Distinguished Lecture: Bhikṣuṇī in Buddhism and the Female Agency

January 24, 2016

Dr. Amy Paris Langenberg was at Nalanda University interim campus on January 22, 2016 to deliver a distinguished lecture. The topic of her talk was “Female Agency in the Mūlasarvāstivāda and Mahāsāṅghika-lokottaravāda Vinayas”

Dr. Amy Langenberg, who is currently working as an Assistant Professor in the Religious Studies Department, Eckerd College, Florida, was reading through Buddhist monastic law texts to understand the gender hierarchy within the monastic community. Her complex reading of bhikṣuṇī vinaya texts presented the language of these texts to be sensitive to various modalities of the nun community. Her hypothesis was that the bhikṣuṇī in Buddhism had some kind of agency with them. The texts she referred for her lecture were Mūlasarvāstivāda and Mahāsāṅghika-lokottaravāda Vinayas. Her lecture led to a round of healthy debate and discussion on new ways of approaching these texts. The lecture helped in deepening the understanding of using different methodologies and tools in order to conduct historical research.