Southeast Asia

Religion, Environment, and AI

Tuesday, April 22

Center for Oral and Public History, PLS 601

 

Morning Session

9:00 – 10:00 am “More than Monks and Manuscripts: Buddhism as Lived Religion in Southeast Asia”

Lisa Battaglia is a comparative religionist and Associate Professor of Religion at Samford University, where she teaches survey courses on World Religions, Cultural Perspectives, and Asian religious traditions, as well as topical courses on Religion and the Body and Women and Religion. Her scholarly interests lie at the intersection of Asian religious traditions and critical methods in the study of religion, with a focus on contemporary Buddhist movements in Southeast Asia. Through her research, she aims to develop a dialogical model for exploring western feminist critique and indigenous Buddhist subjectivities, and to shed productive light on how gender, sexuality, human rights, and religious vocation translate across cultures and cultural domains. Her fieldwork and research have taken her throughout Southeast Asia, including Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, and Malaysia.

 

10:00 – 11:00 am “Environment, Technopolitics, and the Humanities in Southeast Asia”

David Biggs is an environmental historian and a Professor of Southeast Asian History at University of California, Riverside whose work examines intersections of history, conflict and development in ecologies and landscapes of Southeast Asia. His work includes the books Quagmire: Nation-Building and Nature in the Mekong Delta and Footprints of War: Militarized Landscapes in Vietnam. At present, he is completing a survey for Cambridge University Press titled, A Green History of Southeast Asia. 

 

11:00 – 11:30am - Panel Discussion

 

Afternoon Session

1:00 – 2:00 pm “AI and Human Freedom: A Buddhist View”

Peter D. Hershock is Director of the Asian Studies Development Program and founder of the Humane AI Initiative at the East-West Center in Honolulu. His philosophical work makes use of Buddhist conceptual resources to address contemporary issues of global concern, with a focus on equity, diversity, and the impacts and ethics of emerging technologies. He has authored or edited more than a dozen books on Buddhism, Asian philosophy, and contemporary issues. These include Reinventing the Wheel: A Buddhist Response to the Information Age (1999); Buddhism in the Public Sphere: Reorienting Global Interdependence (2006); Valuing Diversity: Buddhist Reflection on Realizing a More Equitable Global Future (2012); and Buddhism and Intelligent Technology: Toward a More Humane Future (2021). His most recent book is Consciousness Mattering: A Buddhist Synthesis (2023).

 

2:30 – 3:30pm Pedagogy Session

 

Sponsored by the Asian Studies Development Program at the East-West Center in Honolulu, with CSUF support from Cultural Anthropology Program, History Department, and H&SS Dean’s Office