Anne Blackburn (academic)

Anne M. Blackburn is a historian of South and Southeast Asian Buddhism. She is Professor of Buddhist Studies and South Asian Studies at Cornell University. Blackburn received her B.A. in Asian History and Religion in 1988 from Swarthmore College, her M.A. in Religious Studies in 1990 from University of Chicago Divinity School, and her Ph.D. in History of Religions in 1996 from the same institution. Blackburn's teachers include: Steven Collins, Charles Hallisey, Frank Reynolds, P.B. Meegaskumbura, and Donald Swearer.

Anne Blackburn was trained to study Buddhism as an historian of religions (in a program greatly influenced by approaches to historical sociology and hermeneutics) rather than as a philologist. Her secondary supervisor worked in Buddhist Studies and South Asian Studies and was (unusually for the field at that time) insistent that the scholars working on Buddhist texts attend to their literary features, and the contexts for their composition and reception. This combination of influences allows Blackburn to approach Buddhist texts with attention to the contexts in which they were composed and used. This led her to substantial work in the history of devotional practices and intellectual history, topics first broached in undergraduate days at Swarthmore College. Blackburn approaches this work with the assumption that the history of Buddhist texts and practices should not be divorced from the history of other forms of life with which they are closely connected, and through which they have been constituted.

Blackburn is currently working on a new project, "Monks, Texts, and Relics: A History of Buddhism in South and Southeast Asia". This study aims to examine the Buddhist monastic networks and temple formation in British colonial port cities.

Books

• Locations of Buddhism: Colonialism and Modernity in Sri Lanka. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010.
• Approaching the Dhamma: Buddhist Texts and Practices in South and Southeast Asia. ed. Anne M. Blackburn and Jeffrey Samuels. Seattle: BPS Pariyatti Editions, 2003.
• Buddhist Learning and Textual Practice in Eighteenth-Century Lankan Monastic Culture. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001.

Articles

• "'Buddhist Revival' and the 'Work of Culture' in 19th-Century Lanka." In The Anthropologist and the Native: Essays for Gananath Obeyesekere, ed. H.L. Seneviratne. Societa Editrice Fiorentina-Manohar, 2009.
• "Writing Histories from Landscape and Architecture: Sukhothai and Chiang Mai." Buddhist Studies Review 24, 2 (2007): 192-225.
• "Localizing Lineage: Importing Higher Ordination in Theravadin South and Southeast Asia." In Constituting Communities: Theravada Buddhism and the Religious Cultures of South and Southeast Asia, ed. John Holt, Jonathan Walters and Jacob Kinnard. SUNY Press, 2003.
• "Notes on Sri Lankan Temple Manuscript Collections." Journal of the Pali Text Society. 27 (2002): 1-59.
• "Serendipity and Sadness." In Excursions and Explorations: Cultural Encounters Between the United States and Sri Lanka, ed. Tissa Jayatilleke. (Print Pack Limited, Colombo 2002).
• "Looking for the Vinaya: Monastic Discipline in the Practical Canons of the Theravada." Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies. 22, 2 (1999): 281-309.
• "Magic in the Monastery: Textual Practice and Monastic Identity in Sri Lanka." History of Religions. 38 (1999): 4:354-372.