Daigengna Duoer (pronounced “dye-gain-na” “door”) is a Canadian historian specializing in religion in modern East and Inner Asia, with a particular focus on transnational Tibeto-Mongolian Buddhism in the twentieth century. She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Religion at Boston University and teaches classes on Buddhism and Asian religions. Please see her department page here.
Her forthcoming book, “Buddhism Beyond the Nation and the Empire: Transnational Buddhists in Modern East and Inner Asia,” investigates Buddhism’s roles within and beyond the competing nation and empire-building projects that took place in early 20th century Inner Mongolia and Manchuria, regions sandwiched between the expansionist ambitions of Republican China, the Japanese Empire, and the Soviet Union. Her research has been supported by the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), Zeit-Stiftung Bucerius, the Mongolia Foundation, the Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation, and the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation, amongst others.
Ph.D. in Religious Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara.
M.A. in Buddhist Studies, University of Toronto.
H.B.A. in Buddhist Studies and Art History, University of Toronto.
Daigengna is a host for the New Books in East Asian Studies Channel, a channel on the New Books Network. In addition to the study of religion, Daigengna is also interested in the study of religion in game media. She is one of the founders of the GAMING+ Project, an online resource for game studies, along with Kaitlyn Ugoretz and Keita Moore.
Contact: dduoer@bu.edu
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
Teaching Experience
Instructor of Record, Boston University
Spring 2025, Healing and the Body in East Asian Religions
Fall 2024, Buddhism
Fall 2024, Zen Thought and Practice
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
