Biography
Tao Jiang is a scholar of Mahāyāna Buddhist philosophy and classical Chinese thought. He also enjoys cross-cultural comparative approaches to ideas. Trained in the scholastic Yogācāra Buddhism at Temple University, over the last fifteen years Jiang has developed a second specialization in pre-Buddhist early Chinese intellectual history. He is the author of Origins of Moral-Political Philosophy in Early China: Contestation of Humaneness, Justice, and Personal Freedom (Oxford 2021) and Contexts and Dialogue: Yogācāra Buddhism and Modern Psychology on the Subliminal Mind (Hawaii 2006), and the co-editor of The Reception and Rendition of Freud in China: China’s Freudian Slip (Routledge 2013). He is working on several other book projects that include the tragedy of freedom in Zhuangzi’s thought and a new interpretation of Linji's Chan Buddhist philosophy.
Jiang is chair of the Department of Religion and director of the Center for Chinese Studies at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, US. He co-chairs the Buddhist Philosophy Unit and was the founding co-chair of the Religion in the Indian and Chinese Cultures Group (which is now the Indian and Chinese Religions Compared Unit). He served on the Program Committee and the First Book Award Jury at the AAR.
Candidate Statement
Growing up in an environment where religion meant superstition and backwardness, it never crossed my mind that I would become a scholar of religion, although I would later realize that religion had been all around me if I knew where to look and how to see. By a stroke of serendipity (or karma), Temple University took a chance on me when I was applying for graduate school. There I met inspiring teachers and supportive friends who opened my eyes to a world hitherto unknown to me. Through the lens of religion, a category often problematic and problematized in tantalizing and surprising ways, I got to study history, philosophy, and psychology, and contemplate what is human. After receiving my doctorate, I worked in Southern Illinois University Carbondale before moving to Rutgers University, New Brunswick, in 2005 and have been working there since.
AAR is my community. I still remember the nervousness and the excitement when attending the annual meeting for the first time over 20 years ago. Ever since then, the annual meeting has become a major occasion to look forward to every year when I get to be intellectually stimulated, share my work with colleagues, catch up with old friends, make new friends, and grab half-priced new books, etc. The kindred spirits here have nurtured me in my professional development over the years. I have also tried to do my part to sustain the wellbeing of the AAR in various capacities. I have co-chaired two program units and was on two steering committees. I served on the Program Committee as well as the Best First Book Award Jury.
The study of religion, and the humanities more generally, in the US has undergone many changes in the duration of my professional life. There is a growing recognition of the need to diversify scholarly approaches as well as the academic ranks. The adjuntification of the faculty has had a devastating effect on the most vulnerable members of our profession. The sharp rise of alt-ac career has led to some necessary rethinking about graduate studies. Currently, the pandemic is still raging in much of the world, straining our community already under duress. The world is lurching from one epic crisis to the next without any respite, and the challenges to us as scholars, educators, and citizens are overwhelming. However, we are not the bystanders of history, but active agents, both individually and collectively, who help to shape the future through our scholarship, our work as educators, and our active participation in worthy causes. Many intellectuals in world history rose to the challenges of their time, and they are the exemplars we look up to when dealing with the many existential crises of our own time.
It is a great honor to be nominated as vice president of the AAR. If elected, I will do my best to contribute to the already robust intellectual life at the AAR and to further improve the professional environment in our beloved community.