Language: English

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Enquiry: 3943 0405/ ics-activities@cuhk.edu.hk

Abstract:

In investigating the religious traditions of Sichuan, the diversity and hybridity of religious practices expressed in texts and rituals have emerged. This talk will address parallel questions of hybridity and religious identity through the historical analysis of religious spaces which have or still are shifting between religious identities, or which have become secular spaces. Starting from her work on the Chunyang Guan 純陽觀 in Xinjin 新津, the Speaker will then expand on hybrid religious sites encountered in recent fieldwork in Sichuan. Examples of Daoist, Buddhist, three religions sites, as well as multivalent sites like native place associations (huiguan會館) will be discussed, in order to shine a light on the continuous transformation of religious sites and the traces these shifts leave within the sites themselves.

Speaker:

Prof. Elena Valussi is a senior Lecturer in the History Department at Loyola University Chicago. Her research and publications revolve around the intersection of gender, religion and body practices, Republican discourses on gender and religion, the intellectual history of Daoism, and spirit writing in Chinese history. Her most recent articles are “Daoist Sexual Practices for Health and Immortality for Women” (2022); “Men Built Religion, Women Made It Superstitious: Gender and Superstition in Republican China” (2020); “Gender as a Useful Category of Analysis in Chinese Religions: With Two Case Studies from the Republican Period” (2019). She is the vice President of the Society for the Study of Chinese Religions, and also the co-director of a research project on religious diversity in Sichuan province funded by the CCK foundation.