How to Be Wrong About Buddhism: A Graphic Memoir

Abstract

This project explores the entanglement of European colonialism/imperialism with the development of Buddhist studies in the West. It is told as a graphic memoir, tracing how the author’s relationship to Buddhist scholarship and practice shifts as she learns more about the co-constitution of race theory, European colonial projects, and the academic study of religion in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Chapters: Prelude: Why a Graphic Memoir? Act I: In Which I Have the Rug Ripped Out From Under Me Act Ii: In Which I Learn What Buddhism Has to Do With the Idea of an Aryan Race Intermission: Every Time I Try to Pick Buddhism up It Slips Through My Fingers Act Ii: In Which I Admit I Have Told a Lie of Omission Coda: How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Being Wrong