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. She has just completed her first book, 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., entitled Head, Eyes, Flesh, and Blood: Giving Away the Body in Indian Buddhist Literature, and has now embarked on a new project dealing with the theme of mothers and motherhood in Indian Buddhist literature.
