Doctor of Philosophy in Religious Studies - Buddhism

Graduate students in Buddhism benefit from our area strengths in both pre-modern and contemporary Theravada Buddhism and Mahayana Buddhism. Advanced study of Bengali, Buddhist-hybrid Sanskrit, Chinese, Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Lao, Malayalam, Malay, Mongolian, Nepali, Pali, Sanskrit, Tamil, Thai, Tibetan, Vietnamese and other Buddhist languages are offered for interested students. Anthropological, historical, material-visual cultural, philological, socio-political, and textual approaches are all possible, and students typically take courses not only in RELS but also in Ancient History, Anthropology, Art History, Comparative Literature, East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Music, and South Asian Studies.

Transcripts uploaded to the application
Letters of recommendation
Statement of purpose
GRE, where required. Check your graduate group for details on program requirements.
Demonstration of English proficiency, where required
Writing sample, where required

Applicants are asked in their application to indicate what fields of specialization they intend to pursue within Religious Studies. While the department strongly encourages creative work that synthesizes diverse approaches to the study of religion, applicants should indicate at least one, and no more than three, research areas when completing the graduate school application.