Reading List for the M.A. Examination in Religions in China
Comparative Religion
Western Michigan University
Read in the order as listed
Daniel L. Overmyer, David N. Keightley, Edward L. Shaughnessy, Constance A. Cook,
and Donald Harper. 1995. “Chinese Religions—The State of the Field: Park I Early
Religious Traditions: The Neolithic Period through the Han Dynasty (ca. 4000 B.C.E. to
220 C.E.).” The Journal of Asian Studies. Vol. 54, No. 1. (Feb.): 124-160.
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0021-9118%28199502%2954%3A1%3C124%3AI%3E2.0.CO%3B2-T
Daniel L. Overmyer, Gary Arbuckle, Dru C. Gladney, John R. McRae, Rodney L. Taylor
“Chinese Religions—The State of the Field: Park II Living Religious Traditions: Taoism,
Confucianism, Buddhism, Islam and Popular Religion.” The Journal of Asian Studies.
Vol. 54, No. 2. (May): 314-321.
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0021-9118%28199505%2954%3A2%3C314%3AI%3E2.0.CO%3B2-I
Early Religions
Keightley, N. David. 2004. “The Making of the Ancestors: Late Shang Religion and Its
Legacy” in John Lagerway eds. Religion and Chinese Society vol.1: Ancient and
Medieval China. Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong Press: 3-63.
Wang Aihe. 2000. Cosmology and Political Culture in Early China. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Puett, Michael J. 2002. To Become a God: Cosmology, sacrifice, and self-divinization in
early China. Harvard-Yenching Institute monograph series, 57. Cambridge: Harvard
University Asia Center.
Poo Mu-chou. 1998. In Search of Personal Welfare: A View of Chinese Religion. Albany:
State University of New York Press.
Wu Hung. 2010. The Art of the Yellow Springs: Understanding Chinese Tombs.
Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
Harper, Donald. 1999. “Warring States Natural Philosophy and Occult Thought.” The
Cambridge History of Ancient China, Michael Loewe and Edward Shaughnessy, eds.
New York: Cambridge University Press: 813-84.
Lewis, Edward Mark. 1999. “Introduction;” “Chapter One: Writing the State;” and
“Chapter Six: The Natural Philosophy of Writing” in Writing and Authority in Early
China. Albany: SUNY.
Bokenkamp, R. Stephen. Ancestors and Anxiety: Daoism and the Birth of Rebirth in
China. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 2007.
Campany, Ford Robert. 2009. Making Transcendents: Ascetics and Social Memory in
Early Medieval China. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
----. 2003. “On the Very Idea of Religions (in the Modern West and in Early Medieval
China).” History of Religions 42, no.4: 287-319.
Confucianism
Csikszentmihalyi, Mark. 2001. “Confucius” in David Noel Freedman and Michael
McClymond, eds. The Rivers of Paradise. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans
Publishing Co.: 233-308.
Fingarette, Herbert. 1972. Confucius: The Secular as Sacred. New York: Harper and
Row.
Jensen, M. Lionel. 1997. Manufacturing Confucianism. Durham: Duke University Press.
Daoism
Seidel, Anna. 1983. “Imperial Treasures and Taoist Sacraments: Taoist Roots in the
Apocrypha,” Michel Strickmann ed., Tantric and Taoist Studies in Honour of R. A. Stein.
Brussels: Institut Belge des Hautes Etudes Chinoises: 291-371.
Robinet, Isabelle. 1997. Taoism: Growth of a Religion, trans. Phyllis Brooks. Stanford:
Stanford University Press.
Hymes, P. Robert. 2002. Way and Byway: Taoism, Local Religion, and Models of
Divinity in Sung. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Buddhism
Zürcher, Erik. 1972. The Buddhist Conquest of China: The Spread and Adaptation of
Buddhism in Early Medieval China. Brill.
Sharf, H. Robert. 2005. Coming to Terms with Chinese Buddhism: A Reading of the
Treasure Store Treatise. University of Hawai'i Press.
Teiser, F. Stephen. 2003. The Scripture on the Ten Kings and the Making of Purgatory in
Medieval Chinese Buddhism. University of Hawaii Press.
Kieschnick. John. 2003. The Impact of Buddhism on Chinese Material Culture.
Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Modern China
Weller, Robert. 1994. Resistance, Chaos and Control in China: Taiping Rebels,
Taiwanese Ghosts, and Tiananmen. Seattle: University of Washington Press.