Reiko Ohnuma

Associate Professor

Reiko Ohnuma is a specialist in the Buddhist traditions of South Asia, with a particular interest in Indian Buddhist narrative literature, hagiography, and the role and imagery of women. She was trained in South Asian Studies at the University of California at Berkeley (B.A. 1986) and in Buddhist Studies at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor (M.A., 1993; Ph.D., 1997). Her courses at Dartmouth focus on both the Hindu and Buddhist traditions of South Asia. Her various articles have been published in History of Religions, Journal of Indian Philosophy, Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, and Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies. Her first book, published in 2007 and entitled Head, Eyes, Flesh, and Blood: Giving Away the Body in Indian Buddhist Literature, was a study of the theme of bodily self-sacrifice in Sanskrit, Pali, and Tibetan Buddhist texts dating from the 3rd c. B.C.E. to the 11th c. C.E. Her second book, Ties That Bind: Maternal Imagery and Discourse in Indian Buddhism, is forthcoming from Oxford University Press.

Courses and Programs

2012 Spring

• Non-Teaching Resident Term

2012 Summer

• Non-Teaching Term
  

2012 Fall

• Non-Teaching Resident Term

2013 Winter

• 1 (11) Patterns of Religious Experience
• 85 (10A) Senior Colloquium: Performing Religion (co-teaching with Christopher MacEvitt)

2013 Spring

• 18 (2) Indian Buddhism
• 40 (10) Gods, Demons, and Monkeys: The Ramayana Epic of India

Selected Publications

• Head, Eyes, Flesh, and Blood: Giving Away the Body in Indian Buddhist Literature (Columbia University Press, 2007).
• "Gift," in Critical Terms for the Study of Buddhism, ed. Donald S. Lopez, Jr. (University of Chicago Press, 2005).
• "Woman, Bodhisattva, and Buddha," Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, 17:1 (2001) 63-83.
• "The Story of Rupavati: A Female Past Birth of the Buddha," Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies, 23:1 (2000) 103-45.
• "Internal and External Opposition to the Bodhisattva's Gift of His Body," Journal of Indian Philosophy, 28:1 (2000) 43-75.
• "The Gift of the Body and the Gift of Dharma," History of Religions, 37:4 (1998) 323-59.