Patheos Featured Writers

Julia M. Hardy has taught courses on Buddhism, Daoism, the Religions of China and Japan, Women's Studies, and the study of religion as an academic discipline. She has taught at Duke University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Muhlenberg College, and Kobe Shoin Joshi Gakuin Daigaku in Kobe, Japan.

Dr. Hardy has presented papers at national conferences on a wide range of topics, including: "Expressions of Dao in 20th Century American Poetry and Art," "Philosophical Taoism: Chinese Religion or Western Invention?" "Woman, the Feminine, and Feminism: Crucial Distinctions in Religious Studies," "Evocations of the Sacred: The Taotie Mask Motif on Ancient Chinese Bronze Vessels," and "Spirituality in the Music and Lyrics of the Grateful Dead."

Dr. Hardy's primary research focuses on issues surrounding the assimilation of "eastern religions," particularly Daoism and Buddhism, into the West. Her publications include: "The Dao of the West: The Orientalist Critique and Western Interpretations of Daoism," Pacific World (forthcoming); "The Library of Dr. Clarke," (from the 2001 American Academy of Religion panel "The Tao of The Tao of the West: A Critical Appraisal of J .J. Clarke's The Tao of the West: Western Transformations of Taoist Thought") in Religious Studies Review, Vol. 28, No. 4, 2002; and "Influential Western Interpretations of the Tao-te-ching," in Lao-tzu and the Tao-te-ching, edited by Michael LaFargue and Livia Kohn (SUNY Press, 1998). Dr. Hardy earned her doctorate from Duke University.