Journeys of Transformation: Searching for No-Self in Western Buddhist Travel Narratives

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Ben Van Overmeire

Ben Van Overmeire is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Duke Kunshan University. A comparatist, he examines how premodern Zen Buddhist genres and ideas are understood today, particularly in popular literature. He has just finished a book manuscript on American Zen autobiography, describing how and why such narratives incorporate koan, Zen riddles revolving around seemingly unsolvable questions such as ’What is the sound of one hand clapping?’ His current project examines the religious imagination of outer space. His work has appeared in Religions, Contemporary Buddhism, The Journal of Popular Culture, and Buddhist-Christian Studies, among other journals. He has presented his work at the annual conferences of the American Academy of Religion (AAR), the Modern Languages Association (MLA), and the American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA). He is a steering member of the Buddhist Pedagogy seminar at AAR and blogs on benvanovermeire.com.