Winfield presented her work, "Vajrapani in Renaissance Italy? Buddhist Iconography and the Question of Premodern Orientalism."
This summer, Professor of Religious Studies Pamela D. Winfield presented her original research at a major international conference on聽“Buddhism and Art from Transregional and Cross-Cultural Perspectives.”
The conference was co-sponsored by the Glorisun Global Network for Buddhist Studies (Peking University), The Frogbear 鈥楤uddhism from the Ground Up鈥 Project (University of British Columbia), Centre d鈥橢tudes Interdisciplinaires sur le Bouddhisme (CEIB) and Institut National de Langues et Cultures Orientales (INALCO), Paris.
Her paper, “Vajrapani in Renaissance Italy? Buddhist Iconography and the Question of Premodern Orientalism鈥 examined the historical conditions under which classical Hercules imagery developed into the Buddhist dharma protector Vajrapani, who was then reintroduced back into the European cultural sphere in the 16th century.