Jessica Starling

Jessica Starling was the Shinjo Ito Postdoctoral Fellow in Japanese Buddhism for 2012-13. She completed her PhD in Religious Studies from the University of Virginia in 2012, after conducting research as a visiting scholar at Otani University in Kyoto from 2009-2011. Her dissertation concerned the history and contemporary experiences of temple wives, known as bomori, in the Jodo Shinshu or True Pure Land School of Buddhism in Japan. Her articles include a study of prescriptive accounts of temple wives from the Meiji through the prewar period, and an in-depth study of sermons for temple wives from the Edo period. Jessica is interested in broader themes of women and gender in Pure Land Buddhism as well as the activities of Buddhist laywomen's associations, especially in the modern and early modern periods. She is now Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Lewis & Clark College.