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RUSSELL
KIRKLAND is a broadly trained scholar of religion and
Asian studies.
He earned both his A.B. in Religious Studies and his A.M. in Asian History
from Brown University in 1976. He later earned an M.A. in Religious Studies
(1982) and his Ph.D. in Chinese language and literature from Indiana University
(1986). He has taught Asian and Native American religions, and related subjects,
at the University of Rochester, the University of Missouri, Oberlin College,
Macalester College, and Stanford University. At UGA, Professor Kirkland’s
regular courses cover Confucianism, Taoism, and Japanese Religions; from
time to time he also teaches courses on Native American Religions, Buddhism
in East Asia, and other topics. He serves on the faculty of the Asian Studies
Program, the Medieval Studies Program, the Environmental Ethics Certificate
Program, and the Native American Studies program (INAS
faculty page)
Professor Kirkland has published widely. His first scholarly article (1977)
was in Biblical Studies. He has also published studies pertaining to Japan,
Korea, and Tibet. But his primary area of research is China. Professor Kirkland
been teaching and writing about Taoism for over twenty years, and has presented
scholarly papers in China, Japan, and Australia, as well as throughout North
America. He is the author of principal entries in the Encyclopedia of Bioethics
(2nd ed.), the Encyclopedia of Women and World Religions; the forthcoming
Worldmark Encyclopedia of Religious Practice; and the forthcoming Encyclopedia
of Taoism. He is Vice President of the Society for the Study of Chinese
Religions and has been on the board of the U.S. Taoist Association since
its inception.
Professor Kirkland is currently working to promote a new understanding of
Taoism that moves beyond the misunderstandings and biasses that plagued
the presentations of twentieth-century scholars around the world. For instance,
his article, “Probing the Anti-Taoist Biasses of Western Sinology:
Toward a Globalization of Taoist Studies,” will appear in Evgeny Torchinov,
ed., Religioznofilosofskoe nasledie Vostoka v germenevticheskoi perspektive
[The Religious and Philosophical Legacy of the East: Hermeneutical Perspectives],
to be published in St. Petersburg, Russia.
In 2004, Professor Kirkland published Taoism: The Enduring Tradition (London
and New York: Routledge; cf. http://rels.queensu.ca/dao/newbooks.php). In it, he works to show that,
over the centuries of imperial Chinese history, Taoism was a valued and
important element of Chinese culture and society, among both the literate
classes and the general public. The book is the first major effort to re-evaluate
Taoism on terms that are defined with reference to the ways in which centuries
of Taoists have understood and practiced their own tradition, rather than
simply by how modern Confucians misrepresented it to foreign scholars and
the Chinese people alike. Professor Kirkland has also re-printed a variety
of his scholarly publications, in full-text, on his Internet webpage (http://kirkland.myweb.uga.edu),
in order to help disseminate more accurate perspectives on Taoism and other
subjects among the public today.
Contact Dr. Kirkland at kirkland@uga.edu