Tori is standing in front of Furman Lake and the Bell Tower.

Victoria Montrose

Assistant Professor of Religion and Asian Studies

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Tori Montrose is a scholar of modern religion specializing in global Buddhism and Japanese religions. Her current research projects include the modernization of Buddhist education in Japan and female leadership in new Buddhist movements. In both her teaching and research, she is interested in the ways in which modernizing and globalizing forces intersect and interact with traditional religious groups. Tori’s work has been published in the journal Japanese Religions, and in the edited volumes, Brill Handbook of East Asian New Religious Movements (Brill, 2018) and Methods in Buddhist Studies (Bloomsbury, 2019). She is a former Fulbright Fellow (Japan, 2015-2016) and received her Ph.D. in East Asian Languages and Cultures from the University of Southern California. She also holds a M.A. in Buddhist Studies from the Graduate Theological Union, and a B.A. in Political Science from the University of California, San Diego.

Education

  • Ph.D., University of Southern California
  • M.A., Graduate Theological Union
  • B.A., University of California, San Diego

Research Interests

Motivating my research agenda is a desire to understand the origins of modern Buddhism, both in Japan and the global diaspora. I examine how Buddhists responded to globalizing and modernizing forces beginning in the mid-nineteenth century and the kind of impact these responses had on both the practices and expressions of Buddhism within the tradition, as well as on Buddhism’s public image outside the tradition.

One of my current research projects explores the central role of a new educational institution, the modern university, in constructing a novel, transnational image of the Buddhist priest in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. My dissertation was the first extensive English-language study of the role played by Buddhist universities in this modernizing and globalizing process. My continued research in this area engages with the important work being done by Japanese scholars in this burgeoning field, bringing it into the English-language scholarly conversation. Furthermore, in applying theoretical frameworks (e.g. discursive institutionalism, professionalization theory) from the social sciences, my work serves as a bridge to a variety of disciplines outside my home of religious studies including sociology, education studies, and political science. My intervention here is twofold. First, to demonstrate how Buddhist Studies scholarship can avoid the silo-effect by entering broader academic discourses through experimentation with interdisciplinary frameworks. Second, to test the boundaries of these frameworks from other disciplines which all too often center Western contexts and views.

Another area of my research is in the wave of new Buddhist movements in Japan that began in the 1930s. Previously, I worked on the early history of one such movement, a group called Shinnyo-en as well as a study of a contemporary "glocalized" ritual performed annually by Shinnyo-en in Honolulu, Hawaii known as the Hawaiian Lantern Floating Ceremony. Currently, I am working on two nascent projects on female leadership in Japanese new Buddhist movements and an expanded study of the Hawaii Lantern Floating Ceremony.

Representative Publications

  • 2019 Montrose, Victoria Rose. "Making the Modern Priest: The Otani Denomination’s Proto-University and Debates about Clerical Education in the Early Meiji Period." In Methods in Buddhist Studies, edited by Scott A. Mitchell and Natalie E.F. Quli. London: Bloomsbury.
  • 2018 Montrose, Victoria Rose. “Shinnyo-en.” In Brill Handbook of East Asian New Religious Movements, edited by Lukas Pokorny and Franz Winter. Leiden: Brill, 144-160.
  • 2014 Montrose, Victoria Rose. “Floating Prayer: Localization, Globalization, and Tradition in the Shinnyo-en Hawaii Lantern Floating.” Journal of Religion in Japan 3, no. 2-3, 177-197.

Honors and Awards

  • 2015-16 U.S. Fulbright IIE Student Research Fellowship
  • 2015-16 Japan Foundation Dissertation Research Fellowship (declined)
  • 2014-15 Blakemore Freeman Fellowship for Advanced Japanese Language Study

Additional Professional Activity

  • President, Society for the Study of Japanese Religion (2024-2027)
  • Steering Committee Member for the Japanese Religions Unit of the American Academy of Religion (2023-2029)
  • Board Member for the Furman University Humanities Center (2023-2026)

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