UCI Religious Studies
Annual Applied Jain Studies Lecture & Chair Installation
Friday, May 12, 2023 | 12:00-2:00PM (PDT)
Online Zoom Webinar
*The event will begin with the installation of Brianne Donaldson as UCI Shri Parshvanath Presidential Chair in Jain Studies, 2019– present.
ANEKĀNTAVĀDA AS TEACHING PHILOSOPHY: HOW JAIN THOUGHT CAN INSPIRE HIGHER EDUCATION
Melanie Barbato, University of Munich
Over the last years, Jainism has increasingly been included in university syllabi on religion and philosophy. This lecture calls for taking the engagement with Jainism one step further: The Jain tradition can not only provide fascinating and important course content but it can also offer models for rethinking what constitutes good teaching in higher education.
Jain philosophy combines a realist outlook on the world with a dedication to doing justice to its infinite complexity. A teaching philosophy inspired by the Jain teaching of non-one-sidedness (anekāntavāda) can help instructors respect and moderate a deep plurality of views without polarization or relativism. The lecture will present five ways in which anekāntavāda can inspire teaching philosophy and contemporary visions for university education.
Melanie Barbato is a research associate at the University of Münster and a project director at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies. She holds a doctorate in Indology and Religious Studies from the LMU Munich and a Master in Oriental Studies from the University of Oxford. Melanie is the author of Jain Approaches to Plurality: Identity as Dialogue (Brill, 2017) and a fellow of the Jain Academy of Scholars.