Julie Regan, Ph.D.

Dr. Julie Regan was first introduced to Asian religions as an undergraduate student of Comparative Literature at Brown University, where she subsequently earned her MFA in Literary Arts. After several years devoted to writing fiction and plays, and teaching writing, she decided to pursue a Ph.D. at Harvard University to deepen her understanding of Buddhist literary traditions and their relationship to bodily practice.

Her secondary fields are Religion, Gender and Culture and Comparative Literature, and her scholarship takes an interdisciplinary approach to reading a variety of texts, performances and rituals, from early Sanskrit court poetry to acts of self-immolation in Tibet today. Her research into Buddhist practice and the body has included fieldwork in traditional temples, cave and pilgrimage sites in India, Nepal, Tibet and China. She comes to La Salle from NYU, where, as a visiting scholar, she recently taught courses including Introduction to Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhism.