Date and Time: Friday April 7, 9:00 AM BJT

Zoom ID: 982 0308 7496, Passcode: CSCC

Speaker: Anna Sun, Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Sociology, Duke University

Moderator: Megan Rogers, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Duke Kunshan University

Abstract

This project is based primarily on my ethnographic work on ancestral rituals in contemporary China. “Grave Sweeping” and related ancestral rituals have seen a significant revival in the past 30 years in China, and it can be argued that it is the most important ritual activity for the majority of Chinese people today. I suggest that the ancestral rituals we see now bear a strong resemblance to the instructions in Family Rituals, the ancient ritual manual complied by Zhu Xi (1130-1200) in the 12th century. This shows that ancestral rituals in China are still conducted predominantly in a Confucian mode (even though Buddhist ancestral rituals are also widespread). It is through the performance of Confucian seasonal sacrifices that people make spiritual connections with their ancestors, and the observance of ritual time and ritual offerings is also the embodied expressions of Confucian ethical teachings.

Bio

Anna Sun is Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Sociology at Duke University. She earned her Ph.D. in sociology from Princeton and B.A from Berkeley. Her research interests include the development of Global Confucianism in the 21^st century; comparative ritual theory; and theoretical and methodological issues underlying the social scientific study of religion.

Her first book, Confucianism as a World Religion: Contested Histories and Contemporary Realities (Princeton University Press, 2013), received the “Distinguished Book Award in Sociology of Religion” from the American Sociological Association and the “Best First Book in the History of Religion Award” from the American Academy of Religion. She co-edited the volume Situating Spirituality: Context, Practice, and Power (with Brian Steensland and Jaime Kucinskas), published by Oxford University Press in 2021. She has also edited the special journal issues “Empirical Studies of Contemporary Confucian Practice in Asia and Beyond” (2022) and “Confucianism and Daoism: From Max Weber to the Present” (2020). She has served as Vice President of the Society for the Study of Chinese Religions (2017-2020) and two-term Co-Chair of the Chinese Religions Unit of the American Academy of Religion (2015-2021).