Associate Professor Elisabetta Porcu

Associate Professor and Head of Department

Elisabetta Porcu is an Associate Professor of Asian religions and Head of the Department for the Study of Religions at the University of Cape Town. She is a South Africa’s National Research Foundation (NRF) B2-rated researcher. 

Before moving to South Africa, she worked at various universities in Japan (2004-2010) and taught Japanese religions at the University of Leipzig (2010-2014). She has been Visiting Research Scholar at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies (Nichibunken) in Kyoto (2013-2014), Numata Visiting Professor of Buddhist Studies at the University of Hawaii (2013), and Visiting Professor at Kyushu University (2016-2017). Among her publications are the monograph Pure Land Buddhism in Modern Japanese Culture (Brill, 2008), the volume Matsuri and Religion: Complexity, Continuity, and Creativity in Japanese Festivals (co-edited with Michael D. Foster, Brill 2020, 2021); and various articles and book chapters, including “Gion Matsuri in Kyoto: A Multilayered Religious Phenomenon” (2020); “Religion, Second Modernity and Individualization in Japan” (2018); “Contemporary Japanese Buddhist Traditions” (2017); and “Pop Religion in Japan: Buddhist Temples, Icons and Branding” (2014). 

Elisabetta is the founding director of the Center for the Study of Asian Religions (CSAR) at the University of Cape Town; the founding editor of the Journal of Religion in Japan (Brill); and has served on the executive committee of the Association for the Study of Religion in Southern Africa (2017-2023, ASRSA President 2021-2023). 

Selected Publications
Books

Co-edited books

Edited volumes

  • Matsuri and Religion in Japan; Special volume of the Journal of Religion in Japan (9, issues 1-3), 2020. Edited with Michael Dylan Foster.
  • Journal of Religion in Japan (2012-present) http://www.brill.com/jrj

Articles and book chapters (select)

  • “The Gion Festival in Kyoto and Glocalization.” Religions 13(8): 689 (pp. 1-13). Special issue on East Asian Religions and Globalization, eds. Ugo Dessì and Lukas Pokorny (2022). DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13080689
  • “Gion Matsuri in Kyoto: A Multilayered Religious Phenomenon.” In Matsuri and Religion: Complexity, Continuity and Creativity in Japanese Festivals. co-edited with Michael Dylan Foster, Leiden: Brill (2021), pp. 37-77.
  •  “Shinnyoen,” co-authored with Ugo Dessì. In Courtney Bruntz (ed.), Oxford Bibliographies in Buddhism. New York: Oxford University Press (2021). DOI: 10.1093/OBO/9780195393521-0275.
  • “Gion Matsuri in Kyoto: A Multilayered Religious Phenomenon” Journal of Religion in Japan 9 (1-3). Special volume on Religion and Festivals in Japan (2020): 37-77. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/22118349-00901006
  • “Introduction: Matsuri and Religion in Japan.” Journal of Religion in Japan vol. 9, issues 1-3 (2020): 1-9. With Michael Dylan Foster. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/22118349-00901009 
  • “Toward a Pure Land Buddhist Aesthetics: Yanagi Sōetsu’s Muu kōshu no gan.” In Georgios Halkias and Richard K. Payne (eds.). Pure Lands in Asian Texts and Contexts. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press (2019), pp. 587-601.
  • “Japanese Buddhisms in Diaspora.” In Richard Payne and Georgios Halkias (eds.), The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Buddhism. London and New York: Oxford University Press (2018): 1-23.
  • “Religion, Second Modernity and Individualization in Japan.” Journal of Religion in Japan 7/2 (2018): 126-144. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/22118349-00702002
  • “Tenrikyō’s Divine Model through the Manga Oyasama monogatari.” Journal of Asian Humanities at Kyushu University (JAH-Q) (2017): 85-93.
  • “Contemporary Japanese Buddhist Traditions.” In Michael Jerryson (ed). Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Buddhism. London and New York: Oxford University Press (2017), pp. 122-139.
  • “Nihon no toshi shakai ni okeru shūkyōsei to sezokusei no yuragi ni kan suru kōsatsu. 2016. [Translation into Japanese of “Observations on the Blurring of the Religious and the Secular” by request of the 21st Century Center for Excellence Program at Kokugakuin University, Tokyo- Series: Articles in Translations.] http://k-amc.kokugakuin.ac.jp/DM/dbTop.do?class_name=col_jat.
  • “Down-to-Earth Zen: Zen Buddhism in Japanese Manga and Movies.” Journal of Global Buddhism 16 (2015): 37-50. http://www.globalbuddhism.org/jgb/index.php/jgb/article/view/146
  • “The Religious-Secular Divide at the Community Level in Contemporary Japan.” In: Marian Burchardt, Monika Wohlrab-Sahr and Matthias Middell (eds.). Multiple Secularities Beyond the West: Religion and Modernity in the Global Age. Boston and Berlin: deGruyter (2015): 167-186.
  • “Pop Religion in Japan: Buddhist Temples, Icons and Branding.” Journal of Religion and Popular Culture 26/2 (2014): 157-172. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3138/jrpc.26.2.157
  • “Religion and the State in Contemporary Japan.” In Religion and Politics: European and Global Perspectives. Johann Arnason and Ireneusz Pawel Karolewski (eds.). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press (2014), pp. 168-182.
  • “Staging Zen Buddhism: Image Creation in Contemporary Films.” Contemporary Buddhism 15/1 (2014): 81-96. https://doi.org/10.1080/14639947.2014.890354
  • “Sacred Spaces Reloaded: New Trends in Shintō.” In Matthias Middell (ed.). Self-Reflexive Area Studies. Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag/Leipzig University Press (2013), pp. 279-294.
  • “Observations on the Blurring of the Religious and the Secular in a Japanese Urban Setting.” Journal of Religion in Japan 1/1 (2012): 83-106. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/221183412X628398
  • “On- and Off-line Representations of Japanese Buddhism: Reflections on a Multifaceted Religious Tradition.” In Pacific World 32/1 (2010): 91-107.
  • “Speaking through the Media: Shin Buddhism, Popular Culture, and the Internet.” In The Social Dimension of Shin Buddhism, Ugo Dessì (ed.). Leiden, Boston: Brill (2010), pp. 209-239. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/ej.9789004186538.i-286
  • “Anniversaries, Founders, Slogans, and Visual Media in Shin Buddhism.” In Japanese Religions 34/1 (2009): 53-73.
  • “Glimpses of the Pure Land in Wartime Italy.” In The Pure Land ns 25 (2009): 71-86.
  • “Jōdo Shinshū no gendaitekina hyōshō” (Modern Representations of Jōdo Shinshū). In Bukkyō Bunka Kenkyūjo Kiyō  47 (2008): 109-119.
  • “Aesthetics and Art in Modern Pure Land Buddhism.” In Japanese Religions 32/1-2 (2007): 53-68.

Important links:
Orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3074-5754
Academia site: www.uct.academia.edu/ElisabettaPorcu
Journal of Religion in Japan: http://www.brill.com/jrj