Andrew Macomber

  • Assistant Professor of East Asian Religions

Areas of Study

Education

  • PhD, Columbia University, 2019
  • MPhil, Columbia University, 2014
  • MA, Columbia University, 2013
  • BA, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 2010

Biography

In his research, Andrew Macomber explores the intersections of the body, religion, and medicine in premodern Japan. His in-progress monograph, Cadaverous: Treating Corpse-Disease and the Demonic Patient in Medieval Japanese Buddhism, examines Buddhist ritual responses to the emergence of unfamiliar afflictions of the body in the late twelfth century, and traces the longer-term impact of those responses on the culture of healing and the imagination of disease in Japan through the sixteenth centuries. He is coeditor of Buddhist Healing in Medieval China and Japan (2020, University of Hawai‘i Press) with C. Pierce Salguero.

His book project is based on three years of archival research in Japan, conducted with the support of grants from the Japan Foundation, the Japanese government, and the Takeda Science Foundation. During this time, he was affiliated with the Research Center for Cultural Heritage and Texts at Nagoya University and the Kyōu Shooku library in Osaka.

His publications in Japanese include a chapter on the Buddhist dimensions of aromatic substances for an edited volume on intoxication and disease in Japanese history, and a snapshot of his research on Buddhist forms of moxibustion for Shinkyū OSAKA, a leading journal for acupuncturists and practitioners of traditional medicine.

Spring 2024

Haunted Archipelago: Ghosts, Spirits, and the Occult in Japanese Religion — EAST 133
Religious Objects in East Asian Religions — EAST 154
Haunted Archipelago: Ghosts, Spirits, and the Occult in Japanese Religion — RELG 233
Religious Objects in East Asia — RELG 240
Buddhism, Healing, and the Body in East Asia — EAST 335
Buddhism, Healing, and the Body in East Asia — RELG 335
Capstone Project — EAST 500

Fall 2024

Haunted Archipelago: Ghosts, Spirits, and the Occult in Japanese Religion — EAST 133
Introduction to Religion: Buddhism in East Asia — EAST 137
Introduction to Religion: Buddhism in East Asia — RELG 137
Haunted Archipelago: Ghosts, Spirits, and the Occult in Japanese Religion — RELG 233

Notes

Andrew Macomber Presents at Northwestern University

January 24, 2024

Assistant Professor of East Asian Religions Andrew Macomber gave a talk as part of the Khyentse Foundation Buddhist Studies Lecture Series at Northwestern University on January 19. His presentation was titled “Evil Dead in the Aristocratic Mansion: Buddhist Experiments with Ritual Healing in Heian Japan.”

Andrew Macomber Publishes Encyclopedia Article

April 29, 2022

Assistant Professor of East Asian Religions Andrew Macomber published an encyclopedia article, "Buddhism and Medicine in Premodern Japan," for the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion.

Andrew Macomber Publishes Two Book Reviews

January 27, 2022

Assistant Professor of East Asian Religions Andrew Macomber published two book reviews, one on a Korean deity in Japanese Buddhism for Monumenta Nipponica, and another on Buddhism and medicine in premodern in Japan for Asian Medicine.

Andrew Macomber Presents at the University of Venice

November 1, 2021

Assistant Professor of East Asian Religions Andrew Macomber gave a presentation via Zoom for the international conference, “Religions, Thoughts, and Health in Asia,” held at the Department of Asian and North African Studies at Ca' Foscari, University of Venice, on October 26, 2021. His talk, "Everything Evil in You: Metapersonal Irritants in the Buddhist Immune System," explored the complicated relationship between disease-causing demons and patients in medieval Japan.

 

Andrew Macomber publishes book on Buddhist healing

September 18, 2020

Andrew Macomber published a book, Buddhist Healing in Medieval China and Japan, with co-editor C. Pierce Salguero (University of Hawai'i Press, August 2020). He also contributes a chapter to the volume, "Ritualizing Moxibustion in the Early Medieval Tendai-Jimon Lineage," which examines how Buddhists sought to treat "corpse-vector disease," a mysterious illness that began afflicting aristocrats and emperors in the late twelfth century, through a combination of ritual therapeutics and Chinese medicine.

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