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Black Buddhism

A research guide on Black Buddhism supporting the Black Buddhism Faculty Project of the Princeton University Center for Culture, Society, and Religion

Background Reading on Buddhism in the West

View as Zotero Bibliography

Ama, Michihiro. Immigrants to the Pure Land: The Modernization, Acculturation, and Globalization of Shin Buddhism, 1898–1941. Pure Land Buddhist Studies. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2011.

Batchelor, Stephen. The Awakening of the West: The Encounter of Buddhism and Western Culture. Reprint with new preface. Williamsville, VT: Echo Point Books & Media, 2011.

Cadge, Wendy. Heartwood: The First Generation of Theravada Buddhism in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004.

Carrette, Jeremy, and Richard King. Selling Spirituality: The Silent Takeover of Religion. London: Routledge, 2005.

Cheah, Joseph. Race and Religion in American Buddhism: White Supremacy and Immigrant Adaptation. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.

Coleman, James William. The New Buddhism: The Western Transformation of an Ancient Tradition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Cox, Laurence. Buddhism and Ireland: From the Celts to Counter-Culture and Beyond. Bristol, CT: Equinox, 2013.

Droit, Roger-Pol. The Cult of Nothingness: The Philosophers and the Buddha. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003.

Fields, Rick, and Benjamin Bogin. How the Swans Came to the Lake: A Narrative History of Buddhism in America. Fortieth anniversary edition. Boulder, Colorado: Shambhala Publications, Inc., 2022.

Gross, Rita M. Buddhism after Patriarchy: A Feminist History, Analysis, and Reconstruction of Buddhism. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993.

Hammond, Philip E., and David W. Machacek. Soka Gakkai in America: Accommodation and Conversion. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Harding, John S., Victor Sogen Hori, and Alexander Soucy, eds. Wild Geese: Buddhism in Canada. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2014.

Iwamura, Jane Naomi. Altared States: Exploring the Legacy of Japanese American Butsudan Practice. Pacific World: Journal of the Institute of Buddhist Studies. Vol. 5, 2003.

———. Virtual Orientalism: Asian Religions and American Popular Culture. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.

Jong, J. W. de. A Brief History of Buddhist Studies in Europe and America. Tokyo: Kosei, 1997.

Kashima, Tetsuden. Buddhism in America: The Social Organization of an Ethnic Religious Institution. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1977.

Klein, Anne C. Meeting the Great Bliss Queen: Buddhists, Feminists, and the Art of the Self. Boston: Beacon, 1995.

Lopez, Donald, Jr. Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.

McMahan, David L. The Making of Buddhist Modernism. New York and London: Oxford University Press, 2008.

Mitchell, Scott A. Buddhism in America: Global Religion, Local Contexts. New York: Bloomsbury, 2016.

Mitchell, Scott A., and Natalie E.F. Quli, eds. Buddhism beyond Borders: New Perspectives on Buddhism in the United States. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2015.

Mullen, Eve. The American Occupation of Tibetan Buddhism: Tibetans and Their American Hosts in New York City. Munster, Germany: Waxmann, 2001.

Numrich, Paul David. North American Buddhists in Social Context. Vol. 15. Religion and the Social Order. Boston: Brill, 2008.

———. Old Wisdom in the New World: Americanization in Two Immigrant Theravada Buddhist Temples. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1996.

Ourvan, Jeff. The Star Spangled Buddhist: Zen, Tibetan, and Soka Gakkai Buddhism and the Quest for Enlightenment in America. New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2013.

Payne, Richard K. How Much Is Enough?: Buddhism, Consumerism, and the Human Environment. Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications, 2010.

Prebish, Charles S. Luminous Passage: The Practice and Study of Buddhism in America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.

Prebish, Charles S., and Martin Baumann, eds. Westward Dharma: Buddhism beyond Asia. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.

Prebish, Charles S., and Kenneth K. Tanaka, eds. The Faces of Buddhism in America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.

Preston, David L. The Social Organization of Zen Practice: Constructing Transcultural Reality. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1988.

Prothero, Stephen R. The White Buddhist: The Asian Odyssey of Henry Steel Olcott. Religion in North America. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996.

Queen, Christopher F. Engaged Buddhism in the West. Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications, 2000.

Seager, Richard Hughes. Buddhism in America. Columbia Contemporary American Religion. New York: Columbia University Press, 2012.

Snodgrass, Judith. Presenting Japanese Buddhism to the West: Orientalism, Occidentalism, and the Colombian Exposition. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003.

Storhoff, Gary, and John Whalen-Bridge, eds. American Buddhism as a Way of Life. SUNY Series in Buddhism and American Culture. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2010.

Tweed, Thomas A. Buddhism in the United States, 1840–1925. London: Ganesha, 2004.

———. The American Encounter with Buddhism, 1844–1912: Victorian Culture and the Limits of Dissent. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992.

Tworkov, Helen. Zen in America: Profiles of Five Teachers. San Francisco: North Point, 1989.

Usuki, Patricia Kanaya. Currents of Change: American Buddhist Women Speak Out on Jodo Shinshu. IBS Monograph. Berkeley, CA: Institute of Buddhist Studies, 2007.

Wilson, Jeff. Mindful America: The Mutual Transformation of Buddhist Meditation and American Culture. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.

———. Mourning the Unborn Dead: A Buddhist Ritual Comes to America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.