shanghai's legendary Jifeng Books, which I visited often in the 2010s)-- www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClrR... . (For a sense of why JF Books is so special, see this by Amy Hawkins www.theguardian.com/world/2024/d... )
- Reposted by Nicholas Witkowski“OpenAI, Coursera, and many other EdTech startups, fantasize about utilizing public and not-for-profit educational infrastructure - our data repositories, labor forces, real estate, and tax havens - to transform themselves into technofeudalists.”
- Against Technofeudal Education - Pillars For Protecting Our "Core Infrastructure" From OpenAI theamericanvandal.substack.com/p/against-te...
- If I were in NYC tonight, this is where I'd be...
- Join us tonight for a public lecture at the New School with Rashid Khalidi, titled "Britain, Ireland, and Palestine," this evening at 5pm at the auditorium at the New School at 66 West 12th Street in NYC. Event and RSVP here: event.newschool.edu/rashidkhalid...
- June 8-14 Summer lecture series in NYC - Lewis Gordon Homi Bhabha @bernardharcourt.bsky.social Rashid Khalidi www.criticalsocialinquiry.org?fbclid=IwY2x...
- Reposted by Nicholas WitkowskiA thirteenth-century Japanese picture scroll shows monks deliberating whether to go to the capital to stage a protest. Those in agreement proclaim: “mottomo, mottomo”—that is appropriate, that is appropriate. (See Adolphson, Gates of Power, 252). #ManuscriptMonday colbase.nich.go.jp/collection_i...
- Reposted by Nicholas WitkowskiProofs for my forthcoming book. Out in November. See here: dukeupress.edu/after-transf... #ancientbluesky #byzantinebluesky
- Reposted by Nicholas WitkowskiI'm going to try and boil down the argument of the book I'm writing, The Hebrew Bible: A Counterhistory. It has the advantage of being based on something totally banal that everybody knows but I don't think we have a satisfying way to think about. 1/5
- Now out: my article answering the question: What does it mean to talk about #Indian #Buddhism as a #subaltern religion? Download here: read.dukeupress.edu/cssaame/arti...
- UGent Buddhist Studies Lecture: “Visualising Rituals in Gandhara” by Ashwini Lakshminarayanan, June 05, 2025 Register here: forms.gle/TwffQCPuVipU... www.cbs.ugent.be/guestlecture...
- Reposted by Nicholas WitkowskiMy latest article on the conflicting pressures faced by Muslim scholars in reformist circles of the 18th century: read.dukeupress.edu/cssaame/arti...
- Reposted by Nicholas WitkowskiIn my first op-ed for @nytimes.com, I argue that the alliance between Silicon Valley & the US government is a threat to democracy. The Republican tax bill now up in the Senate, which would ban states from regulating AI for a decade, will only cement that trajectory. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/30/o...
- Thank you to Dheepa Sundaram @themodsisyphus.bsky.social & Rohit Chopra @rohit.bsky.social for all their work editing the just published May 2025 #CSSAAME @dukepress.bsky.social special volume "Religion and Its Publics in South Asia" Entire Issue free for download: read.dukeupress.edu/cssaame/issue
- Reposted by Nicholas Witkowskihey friends, you can now pre-order my element. and if you don’t want to pre-order, don’t worry! it’ll be free for download for about two weeks after publication.
- Reposted by Nicholas WitkowskiJessica Zu's fantastic interview with Stephanie Balkwill about Prof. Balkwill's new _The Women who Ruled China_ @ucpress.bsky.social ! #Buddhistfeministhistoriography newbooksnetwork.com/the-women-wh...
- Reposted by Nicholas WitkowskiRemembering China’s Empress Dowager Ling, a #Buddhist who paved the way for future female rulers buff.ly/KwIfpA9 Stephanie Balkwill, University of California, Los Angeles
- May 22nd - Prof. Stephanie Balkwill's online lecture on her new book, _Women who Ruled China: Buddhism, Multiculturalism and Governance in the Sixth Century_ Register Below: www.soas.ac.uk/about/event/...
