Stephen F. Teiser

Stephen F. Teiser (born 1956) is the D. T. Suzuki Professor in Buddhist Studies and Professor of Religion at Princeton University, where he is also the Director of the Program in East Asian Studies.^[1] His scholarship is known for a broad conception of Buddhist thinking and practice, showing the interactions between Buddhism in India, China, Korea and Japan, especially in the medieval period; for the use of wide-ranging sources, not only texts and documents, but artistic and material; for a theoretical approach that builds insights from history, anthropology, literary theory, and religious studies; and for seeing Buddhism in both elite and popular contexts.

Each of his monographs has won a major award. Teiser's first monograph, The Ghost Festival in Medieval China (1988) was awarded the prize in History of Religions by the American Council of Learned Societies. His second book, The Scripture on the Ten Kings and the Making of Purgatory in Medieval Chinese Buddhism (1994) was awarded the Joseph Levenson Book Prize (pre-twentieth century) in Chinese Studies. Reinventing the Wheel: Paintings of Rebirth in Medieval Buddhist Temples (2007) won the Prix Stanislas Julien, awarded by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, Institut de France.