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The
Buddhism in North Carolina Project aimed to map the changing religious
landscape of the state, and it involved twenty students from the University
of North Carolina at Chapel under the direction of Thomas A. Tweed, Zachery
Smith Professor of Religious Studies. The students who studied the temples and wrote the
first thirty-three profiles
included eighteen first year students who were enrolled in a course on
"Buddhism in America": Lindsey Alexander, Elyse Ashburn, Justin Ayers,
Rebecca Brunstetter, Jeffrey Bullins, Megan Campbell, Aaron Catrett, Catalina
Garreton, Cyrus Luhr, Kathleen MacGuire, Elizabeth McGlauflin, Daniel Parker,
Nina Poe, Shannon Stevens, Christa Wheeler, Quinn White, Emily Wiegand,
and Monica Zuck. Each student wrote at least one temple profile, and some wrote
more than one. (Authorship is signaled by the initials at the end of the
profile.) Besides traveling the state to gather information about Buddhist
centers, these students also took on a range of other duties. They took
photographs, created maps, wrote grants, archived records, and prepared public
presentations on their research. And the project's editorial staff (Lindsey,
Catalina, Cyrus, Aaron, Nina, and Daniel) put in many extra hours. Months after
the course had ended, they were still meeting on Sunday
afternoons to work on the volume. Two graduate students in the Department
of Religious Studies who specialized in the study of U.S. religion also
visited temples and offered profiles: Noel Lin and Katie Lofton. And Sue
Bales, another graduate student, helped with the map and the Project's
web page.
Even
if all these students worked diligently, the Buddhism in North Carolina
Project would have been impossible without generous financial support from
two sources. Harvard University's Pluralism Project provided funds for
research travel, photocopying, photography, postage, web page construction,
and many other costs associated with this collaborative effort. A grant
from the North Carolina Humanities Council also helped in crucial ways,
especially by supplementing funds available for the production and distribution
of the book which serves as a companion to this website. Some of the costs of
Prof. Tweed's research travel also were provided
by the Faculty Partners Fund and the generosity of two friends of the College
of Arts and Sciences, William Edward Hollan, Jr. and Nancy Hanes White.
Others
helped us too. Richard Jaffe of Duke University and Randolph
E. Clayton, founder of the Cape Fear Tibetan Buddhist Study Group, both
provided very useful leads about North Carolina temples. And Hope Toscher,
the exceptionally able administrative assistant in the Department of Religious
Studies, offered assistance and encouragement in countless ways.
New
updates to the webpage are being made by Jeff Wilson, a graduate student
with the UNC-Chapel Hill Department of Religious Studies who specializes in
Buddhism in America. He can be
reached at jeffwilson@unc.edu. |
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