Carleton announces Asuka Sango as John W. Nason Professor of Asian Studies and Religion Endowed Chair
Sango was named John W. Nason Professor of Asian Studies and Religion Endowed Chair this September.
Asuka Sango, John W. Nason Professor of Asian Studies and Religion, joined the Carleton Department of Religion in 2007. Professor Sango offers a wide range of courses in religious studies focusing on East Asian religions and Buddhism.
She contributes to the college’s mission to promote global citizenship by teaching students about the cultures and religions of Asia. All courses emphasize active learning and student-centered pedagogy while using Asian religions to challenge the accepted views on gender, race, and religion. Among her most innovative courses is her Academic Civic Engagement course, “Samurai: Ethics of Death and Loyalty.” The course
introduces students to both the history and culture of the Samurai class in Japan and to the practice of kyūdō (Japanese archery), encouraging students to learn through mind and body. She also led an off-campus studies trip to Kyoto in 2019. The program offered place-based learning
and included visits to various religious sites in and near Kyoto, including Hiroshima.
Professor Sango’s scholarship focuses on Buddhism in premodern Japan. After completing her first book, The Halo of Golden Light: Imperial Authority and Buddhist Ritual in Heian Japan (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2015), a study of Buddhist statecraft, she has been working on her next book project, Living Thought. She examines scholarly practices of learning such as reading, writing, and oral debate in medieval Japanese Buddhism, and breaks new ground by turning to the “backstage” of intellectual life: study notes, lecture scripts, and debate records, produced not by the intellectual giants, but by ordinary scholar monks whose voices have been largely ignored by modern scholars. As this project nears its completion, she is excited about the prospect of her new project: Entitled Dreams, Gossip, and Secrets, this book explores the discourses and practices of dreaming and gossiping as part of the larger culture of secrecy in premodern Japan while incorporating neuroscientific, psychological, and sociological approaches to dreams, gossip, and secrecy.
Sango is currently serving as chair of the Department of Religion and the director of the Asian Studies Program. She has served on a number of college committees, including serving on the community, equality, diversity, and inclusion (CEDI) leadership board. In addition to her service to Carleton, professor Sango was co-chair for the Japanese Religions Unit Steering Committee for the American Academy of Religion from 2015 to 2020 and served as a reviewer for the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Bukkyō Dendō Kyōkai Canada Fellowship in Buddhist Studies in 2018.
Sango earned a bachelor’s of art degree from Wittenberg University in 1999, an MA in East Asian religions from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2002 and an MA in 2005 and PhD in religious studies from Princeton University in 2007.
The John W. Nason Professorship was established in honor of John Nason, a Carleton alumnus and former Carleton president, who had a keen interest in foreign affairs and international education.