Profile picture of Jeff Schroeder

Jeff Schroeder

Associate Professor
Religious Studies Advisor
Religious Studies
Phone: 541-346-4165
Office: 332 Susan Campbell
Research Interests: history of Buddhism in 19th- and 20th-century Japan, especially of the Jōdo Shin sect; Buddhism and World War II; Buddhism, science, and philosophy; democratization of Buddhist institutions; experimental Buddhist communities

Education

  • Ph.D., Religious Studies, Duke University, 2015 
  • M.A., Asian Studies, Duke University, 2009
  • B.A., Religion, Reed College, 2005

Publications

  • The Revolution of Buddhist Modernism: Jōdo Shin Thought and Politics, 1890-1962 (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2022).

  • “Japanese Buddhist War Support and the Kanchō System,” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, vol. 50, no. 1, (2023): 49-77.

  • “Upāya,” Buddhism: Oxford Bibliographies Online, edited by Richard Payne, New York: Oxford University Press (2023).

  • “On the Absence of Buddhist Ethics: An Examination of Interwar Shin Writings on the Two Truths,” The Eastern Buddhist, 3rd ser., vol. 2, no. 1 (2022): 35-53.

  • “Sensō jidai ni sōō no kyōgaku: Soga Ryōjin to Ōtani-ha kyōdan ni tsuite 戦争時代に相応の教学:曽我量深と大谷派教団について” (Doctrinal Teachings for an Age of War: The Case of Soga Ryōjin and the Ōtani Organization), Kindai Bukkyō no. 29 (2022): 101-124.

  • Translation from the Japanese with introduction and notes. “Discussing the Kanrenkai,” Kyōkai Jigensha (attrib. Kiyozawa Manshi), in Buddhism and Modernity: Sources from Nineteenth-Century Japan, edited by Orion Klautau and Hans Martin Krämer (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2021), 73-84.

  • Translation from the Japanese with introduction and notes. “Soga Ryōjin’s ‘Behold the Man’ and ‘Transcend the Individual.’” Pure Land (new series) no. 29 (2017-2018), 39-50.

  • "Bukkyō shisō no seijigaku: Kaneko Daiei no ianjin mondai o megutte" (The Politics of Buddhist Thought: Concerning the Heresy Case of Kaneko Daiei) in Kindai Nihon shisoshi o yominaosu: Kiyozawa Manshi no shiten kara, edited by Ōmi Toshihiro and Yamamoto Nobuhiro (Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 2016).

  • “Historical Blind Spots: The Overlooked Figure of Chikazumi Jōkan,” Religious Studies in Japan vol. 3 (2016): 67-82.

  • "Empirical and Esoteric: The Birth of Shin Buddhist Studies as a Modern Academic Discipline,” Japanese Religions vol. 39, nos. 1-2 (2014): 95-118.

  • "The Insect in the Lion's Body: Kaneko Daiei and the Question of Authority in Modern Buddhism" in Modern Buddhism in Japan, edited by Paul Swanson, Ōtani Eiichi and Hayashi Makoto (Nagoya: Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture, 2014), 194-222.           

Teaching

  • REL 199 Paths to Nirvana
  • REL 303 Japanese Religions
  • REL 357 War, Terrorism, and Religion
  • REL 359 Religion After Atheism
  • REL 399 Religion and Climate Change
  • REL 407/507 Modern Buddhas
  • REL 411/511 Making Sense of Religion