Campany, Robert F.

Professor
Department of Religion
213-740-0272
campany@usc.edu

Professor Campany studies 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, he studies the history of how the thing we now call "religion" has been characterized. His work brings early medieval Chinese materials into conversation with the broader study of religion. He prefers to study religions in the round, religions as they are lived by individuals and communities over time, rather than as systems of abstract thought.  Prof. Campany is now writing a thematic study of religious visions in early medieval China that deals with Buddhist, Daoist, shamanic, and other traditions and their texts and practices. 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.

Additionally, Prof. Campany has been the recipient of numerous fellowships and grants, including awards from the Natonal Endowment for the Humanities, Chiang Ching Kuo Foundation/American Council of Learned Societies, and the Luce Foundation.  He has also received recognition for his work in the classroom (Indiana University Trustees Teaching Award for Teaching Excellence).
 
Education:
Ph.D. (History of Religions), University of Chicago, 1988
M.A. (Religion), University of Chicago, 1983
B.A. (Philosophy), Davidson College, 1981
 
Selected Publications:
Campany, R.F. (forthcoming) Making Transcendents:  Ascetics and Social Memory in Early Medieval China

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. University of California Press.

Campany, R.F. (1996)  Strange Writing: Anomaly Accounts in Early Medieval China.  Albany, New York: State University of New York Press.