Brooke Schedneck

Dr. Schedneck has taught at Rhodes since 2017. She teaches courses on Buddhism, Asian religions, and in the Life program. She also leads the Maymester in Thailand. Before coming to Rhodes, she taught study abroad students as a lecturer in Buddhist Studies at the Institute of Southeast Asian Affairs in Chiang Mai, Thailand, for four years. She has been invited to give research presentations in Thailand, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Malaysia. In 2020, Dr. Schedneck published a co-edited volume titled Buddhist Tourism in Asia and her second monograph, an ethnography of Buddhism in Chiang Mai, was published by the University of Washington Press in 2021. This book, Religious Tourism in Northern Thailand, was short-listed for the EuroSEAS Humanities Book Prize 2022. Her introduction to contemporary, lived Theravada Buddhism in Southeast Asia was published in 2023 with Shambhala Publications.

Her work broadly concerns contemporary Buddhism in Thailand, where she has lived and conducted research for over eight years. Further interests include global Buddhism, religions of Southeast Asia, gender in Asian religions, and religious tourism. Previous research has explored the modern vipassana meditation movement in Thailand’s international meditation centers and tourist encounters with Buddhism in Northern Thailand. Her current research focuses on monastic scandals and the monastic body within Thai Buddhism.

Selected Publications

Books

Living Theravada: Demystifying the People, Places, and Practices of a Buddhist Tradition. Shambhala Publications, 2023.

Religious Tourism in Northern Thailand: Encounters with Buddhist Monks. University of Washington Press, 2021.
*Short-listed for the EuroSEAS Humanities Book Prize 2022

Buddhist Tourism in Asia, co-editor. University of Hawaii Press, in the series Contemporary Buddhism, 2020.

Thailand’s International Meditation Centers: Tourism and the Global Commodification of Religious Practices, Routledge, in the series Contemporary Asian Religions, 2015.

Recent Articles

“The Lay Buddhist Gaze and Femininity in Thai Male Monasticism.” Southeast Asia Research. 29(4): 417-433, 2022.

“Educational Philosophies and Celebrity Monks: Strategies for Communicating Buddhist Values to Thai Buddhist Youth.” Special Focus: Buddhism and Young People. Journal of Global Buddhism 22 (2): 273-289, 2021.

“Buddhist Missionaries.” Oxford Research Encyclopedia: Religion. 2021.

“Multiple Buddhisms in Ladakh: Strategic Secularities and Missionaries Fighting Decline.” Co-authored with Elizabeth Williams-Oerberg and Ann Gleig. Special Issue: Buddhism and Modernity in Asian Societies. Religions 12 (11): 1-19, 2021.

“Everyday Scandals: Regulating the Buddhist Monastic Body in Thai Media.” TRaNS: Trans-Regional and -National Studies of Southeast Asia. First View: 1-15. , 2021.

“An Entangled Relationship: A Lived Religion Approach to Buddhism and Economics.” Special Focus on Buddhism and Economics in Journal of Global Buddhism 20: 31-48, 2019.

“Thai Buddhist Monastic Schools and Universities.” Co-author, Education About Asia 24 (1): 37-42, 2019.

“The Promise of the Universal: Non-Buddhists’ Accounts of their Vipassanā Meditation Retreat Experiences.” Religion, 2019.