- How exciting! Thank you for writing this @bryandaniellowe.bsky.social! Really looking forward to reading!
- STARTING NOW!
- Friends, please join @adeanamcn.bsky.social and myself as we host Chandrabhan Yadav for the final lecture of our Spring 2025 #Buddhism and #Caste Initiative Lecture Series (PLEASE SHARE WIDELY) Friday, May 16 10:00am EDT / 19:30 IST (on MSTeams) Please register VIA QR CODE BELOW!
- Friends, please join @adeanamcn.bsky.social and myself as we host Chandrabhan Yadav for the final lecture of our Spring 2025 #Buddhism and #Caste Initiative Lecture Series (PLEASE SHARE WIDELY) Friday, May 16 10:00am EDT / 19:30 IST (on MSTeams) Please register VIA QR CODE BELOW!
- Reposted by Nicholas WitkowskiI can tell you one thing about this study: this is absolutely not true, no one who teaches in a humanities classroom thinks it's true, nothing has ever been less true, and it's extremely not true
- The effect of ChatGPT on students’ learning performance, learning perception, and higher-order thinking: insights from a meta-analysis - Humanities and Social Sciences Communications nature.com/articles/s41599-025… #AI #education
- Reposted by Nicholas WitkowskiHow did Mughal understandings of the historical past evolve and change over time? This is the question explored in my new essay, which focuses particularly on the early eighteenth century. It is open access, and I look forward to your comments. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
- Reposted by Nicholas WitkowskiDelighted to share that the Indian print edition of my book, Pious Labor, is *coming soon* from Three Essays Collective!
- Reposted by Nicholas Witkowski[This post could not be retrieved]
- Reposted by Nicholas WitkowskiMy article on racial capitalism and caste in Historical Materialism: “The longevity of caste has not to do with its moorings in tradition, but the powerful counterrevolutionary forces that have foiled caste emancipation again and again.” www.historicalmaterialism.org/article/wher...
- Reposted by Nicholas WitkowskiArchive | #DalitHistoryMonth: Karthick Ram Manoharan explores the energetic and ongoing debate on caste and representation in Tamil cinema, with the director Mari Selvaraj and his film Maamannan.
- Beginning NOW!
- Pls join @adeanamcn.bsky.social & myself as we host Lucinda Ramberg's (Cornell University) lecture: “We Were Always #Buddhist”: #Dalit Historiography and the Temporality of #Caste (PLEASE SHARE WIDELY) April 18, 2025 10:00am EDT / 19:30 IST (on MSTeams) Please register here: tinyurl.com/2y62cswx
- April 18, 2025 10:00am EDT / 19:30 IST (on MSTeams) Please register here: tinyurl.com/2y62cswx
- Pls join @adeanamcn.bsky.social & myself as we host Lucinda Ramberg's (Cornell University) lecture: “We Were Always #Buddhist”: #Dalit Historiography and the Temporality of #Caste (PLEASE SHARE WIDELY) April 18, 2025 10:00am EDT / 19:30 IST (on MSTeams) Please register here: tinyurl.com/2y62cswx
- Pls join @adeanamcn.bsky.social & myself as we host Lucinda Ramberg's (Cornell University) lecture: “We Were Always #Buddhist”: #Dalit Historiography and the Temporality of #Caste (PLEASE SHARE WIDELY) April 18, 2025 10:00am EDT / 19:30 IST (on MSTeams) Please register here: tinyurl.com/2y62cswx
- Reposted by Nicholas WitkowskiNew insights on how Śiva worship took shape in early India and Nepal!
- Lay Practitioners, Ascetics, and Tāntrikas: Rituals and Society in Early Śaivism On Thursday, April 10, at the CEU Center for Religious Studies in Vienna, Dr. Nina Mirnig will speak about negotiation, adaptation, and innovation in Śaivism during its formative phase: events.ceu.edu/2025-04-10/l...
