About H-Buddhism

Membership Conditions

H-Buddhism is a network that is specifically aimed for advanced academic specialists in this area, for the primary purpose of exchanging professional information. Thus, subscriptions to H-Buddhism are limited to:

(1) Those who hold an advanced degree (M.A. or Ph.D.) in Buddhist Studies
(2) Those who are currently enrolled in an advanced degree program in which Buddhist Studies is a major component.
(3) Those whose original training is outside the field of Buddhist Studies proper, but who have significant scholarly publications in the area of Buddhist Studies.

Therefore, in your application to H-Buddhism, you should clearly indicate:
(1) Your academic status
(2) Your broad area of research
(3) Your main present project(s)

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History

H-Buddhism is an international electronic discussion group that was created on the H-Net Network in August, 2001. The origins of the group go back to May 1999, when Charles Muller founded the Buddhist Scholars Information Network (known as Budschol) on a commercial listserv, to serve as a medium for the exchange of information (regarding resources, events, projects, publications, job listings, and so forth) among the worldwide community of scholars engaged in work related to Buddhism.

Problems developed with the commercial listserv arrangement, since (1) Budschol suffered under the demands for the private information of its subscribers by commercial listservs; (2) our members desired participation in a larger online academic community, and (3) we wanted very much to establish an active book review system, but lacked the infrastructure to do so. Given these needs, it seemed that becoming a participant in H-Net provided a perfect solution. Thus, in the spring of 2001, we applied for membership, and became part of H-Net in the fall of the same year, bringing with us almost 400 hundred subscribers (For Muller's more detailed personal account of the creation of the list, see this article).

Since this time, H-Buddhism has continued to grow rapidly, having, as of April 2014, 1530 active subscribers — almost all being academic specialists who do a significant portion of their work in the area of Buddhist Studies. We have also realized our goal of developing an energetic book review service, with fifteen review editors covering a broad range of topical areas. The the management of discussions and web site is currently handled by Charles Muller, Franz Metcalf (both of whom have served as list editors since the earliest days of Budschol), Matthew McMullen, Charles DiSimone, Lewis Doney, and Jason Protass. The latter four have joined our editorial staff since our 2014 move to H-Net 2.0.

Content

The editorial staff of H-Buddhism has striven from the outset to create and maintain an on-line academic publication standard that is on a par with the best print journals and book publishers. H-Net itself has provided the basic foundation for these standards in the form of its own guidelines for posting, and we have adopted these and tried to go beyond them in terms of establishing standards for academic rigor and online netiquette in the form of our own supplementary guidelines.

In addition to the network editors introduced above, major policy decisions and book reviews are handled by our advisory board and editorial staff. While subscriptions to H-Buddhism's discussion list are open only to graduate students and professors doing specialized work in Buddhist studies, its archived logs are open resources available to everyone. Freely available for viewing, downloading, and for RSS subscription, are H-Buddhism discussions, and announcements about subjects ranging from conferences and seminars to academic jobs. Moreover, our archive also serves as a central repository for sample syllabi, bibliographies, book and product reviews, and other materials of interest to the college level Buddhist studies community, and is linked to other important Buddhist Studies sites.

The primary purpose of H-Buddhism is to enable specialists in Buddhist studies to easily communicate current research and teaching interests; to discuss new articles, books, papers, approaches, methods and tools of analysis; to test new ideas and share comments and tips on teaching. Relevant extracts from the H-Net Job Guide are posted, as are fellowship announcements. Organizers of conferences, and symposia in Buddhist studies are encouraged to post calls for papers and program contents. Reports on new archival or bibliographic sources, new software, or on-line data sets are also welcome.

H-Buddhism is one of the many H-NET lists supported by Michigan State University, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Japan Foundation. H-Net, Humanities Online is a broad initiative designed to facilitate electronic communications among historians and other social scientists.

Membership Restrictions

Membership to H-Buddhism is open to:

  1. Those who hold an advanced degree (M.A. or Ph.D.) in Buddhist Studies,
  2. Those who are currently enrolled in an advanced degree program in which Buddhist Studies is a major component.
  3. Those whose original training is outside the field of Buddhist Studies proper, but who have significant scholarly publications in the area of Buddhist Studies.
  4. Those whose academic training or subsequent research has dealt with Buddhist Studies to the extent that they teach undergraduate or graduate courses in Buddhist Studies.