Erik Davis
Professor, Religious Studies
Current Focus: Development of early Buddhist sectarianism, meditative practices, and philosophical development; Ritual creativity and deployment in contemporary protest movements in Cambodia
Old Main 104
651-696-6152
[email protected]
CURRENT FOCUS
Cambodian Buddhism; Buddhism and the Khmer Rouge; political appropriations of memory; religion and Cambodian activists; and pedagogy in Religious Studies
BIOGRAPHY
Erik Davis studies and teaches Buddhism, ritual, and the theory of religion. His scholarship is based on extensive fieldwork in Cambodia and examines religious life through relationships, material practices, imagination, and political authority.
His newest book, Each Other’s Destiny: Rebirth and Relationship in Cambodian Buddhism (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2026), explores Cambodian accounts of past-life memory and develops a relational understanding of rebirth. His first monograph, Deathpower: Buddhism’s Ritual Imagination in Cambodia, examines Buddhist funeral ritual and the relations among monks, spirits, agriculture, hierarchy, and moral power. With Jason A. Carbine, he edited Sīmās: Foundations of Buddhist Religion, a comparative study of the boundaries that establish Buddhist monastic communities. He also co-led New Khmer Folktales, a four-volume Khmer-language project based on oral narratives collected across Cambodia.
Teaching is a central part of Davis’s academic work. He teaches Buddhist Studies and teaches about Cambodian and Southeast Asian religions, ritual, death and funerary studies, and religion and politics. He developed and teaches the department’s required course RELI-235, “Theorizing Religion.” His courses make foundational academic practices explicit and develop them progressively, enabling students with different forms of preparation to undertake increasingly complex interpretive and research work. His current course-development project, How to Get to Nirvana, is supported by grants from the Khyentse Foundation and Macalester College.
His current research includes “Nuon Chea’s New Buddhism,” a project on Cambodia and hauntology, and “The Perfect Funeral of Norodom Sihanouk.” He is the inaugural series editor of Bridwell Press’s Cambodian Cultural Heritage Series.
More information about Davis’s research, publications, teaching, and current projects is available at erikwdavis.org.