Gatty Lecture Series

*Please note this Gatty Lecture takes place in Rockefeller Hall 374, not the Kahin Center*

Join us for a talk by Brooke Schedneck, Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Rhodes College.

This Gatty Lecture will take place at Rockefeller Hall 374. Lunch will be served. For questions, contact seap@cornell.edu.

Abstract

How does monastic authority become visible? This presentation examines the aesthetics of Thai Buddhist monasticism, focusing on the sensory dimensions through which appearance, bodily presence, comportment, and affect generate perceptions of sacred authority. Drawing on ethnographic research, media analysis, and twenty focus groups with Thai Buddhist laypeople, I compare two contrasting forms of monastic masculinity: the restrained, ascetic authority of forest monks and the softer, more intimate and ornamental charisma of kruba monks of the northern region. These contrasting “monastic idols” demonstrate that masculinity within the Thai sangha is neither singular nor fixed but continually produced through embodied and aesthetic practices.

The second part turns to female monastic practice to ask how sacred authority is assembled in the absence of institutional recognition. For fully ordained women and precept nuns, bodily discipline, religious spaces, teaching, community care, and mediated public presence work together to make sacredness perceptible to lay supporters. Rather than conforming to or rejecting gendered expectations, female monastics construct legitimacy through an assemblage of aesthetic and religious practices. Comparing these forms of monastic authority reveals how aesthetics both reproduce and reconfigure gender, legitimacy, and sacred presence in contemporary Thai Buddhism.

About the Speaker

Brooke Schedneck is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Rhodes College. Her research focuses on contemporary Buddhism, particularly in Thailand, where she has spent years teaching and conducting fieldwork. She is the author of Religious Tourism in Northern Thailand, which was shortlisted for the EuroSEAS Humanities Book Prize in 2022, and Living Theravada: Demystifying the People, Places, and Practices of a Buddhist Tradition (Shambhala, 2023). She is currently completing a monograph on monastic aesthetics in modern Thailand and is currently working on a project exploring spirituality among Thai youth in the digital age.