Ronald Green - Coastal Carolina University
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Ronald Green

Professor, Department Chair

Contact Ronald Green
843-349-2782 rgreen@coastal.edu

Penny Hall 327

Spring 2024 Office Hours
Mondays - Fridays 10:00am - 10:50am
*Please email for an appointment. 

Biography

Ronald S. Green is a specialist in Asian religions with a focus on the history and philosophy of Japanese Buddhism. His research interests include early Japanese Yogacara (Hosso-shu) and Kukai's Ten Abodes of Mind. He also studies Buddhist and Shinto biographies and ideas as represented along the Shikoku pilgrimage and in popular culture media including film, manga, anime, and contemporary Japanese fiction. Along with Dr. Susan Bergeron, he is co-editor of the ASIANetwork Exchange. See https://www.asianetworkexchange.org/ 

His book publications include: 

He completed translations of two novels, Mountain of Light (Hikari no yama) and Flowers in Limbo (Chuin no hana), by the Akutagawa Award-winning Buddhist monk Genyu Sokyu and translated the play Hell Valley Onsen, Ignorance Inn (Jigoku tani onsen mumyo no yado) by Tanino Kurō. He translated the first half of Yoko Ogawa's novel Twinkle of Amber (Kohaku no matataki) and is seeking a publisher.

He has also translated Theories of Buddhist Meditation (Bukkyo meiso ron) by University of Tokyo professor of Buddhist Studies, Minowa Kenryo.

He is currently researching and translating "Essays on the Forest of Meanings in the Mahayana Dharma Garden" by Kuiji.

Education

Ph.D. in Buddhist Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2003.
M.A. in South Asian Religions from the UW-Madison
M.A. in Japanese Literature from the University of Oregon
M.S. in Sociology from Virginia Tech.

Interesting Facts

Dr. Green has completed the 1,200-kilometer (750-mile) Shikoku Pilgrimage in Japan on foot and has returned many times to study and trek sections of it. Along with Dr. Susan Bergeron in Geography at CCU, he received a 2019-2020 ASIANetwork Freeman Foundation Student-Faculty Fellows Program grant to take six students to study the pilgrimage and build a Virtual Shikoku platform. For more information, please visit https://www.coastal.edu/humanities/tapestrymagazine/tapestryspring2020/pilgrimsplatforms/ 

Teaching Areas

Buddhism, Shinto, Asian Religions, Reading Buddhist Texts, Buddhist Meditation Traditions, Buddhism in Literature and Film, Representations of Religion and Identity in Japanese Popular Culture.

Research Areas

Nara and Heian Buddhism, Theories and Practices of Buddhist Meditation, Yogacara and Buddhist Philosophy, Kukai and Shingon, Classical Chinese and Kanbun, Buddhism in Film, Buddhism in Contemporary Japanese Literature