Research Interests and Education
Daigengna Duoer (pronounced “dye-gain-na” “door”) is a Canadian historian of religion in modern East and Inner Asia. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the Religious Studies Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara specializing in Buddhism in modern Inner and East Asia, focusing particularly on Tibeto-Mongolian Buddhism in modern Northeast Asia. See her department page here.
For her dissertation, she investigates the roles that Tibeto-Mongolian Buddhists played within and beyond the competing nation and empire-building projects that took place in twentieth-century Inner Mongolia and Manchuria. Particularly, she studies and maps transnational and transregional Buddhist networks formed by Inner Asian as well as East Asian Buddhists connecting Inner Mongolia, Manchuria, Tibet, Republican China, and Imperial Japan. Her main advisor is Professor Vesna Wallace. Professor José Cabezón, Professor Kate McDonald (History), and Professor Xiaowei Zheng (History) are on her dissertation committee.
She completed both her H.B.A. in Buddhist Studies and Art History and her M.A. in Buddhist Studies at the University of Toronto.
Fellowships & Awards
Daigengna is a recipient of the ACLS Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Program in Buddhist Studies Dissertation Fellowship (2022-2023), the East and Inner Asia Council Grant of the Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation (2022), the Zeit-Stiftung Ebelin und Gerd Bucerius Beyond Borders Dissertation Completion Scholarship (2021-2022), the Mongolia Foundation Scholarship (2021), the SSHRC Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Doctoral Scholarships, and the Rowny Fellowship from the Department of Religious Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara, amongst other awards. She is currently a recipient of the Steve and Barbara Mendell Graduate Fellowship in Cultural Literacy at the Walter H. Capps Center at UCSB.
Daigengna had the honor of receiving the Professor Charles H. Long Memorial Award for Academic Achievement in the Study of the History of Religions from the UCSB Religious Studies Department in 2019. In 2020 and 2021, she received from the department the Graduate Advisor’s Exceptional Service Award and the Chair’s Distinguished Service Award for her service as Lead TA in 2019-2021. In 2021, Daigengna received the Wilbur M. Fridell Memorial Award along with her fellow graduate students Kaitlyn Ugoretz, Mason Johnson, and Mariangela Carpinteri.
Daigengna was nominated for the 2020-2021 Graduate Student Association Excellence in Teaching Award and the 2020-21 Academic Senate Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award at UC Santa Barbara.
Daigengna, Kaitlyn Ugoretz, and Keita Moore are the recipients of the Graduate Collaborative Research Grant for the GAMING + Project, an online conference and resource on game studies. This grant was generously provided by the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center at UC Santa Barbara.
Language Skills
Daigengna mainly works with Chinese, Japanese, Tibetan, and Mongolian sources. She is actively adding Manchu, Korean, and Russian to her language abilities. She also reads French and is Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT) N1 and Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi (HSK-Chinese) Level 6 certified.
Professional Services and Projects
Daigengna is a host for the New Books in East Asian Studies Channel, a channel on the New Books Network. For a list of interviews that she has done, see the New Books Network Podcast page on this site, or visit my profile on the NBN site here.
In addition to the study of religion, Daigengna is also interested in gamic studies. She is one of the founders of the GAMING+ Project, an online resource for game studies funded by the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center at UC Santa Barbara, along with Kaitlyn Ugoretz and Keita Moore.
All photography on this site are taken by Daigengna Duoer.
Publications:
Duoer, Daigengna. 2023. “Governing ‘Lamaism’ on the ‘Frontier’: Buddhism and Law in Early Twentieth-century Inner Mongolia,” in Buddhism and Constitutional Law, eds. Benjamin Schonthal and Tom Ginsburg, Cambridge: Cambridge Press, 305–325. [Open access]
Duoer, Daigengna. 2019. “Making the Esoteric Public: The Ninth Panchen Lama and the Trans-ethnonational Rituals of the Kālacakra Initiations in Early Twentieth-Century East Asia,” Acta Mongolica, 18 (532), 131–175.
Duoer, Daigengna. 2019. “From ‘Lama Doctors’ to ‘Mongolian Doctors’: Regulations of Inner Mongolian Buddhist Medicine under Changing Regimes and the Crises of Modernity (1911-1976),” Religions, 10, 373.
Duoer, Daigengna. 2016. “Thoughts on the University of Toronto’s Department for the Study of Religion’s Buddhist Studies Numata Reading Group with Dr. Constantino Moretti,” Canadian Journal of Buddhist Studies, 11, 56–59.
Published Translations:
Mori, Masahide. 2022. “The Origin and Transformations of Abhiṣeka in Indian Buddhism,” in Rituals of Initiation and Consecration in Premodern Japan: Power and Legitimacy in Kingship, Religion, and the Arts, eds. Fabio Rambelli and Or Porath, Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 51–60. Translated by Daigengna Duoer
Book Reviews:
Duoer, Daigengna. 2022. Review of Buddhism and Modernity: Sources from Nineteenth-Century Japan, by Orion Klautau and Hans Martin Krämer. Global Intellectual History. https://doi.org/10.1080/23801883.2022.2033922
Conference Presentations:
2024 “Handing Over Xuanzang’s Bones to a Mongolian Lama in Taiwan: The 7th Changkya Hutugtu and the Politics of Cold War Sino-Japanese Buddhist Diplomacy,” in the panel: Human Remains, Religion, and Politics in East Asia, Association for Asian Studies (AAS), Seattle, WA, March 14-17, 2024. [Accepted to present]
2023. Duoer, Daigengna. “Revisiting the Trope of “Lamaism”: Transnational Discourses on Inner Asian Buddhism from Modern China and Japan,” Buddhism Unit, 2023 American Academy of Religion (AAR) Annual Conference, San Antonio, TX, November 18-21, 2023.
