Ph.D. (Columbia University)
Professor
209 Emison Museum
Phone: (765) 658-4719
E-mail: pwatt@depauw.edu

Paul B. Watt received his B.A. from International Christian University in Tokyo and his M.A., M. Phil., and Ph. D. degrees from the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University in New York. His dissertation dealt with the life and thought of the 18th-century Japanese Buddhist monk Jiun Sonja. He has taught at Grinnell College and Columbia University, and since 1989 he has been on the faculty at DePauw University, where he is currently Professor of Asian Studies. In 2001, he began a four-year term as a University Professor. From 1998 through 2003 he was an invited visiting researcher at Otani University in Kyoto. During the 2003-04 academic year, he was appointed a visiting professor there. Also during the 2003-04 academic year, he became chair of the Board of Directors of ASIANetwork, a consortium of over 150 liberal arts colleges dedicated to strengthening Asian Studies on their campuses.

The focus of Professor Watt’s teaching is East Asian religions and culture, with particular attention to Japan. His research deals primarily with the religions of Japan and the interactions between them and Japanese society. His publications include “Body, Gender and Society in Jiun Sonja’s Buddhism” in Engendering Faith: Women and Buddhism in Premodern Japan (2002), “Eison (1201-90) and the Movement to Revive the Precepts” in Japanese Religions in Practice (1999), “The Buddhist Element in Shingaku” in Buddhist Spirituality: Later China, Korea, Japan and the Modern World (1999), and “Jiun Sonja: A Response to Confucianism within the Context of Buddhist Reform” in Confucianism and Tokugawa Culture (1997).

ASIA 282

Modern Japanese Novelists

ASIA 480

REL 197B