[Khyentse Foundation Fellowships Awarded to Yuyu Zhang]
The Center for Buddhist Studies and the Department of East Asian Studies are pleased to announce that Yuyu Zhang is one of the two recipients of the 2025-2026 Khyentse Foundation Doctoral Fellowship. An award ceremony will take place in conjunction with the East Asian Studies ceremony on May 8, 2025.
Yuyu Zhang (張玉瑜) is a Ph.D. student in the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Arizona, majoring in Chinese Buddhism. Her current research centers on a reexamination of the triptych Guanyin, Gibbons, and Crane, attributed to the thirteenth-century Chinese Chan monk Muxi Fachang 牧谿法常. Now housed at Daitoku-ji in Kyoto and designated a National Treasure in Japan, the triptych has long attracted the attention of art historians. However, its religious significance, especially in relation to the Chinese Chan monastic context in which it was created, has not been sufficiently explored. Building on her ongoing research on Chan painting, Zhang adopts an interdisciplinary approach that combines art historical analysis with methods from religious studies. In 2024, she published two peer-reviewed articles on Song dynasty Chan portraiture and seventeenth-century Ōbaku Zen painting, laying a strong foundation for this new inquiry. This project pursues two primary goals. First, it seeks to explore the triptych’s religious meaning by situating it within the thirteenth-century Chinese Chan monastic environment in which it was produced, understood, and engaged. Second, it aims to propose a new framework for interpreting Chan painting through the lens of monastic literary culture and Buddhist textual tradition, with the broader goal of contributing to the study of East Asian Buddhist visual culture.
Congratulations to Yuyu Zhang on receiving this honor!