Manuel Lopez Zafra
Associate Professor of Religion - Humanities - Interdisciplinary Programs - International and Area Studies - Religion
- Phone: (941) 487-4317
- Email: mlopezzafra@ncf.edu
- Office Location: ACE 204
- Mail Location: ACE 116
Ph.D. University of Virginia
M.A. University of Virginia
B.A. Universitat Pompeu Fabra
I am a scholar of Buddhism with a particular regional focus on Tibet and the Himalayas (Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan). I am an Assistant Professor of Religion at New College of Florida, where I teach courses on Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism, Buddhist Contemplative Systems, Hinduism, and Asian Religions in general. I am also interested in the intersection of religion and popular culture and write about it in a blog.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Books
Forthcoming: Monastic Education in Bhutan: Tradition and Transformation in the 21st Century.
Peer-Reviewed Articles
- “Shifting Grounds: A Comparison of the Notion of the Ground (gzhi) in the Tibetan Great Perfection Tradition with the Idea of the Unconscious in the Analytical Psychology of Carl Gustav Jung.” Under review at the International Journal of Jungian Studies.
- “In Search of the Lost Manuscript: The Obscure Recension History of the Tenth Century Text The Lamp for the Eye in Meditation.” Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines 52, October 2019.
- “Contemplative Practice, Doxographies, and the Construction of Tibetan Buddhism: Nupchen Sangyé Yeshé and The Lamp for the Eye in Meditation” in Religions 2018, 9(11), 360; doi: 10.3390/rel9110360.
- “The Twenty or Eighteen Texts of the Mind Series: Scripture, Transmission, and the Idea of Canon in the Early Great Perfection Literature.” Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines 24, January 2018.
Book Chapters
- Gyeltshen, Dorji, and Manuel Lopez, “If You Build Them, They Will Come: The Transformation of Female Monastic Education in Contemporary Bhutan.” In the Jacobsen, Knut A. Routledge Handbook of South Asian Religions. Milton: Taylor & Francis Group, 2020.
- Gyeltshen, Dorji, and Manuel Lopez, “So Old and Yet So New: Buddhist Education and the Monastic Curriculum in Contemporary Bhutan.” In Proceedings of the Fifteenth Seminar of the IATS, 2019. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. Accepted.
Book Reviews
- Forthcoming: Review of American Dharma: Buddhism Beyond Modernity, by Ann Gleig Nova Religio, (May 2020).
- Review of Architects of Buddhist Leisure: Socially Disengaged Buddhism in Asia’s Museums, Monuments, and Amusement Parks. By Justin Thomas McDaniel. University of Hawai’i Press, 2017. Nova Religio, vol. 22, no. 3 (February 2019).
- Review of Remembering the Lotus-Born. Padmasambhava in the History of Tibet’s Golden Age by Daniel Hirshberg, in Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines 45, April 2018.
- Review of The Buddha Party: How the People’s Republic of China Works to Define and Control Tibetan Buddhism by John Powers Nova Religio, vol. 21, no. 3 (February 2018).
- Review of New World Dharma, by Trevor Carolan. Nova Religio, vol. 20, no. 4 (May 2017).
COURSES I TEACH
Introduction to Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism, Chinese Religions, Japanese Religions, Buddhist Meditation, Hinduism, Religion and Popular Culture, Asian Philosophy and Religion, Introduction to Eastern Religious Traditions, Theory and Methods in the Study of Religion, God(s)
IN THE MEDIA
- Interview on the HBO series The Leftovers (2018): RNS Religion News Service.
- Interview regarding protests against Vice-President Mike Pence using the iconic costumes from The Handmaid’s Tale (2018): 香港01有限公司 HK01 (A Hong Kong Newspaper)
- Green Legacy Hiroshima Project (2017):Sarasota Magazine, Marie Selby Botanical Gardens, FOX 13 News.
Read even more here: https://manuclasses.wordpress.com