Rituals and Revelations: Re-thinking Comparative Approaches to the Study of Religion

This talk will explore ritual practices in Chinese history as well as theories that arose in China concerning these practices. Prof. Puett will argue that these practices and theories open up a number of interesting comparative issues concerning religion, belief, and, of course, ritual itself.

About the speaker:
Michael Puett is the Walter C. Klein Professor of Chinese History and Anthropology at Harvard University. His interests are focused on the inter-relations between religion, philosophy, anthropology, and history, with the hope of bringing the study of China into larger historical and comparative frameworks.

He is the author of "The Ambivalence of Creation: Debates Concerning Innovation" and "Artifice in Early China and To Become a God: Cosmology, Sacrifice, and Self-Divinization in Early China," as well as the co-author, with Adam Seligman, Robert Weller, and Bennett Simon, of "Ritual and its Consequences: An Essay on the Limits of Sincerity."