Joy Brennan joined Kenyon’s faculty in 2014. Her work focuses on Buddhist understandings of how people unconsciously construct identities and worlds of experience, producing personal and interpersonal suffering in the process. She also thinks and writes about related topics including Buddhist liberation practices, the convergence of secularism and Buddhist ideas and practices, and the intersection of Buddhist analyses of interpersonal suffering with contemporary accounts drawn from race and gender studies. Brennan teaches introductory courses in Religious Studies, Buddhist studies and East Asian religions, as well as advanced courses in Buddhist studies, including Modern Buddhism and Zen Buddhism.
Areas of Expertise
Buddhist philosophy and psychology, Yogacara, Zen Buddhism
Education
2015 — Doctor of Philosophy from University of Chicago
2007 — Master of Arts from Indiana University
2002 — Bachelor of Arts from Fordham University, summa cum laude
Courses Recently Taught
This course includes brief introductions to four or five major religious traditions while exploring concepts and categories used in the study of religion, such as sacredness, myth, ritual, religious experience and social dimensions of religion. Traditions such as Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Confucianism, Taoism, Hinduism and Native American traditions may be presented through important texts and practices. This counts toward the 100-level introduction to religious studies course requirement for the major. No prerequisite. Offered every semester.
This course covers the same material as RLST 101 and is open only to first-year students, giving first-years the opportunity to experience the rigorous and intimate seminar setting as they work through the topics and themes of the religious studies department's introductory course. This counts toward the 100-level introduction to religious studies course requirement for the major. No prerequisite. Offered every two years.
Buddhism has been one of the major connective links among the varied cultures of South, Southeast and East Asia for over two millennia, and over the past 100 years it has established a presence throughout the world. This course surveys the ideas and practices of Buddhism with a focus on Buddhist ideas as they developed in South Asia within the first millennium of Buddhist history. Readings include ancient Buddhist texts, contemporary commentaries and scholarship, and a contemporary memoir. This counts toward the religious traditions requirement as Buddhism. No prerequisite. Offered every fall.
This advanced course covers the central ideas and practices of Zen Buddhism in China, where it originated and is called Chan; Japan, where it has influenced and been influenced by many aspects of Japanese culture and from where it was exported to the West; and the United States. Readings include primary texts, secondary studies and a memoir. This counts toward the religious traditions requirement as Buddhism or the religions of distinct geographic regions as East Asia. No prerequisite. Offered every two years.
This course considers the passionate thinking, imagining, and social organizing of religious social visionaries. Religious social visionaries are those who call upon the ideas, texts, practices, communities, interpretive tools, and powers of their religious traditions to help them imagine society differently and engage in organizing to change society. Students read writings of and about religious visionaries and activists mainly from Buddhist, indigenous Chinese, Christian, and Native American textual, communal and political traditions. We ask: What imaginative ideals guide these religious dreamers and activists? What tools from their traditions do their religious imaginations draw upon? How do their social contexts shape their interpretive approaches to their traditions? And how do they organize their communities to work together toward their goals? We also consider case studies of social reactionaries, or those who seek to retrench an imagined lost ideal society, as well as anti-religious social visionaries, those whose dreams of a new society require leaving religion behind. This counts as a theory/methodology course for the major. No prerequisites.
