Julie Regan is currently completing her PhD in the Study of Religion at Harvard University, with a secondary field in Comparative Literature. Awarded a dissertation completion grant fellowship from Harvard for 2012-13, she is spending the academic year writing in residence at NYU, where she previous taught introductory courses in Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhism and was invited to be a visiting scholar.

Julie's primary area of study is Buddhism, though her background reflects extensive study of comparative world religions and world literature in Asia and the West.  She is particularly interested in the relationship between imaginative literary works and bodily practices in Buddhist traditions, issues of religion, gender and sexuality, and the transnational/transcultural and translational dimensions of world literature/world religions. Her studies in Religion, Gender and Culture and her secondary field in Comparative Literature at Harvard, as well as her own literary writing, help inform her theoretical background and methodology.  

Julie's dissertation focuses on two Buddhist-themed narrative works of the early Sanskrit court poet Asvaghosa, which she reads through the lens of theoretical resources drawn from medieval Indic manuals on poetics and erotics, as well as contemporary theories of textuality, the body, pleasure and reality. Her research into Buddhist practice and the body has included fieldwork in traditional temples, cave and pilgrimage sites in India, Nepal, Tibet and China.