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Alessandro Poletto

Lecturer in East Asian Religions, Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis
Alessandro Poletto (he/they) specializes in the social and religious history of premodern Japan, with an emphasis on Buddhism in the early medieval period (tenth to the thirteenth century). He earned his PhD from Columbia University in 2020 with a dissertation entitled “The Culture of Healing in Early Medieval Japan: A Study in Premodern Epistemology,” in which he examined discourses and practices concerning healing and disease, with particular attention to the relationship between Buddhist healers and other technicians involved in the treatment of illness, namely court physicians and onmyōji. His other research and teaching interests include the understanding and ritual resolution of natural disasters in premodern East Asia, the history of the cultural exchanges between the Korean peninsula and the Japanese archipelago, and Buddhist material culture and archeology in East Asia.

His current research focuses on the material and textual dimensions of various types of deposits — within statues or under the ground — in order to get a grasp of Buddhism as practiced by lay Buddhists in early medieval Japan. Dedicatory or votive materials discovered inside Buddhist statues or in underground deposits (commonly known as kyōzuka) illustrate the motivations behind the undertaking of a certain burial of sutras, or the production of a copy of a specific sutra, allowing us to see the hopes, aspirations and anxieties of the people engaging in such practices, but also the ways in which they attempted to shape their destinies, and those of deceased dear ones, through their dedicatory good acts.

Before joining Washington University, Alessandro was a JSPS postdoctoral fellow at Kyoto University. He holds a B.A. from the University of Naples “L’Orientale,” and an M.A. from Osaka University.

Economy

Will government investment make green hydrogen a reality in Australia?

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Australia is set to ban live sheep exports. What will this mean for the industry?

This month the federal government announced a plan to ban live sheep exports, set to come into effect from May 1 2028. The announcement coincided with the release of a highly anticipated report by an independent panel...

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The U.S. economy is slowing, but not crashing. In the dismal science, this is what counts as good news. Thats the message I took away from the latest inflation data, released May 15, 2024, which showed U.S. consumer...

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This years budget has something for everyone, with very little in the way of cuts and no new taxes. Its a classic good news pre-election budget. Whether it is too good to be true hinges on whether this budget...

Politics

Why the US government is intervening in the live music business and could break up Live Nation Entertainment – a music industry scholar explains

The U.S. Justice Department, along with 29 states and the District of Columbia, have filed an antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation Entertainment, the parent company of Ticketmaster. The lawsuit alleges that Live Nation...

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How Iran selects its supreme leader

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Why the upcoming South African election a massive milestone for the ruling ANC

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Science

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IceCube researchers detect a rare type of energetic neutrino sent from powerful astronomical objects

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Technology

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Shiba Inu and Dogecoin Prices Poised for Sharp Rally in June: Market Analysts

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