Department of Religious Studies
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Faculty - James H. Foard
James Foard
Professor of Religious Studies
Ph.D., Stanford
Arrived at ASU: 1977
E-mail: James.Foard@asu.edu
CV: (PDF)
Research Interests
Japanese Buddhist images in their ritual settings, Rituals and Texts of Hiroshima, Religion in Japan.
Biography
(Ph.D., Stanford) is professor of the history of religions, specializing in the religions of Japan, particularly popular religion and culture from medieval times to the present. He has taught at Hiroshima Shudo University and Stanford University, and was a Visiting Fellow at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies.
Courses Taught
REL 100 - Religions of the World
REL 200 - The Study of Religious Traditions
REL 344 - Religion and Values in Japanese Life
REL 355 - Japanese Cities and Cultures to 1800
REL 444 - Religion in Japan
REL 591 - Seminar on Icons
Selected Publications
“The Mistake Will Not Be Repeated: Hiroshima and Japanese War Responsibility,” in Taking Responsibility: Comparative Perspectives. Edited by Winston Davis. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2001.

“What One Kamakura Story Does: Practice, Place and Text in the Account of Ippen at Kumano,” in Re-Visioning “Kamakura” Buddhism. Edited by Richard K. Payne. Kuroda Institute Studies in East Asian Buddhism 11. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1998.

"Imagining Nuclear Weapons: Hiroshima, Armageddon, and the Annihilation of the Students of Ichijo School." Journal of the American Academy of Religion 65 (1997): 1-18.

"The Universal and the Particular in the Rites of Hiroshima." In Asian Visions of Authority: Religion and the Modern States of East and Southeast Asia. Ed. by Charles F. Keyes, Laurel Kendall, and Helen Hardacre. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1994.

"Prefiguration and Narrative in Medieval Hagiography: The Ippen Hijiri E" in Flowing Traces: Buddhism in the Literary and Visual Arts of Japan. Ed. by James Sanford, William La Fleur, and Masatoshi Nagatomi. Princeton: Princeton University Press, (1992).

“The Boundaries of Compassion: Buddhism and National Tradition in Japanese Pilgrimage.” The Journal of Asian Studies 41:2 (February, 1982): 231-51.