Join us for the launch of the new major in Religious Studies, featuring a short talk by Professor Tom Kasulis on The Study of Religion: Why, What and How

Kasulis is past chair of the Department of Comparative Studies and also of the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures.He was also the founding director of Ohio State's Institute for Collaborative Research and Public Humanities. He has written numerous books and scholarly articles on Japanese religious thought and Western philosophy, including Zen Action/Zen Person (University of Hawaii Press, 1989) and Shinto: The Way Home (University of Hawaii Press, 2004). He has co-edited for SUNY Press a three-volume series comparing Asian and Western ideas of self in different cultural arenas: Self as Body in Asian Theory and Practice (1993), Self as Person in Asian Theory and Practice (1994), and Self as Image in Asian Theory and Practice (1998), as well as The Recovery of Philosophy in America: Essays in Honor of John Edwin Smith (1997).

Kasulis is the author of Intimacy or Integrity: Philosophy and Cultural Difference (University of Hawaii Press, 2002), a comparative cultural philosophy of relationship based on his Gilbert Ryle Lectures of 1998. He is currently working on a short history of Japanese philosophy and coediting an accompanying sourcebook of readings from Japanese philosophy.

Kasulis teaches courses in comparative studies, philosophy, and east asian languages and literatures, comparative religion, and philosophy of religion.

Reception with food and drink to follow.

RSVP, kasulis.1@osu.edu, reff.1@osu.edu or urban.41@osu.edu