Alice Collett
Alice Collett, Lecturer in Asian Religions
Contact Details
T: 01904 876441
E: a.collett@yorksj.ac.uk
Information
Dr. Alice Collett is a Lecturer in Asian
Religions in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies. Her
research areas include: Buddhism and gender, Buddhist texts in
Sanskrit and Pali, study of the Pali and Sanskrit languages,
orientalism and colonial encounters with Asian religions, early
Indian Buddhism. Dr. Collett teaches a programme of Asian religions
at York St John University at both undergraduate and postgraduate
level. Courses taught by Dr. Collett include ‘Introduction to Asian
Religions’, ‘Buddhism in South and Southeast Asia’, ‘Texts and
Practice in Hindu Traditions’, ‘Religions of East Asia’, ‘Women in
Asian Religions’, ‘Religion and Social Change in Asia’.
AHRC Early Career Fellowship
2012
Dr. Alice Collett has received a prestigious
AHRC fellowship award to write her book, Women in the Pali
Canon and Commentaries. The book will contain seven chapters,
each of which will focus on one early Buddhist nun. Each chapter
will first identify the main Pali sources for information on the
nun, and then include a section on other sources from other
traditions. Following this, a biography of each nun will be told,
as much as can be constructed from the available sources. Each
chapter will conclude with a discursive section which looks at
themes raised in each biography. Such themes might be, for example,
roles for women in the early Buddhist communities, the importance
of caste status within the biographies, and social constructs of
the female, including notions of female beauty. Such a volume could
have a significant impact on our understanding of women in early
Indian Buddhism, as detailed study and translation of these texts
which appear to recount the biographies of such women has the
potential to re-shape ideas about how the historical Buddha and the
early Buddhist communities viewed women.
Other current projects
Dr. Collett is also currently editing a volume
entitled Women in Early Indian Buddhism: Comparative Textual
Studies. This volume brings together work for established and
emerging international scholars, and focuses on the study and
translation of texts and texts fragments from a variety of
traditions. The volume will include study and translation of texts
in five different languages: Gandhari, Sanskrit, Pali, Chinese,
Tibetan and Sinhala. The work includes comparative study of
parallel texts and passages from different traditions, and
addresses the question of ‘female presence’ in the early
communities as discerned from certain early text fragments. As well
as this, other themes discussed within the volume include female
sexuality, notions of purity and impurity, and qualities attributed
to distinguished nuns
Selected Publications
· ‘Female Past in Early Indian Buddhism:
The Seven Sisters’ to be published as conference proceedings of
Genealogy as History, History as Genealogy, Cardiff
University, May 2010 in Religions of South Asia (2012)
· 'Soma the Learned Brahmin'
in Religions of South Asia, 2009 3.9 (93-109)
· 'Historico-Critical Hermeneutics in the
Study of Women in Early Indian Buddhism’, in Numen, 2009
56 (91-117)
· ‘Buddhism and Gender: Reframing and
Refocusing the Debate', in the Journal of Feminist Studies in
Religion, 2006 22.2 (55-84).
Professional Membership
UK Association for Buddhist Studies (committee
member)
American Academy of Religion
Pali Text Society