2023. Duoer, Daigengna. “A Ritual to Protect the Nation from Communism: Buddhism and Affect in Cold War Taiwan,” in the panel, “Religion & Cold War in East Asia, 2023 Association for Asian Studies in Asia (AAS-in-Asia) Annual Conference, Daegu, South Korea, June 24-27, 2023.
2023. Duoer, Daigengna.“Scaling Space and Time in Modern China and Inner Asia.” 2023 Association for Asian Studies (AAS) Annual Conference, Boston, March 16-19, 2023.
2022. Duoer, Daigengna. “Ramakyō and Japanese Colonialism: Transnational Buddhism in Early Twentieth-Century Inner Mongolia and Manchuria.” XIXth Congress of the International Association of Buddhist Studies (IABS), Seoul, South Korea, August 14-19, 2022.
2022. Duoer, Daigengna. “Competing to Regulate Religion Beyond Borders: The Case of Buddhism in Early 20th-century Inner Mongolia.” Zeit Stiftung Beyond Borders Student Conference, Hamburg, Germany, April 7-10, 2022.
2022. Duoer, Daigengna. “Solving the ‘Ethno-Religious Issue’ on the ‘Frontier’ for the Nation, the Empire, and the Party: Regulations of Buddhism in Twentieth-century Inner Mongolia.” Presentation for the panel: The Past, Present, and Future of Inner Mongolia. 2022 Association of Asian Studies (AAS) Annual Conference, Hawai’i, March 24-27, 2022.
2021. Duoer, Daigengna. “Embodying Otherness: Religion, Colonialism, and Japanese Intelligence Agents under Inner Asian Buddhist Disguises.” Presentation for the panel Session: Geopolitical Entanglements: Buddhism and Japan’s Wartime Empire. 2021 American Academy of Religion (AAR) Annual Conference, online, November 19, 2021.
2021. Duoer, Daigengna. “Queering Religion, Playing with Religion: Tibetan Buddhism in Japanese Boys Love Manga.” UC Santa Barbara, UC Riverside, and Stanford Buddhist Studies Graduate Students’ Research Workshop, online, May 1, 2021.
2021. Duoer, Daigengna. “Towards A ‘Modern Manchu-Mongolian Buddhism’: Religious Spatializations Within the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.” Presentation for the panel: Japan as a Site for Discourses on Religion and Modernity. 2021 Association of Asian Studies (AAS) Annual Conference, online, March 26, 2021.
2021. Duoer, Daigengna. “Governing Buddhism in the Modern: Buddhist Monasticism and the Constitutional Laws of Competing Regimes in Early 20th-century Inner Mongolia (1931-1945).” Buddhism and Constitutional Law Workshop, American Bar Foundation, online, March 25, 2021.
2021. Duoer, Daigengna. “Colonialism in Disguise: Japanese Agent Kimura Hisao’s Colonial Gaze and Embodiment in Inner Asian Religious Spaces and Places.” Mapping the Territory: Religion, Place, and Space in Asian Humanities Conference, UCLA, online, January 30, 2021.
2020. Duoer, Daigengna. “Responses to COVID-19 in Buddhist Communities of Contemporary China.” Buddhist Responses to COVID-19, online, July 8, 2020. http://www.jivaka.net/buddhism-in-the-pandemic-video-materials/
2019. Duoer, Daigengna. “Definitions and Regulations of Buddhist Monasticism in Early 20th Century Inner Mongolia: 1912-1945.” Woodenfish Forum Hong Kong 2019: Monasticism and Monastic Codes Across the Buddhist World. Gold Coast Hotel, Hong Kong, June 22-24, 2019.
2019. Duoer, Daigengna. “Modern Inner Mongolian Buddhism in Chinese and Japanese Sources.” Expanding the Archives of Mongolian Buddhism Workshop. University of California, Santa Barbara, March 27, 2019.
2018. Duoer, Daigengna. “The 9th Panchen Lama and Kālacakra Initiations in Inner Mongolia.” New Directions in Mongolian Buddhism Conference. University of California, Santa Barbara, January 29-30, 2018.
Teaching Experience
Instructor of Record, University of California, Santa Barbara
Fall 2023, Religion in Japanese Culture
Summer 2023, Zen Buddhism
Summer 2022, Transnational Buddhism through Digital Mapping
Summer 2022, Zen Buddhism
Summer 2020, Zen Buddhism
Fall 2019, Introduction to Japanese Religions
Summer 2019, Introduction to Buddhism
Graduate Teaching Assistant, University of California, Santa Barbara
Summer 2021, Introduction to Buddhism
Spring 2021, Asian Religious Traditions
Winter 2021, Introduction to Buddhism
Fall 2020, Religions of Tibet
Winter 2020, Introduction to Buddhism
Spring 2019, Introduction to Buddhism
Winter 2019, Introduction to Buddhism
Fall 2018, Zen Buddhism
Spring 2018, East Asia Modern
