Dr. Brooke Schedneck, assistant professor of religious studies at Rhodes, has published widely in fields of Asian studies, Buddhist studies, and religious studies. Her latest book is a co-edited volume with Courtney Bruntz of Doane University titled Buddhist Tourism in Asia.
The book contains nine chapters, which capture facets of Buddhist tourism in temples, cities, and monuments throughout Asia. Along with co-editing, Schedneck wrote the introduction and contributed a chapter on temple tourism in Chiang Mai, Thailand.
This is the first book to focus on Buddhist tourism—exploring how Buddhists, government organizations, business corporations, and individuals in Asia engage with Buddhism through tourism. Contributors examine sacred places and religious monuments as they have been shaped and reshaped by socioeconomic and cultural trends in the region.
Mark Rowe, associate professor of religious studies at McMaster University, writes in the preface that this book: “ . . . breaks exciting, new ground in expanding our ever-shifting understanding of contemporary Asian Buddhism” and “ . . . provides detailed local studies of contemporary Buddhism that consciously engage broader theoretical conversations within the study of religion, anthropology, and modernity.”