The Berkeley Group in Buddhist Studies offers an interdisciplinary program of study and research leading to a Ph.D. degree in Buddhist Studies. The Group, which cooperates closely with the Departments of South and Southeast Asian Studies (SSEAS), and of East Asian Languages and Cultures (EALC), emphasizes the study of Buddhism in its many forms within its Asian historical and cultural context.
The ability to read and analyze Buddhist texts in their original languages is an indispensable skill for research in the field. Accordingly, the study of classical Asian languages constitutes a core element of the doctoral program. The specific combination of Asian languages required for any particular Ph.D. student will depend on his/her area of research, but all students will be expected to gain facility in a minimum of two Asian languages, at least one of which will be Classical Chinese, Classical Japanese, Pali, Sanskrit, or Classical Tibetan.
While linguistic competence is crucial, it is not considered an end in itself. Students are expected to acquire a sophisticated appreciation of the historical, social, and cultural milieus from which the Buddhist textual legacy emerged. All students in the Ph.D. program are encouraged to broaden and deepen their understanding of Buddhist phenomena through incorporating archaeological, ethnographic, and visual materials and perspectives. Because of Berkeley's particular strength in the area of Buddhist visual culture (three of the Group's faculty are specialists in Buddhist art), all students in the program are expected to take at least one course in art history. In addition, depending on their research interests, students are encouraged to do additional work in fields such as anthropology, critical theory, history, literature, philosophy, and so on. The goal of our program is not only to provide students with the linguistic, methodological, and conceptual skills required to produce significant new research on Buddhist phenomena, but also to have students bring their research into dialogue with ongoing issues and concerns in the humanities writ large.