Wendi Adamek, Assistant Professor of Religion, Receives Fulbright to Study Inscriptions in China
 Assistant Professor of Religion Wendi Adamek has been awarded a Fulbright research fellowship for the academic year 2004-2005 to study the inscriptions carved in the rocks of a mountain site known as Bao shan, near Anyang in the Henan province of China. The inscriptions there represent the highest single-site concentration of memorials for Buddhist women of the Tang dynasty (618-906), and Adamek will explore the social and soteriological contexts of these reliquary inscriptions for medieval Chinese Buddhist nuns.
The project, which will be used for her next book, will begin to address a significant lacuna in the fields of Chinese Buddhist studies and Tang history, for there is very little Western language material on Tang Buddhist nuns. According to Adamek, there is evidence that nuns made up a significant portion of the Tang clergy, and engaged in demanding ascetic practices and doctrinal studies. Little is known about their lives and works, and she hopes that her book will be the first of many to use inscriptional material to shed light on the topic.
Wendi Adamek joined the Barnard Religion Department as Assistant Professor of Chinese Religions in the fall of 2001. She has traveled extensively in Asia, including three years spent in Japan with the support of a Fulbright research fellowship and a grant from the Society for the Preservation of Buddhism. She also spent 2000-2001 in China on an NEH fellowship. Professor Adamek specializes in medieval Chinese Buddhism, and her current research interests include Buddhist nuns of the Tang dynasty, Buddhist donor practices, and the religious art of the Silk Road.
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