Organizer: Council on Southeast Asia Studies, Yale University
Type/Location: In Person / New Haven, CT
Description:
Join the Council on Southeast Asia Studies at Yale for a talk by Michele Thompson, Professor of History at Southern Connecticut State University and NYSEAN Member. Dr. Thompson will share an overview of the Vietnamese Buddhist involvement in health care, and the changes in Vietnam that resulted in a resurgence of Buddhist political and medical activity culminating with the Buddhist protests of the 1960s.
Abstract:
Until the Nguyễn Dynasty (1802-1945) in Vietnam the Royal Court relied on Buddhist institutions for its public health care programs. Buddhists also acted as political advisors to emperors and the monk physician Tuệ Tĩnh was sent as living tribute to the court of the Ming Dynasty in 1385. Buddhist involvement in health care in Vietnam dissipated during the Nguyễn and the early decades of French Colonial rule (1862-1954). But the Great Depression in the late 1920s and 1930s saw a resurgence of Buddhist involvement in health care for the growing numbers of desperately poor Vietnamese. World War II intensified these conditions and by early 1945 Buddhist monks were among the traditional medical practitioners caring for Việt Minh troops fighting the Japanese and then the French. This paper will give an overview of Vietnamese Buddhist involvement in health care and will move on to a discussion of changes in Vietnam which resulted in a resurgence of Buddhist political and medical activity culminating with the Buddhist protests of the 1960s. This deliberate involvement in the cares of the world is usually referred to as 'Engaged Buddhism.' After the relaxation of social and religious restrictions in the 1990s Engaged Buddhism has emerged again with a group of charity medical clinics which directly reference the 14th century Buddhist monk Tuệ Tĩnh in their name, Tuệ Tĩnh Ðường which can be loosely translated as 'Tuệ Tĩnh's Place.' Worldwide medicine and politics are intimately entwined and while the health care offered at these clinics is interesting in and of itself perhaps what is most interesting about them is the Vietnamese government’s toleration of them. This paper will conclude with an exploration of that subject.
About the Speaker:
Michele Thompson is a Professor of History at Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU) in New Haven, CT. She received her M.A. (1985) from the University of Alabama and Ph.D. (1998) from the University of Washington, studying both ancient and modern Southeast Asia, the history of medicine, and late traditional China. Her current teaching interests include Southeast Asia, history of science, medicine, and technology, and comparative colonialisms. Select publications include: Vietnamese Traditional Medicine: A Social History (National University of Singapore Press, 2015); Translating the Body: Medical Education in Southeast Asia (co-edited with Hans Pols and John Harley Warner, National University of Singapore Press, 2017); "Gia Truyền: Family Transmission Texts, Medical Authors and Social Class within the Healing Community in Vietnam" Southeast Asia Research 25:1 (Winter 2017): 34-46; "Selections from Miraculous Drugs of the South by the Vietnamese Buddhist Monk Physician Tuệ Tĩnh (c 1330-c 1389)" in C. Pierce Salguero ed. Buddhism and Medicine, a Sourcebook (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017); "Fighting for Health: Medicine in Cold War Southeast Asia" co-edited with Michitake Aso and Kathryn Sweet, National University of Singapore Press, January 2024. Thompson’s current research focuses on the involvement of the Vietnamese Buddhist Sangha in medical care during the 14th century, particularly the semi-legendary biography of Tue Tinh, a 14th century Vietnamese Buddhist monk-physician; and the history of vaccination for smallpox in all of Southeast Asia from the first introduction of this technique in 1805 to sometime in the 1970s when smallpox had been eradicated in every country in the region.
Registration:
To attend the event in person, please register here.