Gongyang: Meditations on Korean Buddhist Temple Food
Introduction
Buddhist temple food has recently gained significant popularity in South Korea and beyond. This lecture examines the political, socioeconomic, and ecological forces that have transformed temple food from a relatively obscure tradition into a prominent cultural phenomenon. In particular, it highlights the leadership of Buddhist nuns in excavating, preserving, reinterpreting, and popularizing temple food within patriarchal religious structures. These nuns have responded proactively to contemporary challenges—including food insecurity, public health concerns, the erosion of communal bonds, and the ecological crisis—while carving out a meaningful space of their own. In doing so, they demonstrate that food and cooking can serve as powerful pathways to enlightenment, on par with doctrinal study or meditation. The lecture also introduces several leading “master chefs of temple food,” a formal title awarded to Buddhist nuns and monks for exceptional contributions to its development, and considers how its popularization as part of a healthy lifestyle has led to increasing fusionization and commercialization.
Light lunch and refreshments will be served. Please register in advance using the link above.
About the Speaker
Dr. Hyaeweol Choi is Professor of Korean Studies, Gender History, and Religious Studies, and holds the C. Maxwell and Elizabeth M. Stanley Family and Korea Foundation Chair in Korean Studies at the University of Iowa. Her research interests span gender, empire, modernity, religion, food and the body, and transnational history. She has published widely on topics including the genealogy of modern womanhood in Korea; the emergence of the “New Woman” in colonial-era Korea; the evolution of the concept of domesticity in encounters between Christian missionaries and women in Asia and the Pacific; and the impact of transnational mobility on gender norms and bodily practices. Her current project, Food and the Life Politics of Domesticity in Transpacific Korea, explores the domestic sphere as a nexus of local, public, global, and environmental forces. Through this lens, she examines everyday gender politics and performances in relation to food ethics and practices in an age marked by excess, inequality, and ecological crisis.