Assistant Professor Pamela Winfield convened a panel on the modern Japanese lay Buddhist movement called Shinnyo-en for the national American Academy of Religion in November 2011. The panel gathered scholars from the United States and Europe who presented papers on the scriptural, visual/material, ritual, and practical dimensions of institution building in the modern period.
As part of the panel on “Renewing a ‘New’ Religion in Japan: The Case of Shinnyo-en,” Winfield presented a paper on “The Architectural, Visual and Rhetorical Renovations in Shinnyo-en.”
Winfield also convened a panel on Zen Poetry at the regional American Academy of Religion conference in March 2012. In addition to papers on the literary history and technical aspects of Dogen’s Chinese Zen poetry, Winfield presented a text-image analysis of Dogen’s poetic portrait inscriptions entitled “Reflections on the Word-Art of Dogen.”