Divinity School Teaching Fellow in the College

Bruce Winkelman is a historian of religions whose work spans theory and method in the study of religion, the history and historiography of Japanese religions, and the invention of Buddhist traditions across East Asia. He obtained his PhD in the History of Religions from the University of Chicago Divinity School in 2023. Bruce’s dissertation, "Genealogies of Japanese Buddhism: The Institutional Politics of Founder Centrism in Early Medieval Japan", examines the ideological effects of Buddhist institution's instrumental uses of stories about the famed founders of Japan’s Buddhist schools and traditions. In broad strokes, Bruce's research aims to better understand how and why it has become virtually inconceivable both for Buddhists as well as for scholars of religion to talk about the history of Buddhism in Japan without reference to this specific group of local Buddhist founders. His teaching covers theory in the history of religions, Japanese religions, and East Asian Buddhism.