About

Robert Ford Campany

Professor of Religion and East Asian Languages and Cultures

Contact Information
E-mail: campany@usc.edu
Phone: (213) 740-0270
Office: ACB 130
Office Hours: By appointment : By appointment

LINKS
Curriculum Vitae
 

Education
B.A. Philosophy, Davidson College, 1981
M.A. Religion, University of Chicago, 1983
Ph.D. History of Religions, University of Chicago, 1988
 

Academic Appointment, Affiliation, and Employment History
Professor of Religious Studies and East Asian Langs. & Cultures, Indiana University, 07/01/1988-08/15/2006  
 

Description of Research

Summary Statement of Research Interests
I study the religions of China, focusing on the exciting and formative period from ca. 250 B.C.E. to 600 C.E. and on the Daoist, Buddhist, Confucian, and popular traditions. More generally, I study the history of how the thing we now call "religion" has been studied and characterized. My work attempts to bring early medieval Chinese materials into conversation with the broader study of religion, and to encourage other scholars in the field to engage in this conversation. I prefer to study religions in the round, religions as they are lived by individuals and communities over time, rather than as systems of abstract thought. At present I have just completed a study of the social contexts of the quest for transcendence or immortality in early medieval China--a study in which I argue that practitioners of esoteric arts of transcendence functioned in society as a type of holy person. I'm also co-editing a sourcebook of translations of documents from early medieval China. Other interests include the following: methods for the cross-cultural study of religion; religion and the body; religion and food; how religions travel across cultures; death, immortality, and relations between the living and the dead; religion and narrative; dreams and their interpretation.
 

Research Specialties
history of Chinese religions, methods and theory for the study of religion and culture
 

Publications

Book
Campany, R. F. (2008). Making Transcendents: Ascetics and Social Memory in Early Medieval China. University of Hawaii Press.
Campany, R. F. (2002). To Live as Long as Heaven and Earth: A Translation and Study of Ge Hong's Traditions of Divine Transcendents. Berkeley and Los Angeles: To Live as Long as Heaven and Earth: A Translation and Study of Ge Hong's Traditions of Divine Transcendents/University of California Press.
Campany, R. F. (1996). Strange Writing: Anomaly Accounts in Early Medieval China. Albany, New York: Strange Writing: Anomaly Accounts in Early Medieval China/State University of New York Press.
 

Service to the University

Administrative Appointments
Director of Religion, Spring 2009   
 
 
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