Natasha Heller
Professor of Religious Studies
Affiliated faculty member, Department of Women, Gender & Sexuality and Environmental Thought and Practice
Office Hours
Tuesdays 2:00pm-3:00pm and Wednesdays 1:30pm - 2:30pm
I teach from apples (LASE 1520) to Zen (RELB 2450) and some topics in between. I was trained in Buddhist Studies and Chinese intellectual and cultural history, disciplinary approaches that continue to inform my work. My first book, Illusory Abiding: The Cultural Construction of the Chan Monk Zhongfeng Mingben, is a study of an eminent monk of the Yuan dynasty that explores the social and cultural dimensions of Chan Buddhism. I continue to write frequently on Song and Yuan dynasty Buddhism and have authored or co-authored many book chapters and journal articles, including for Brill’s Encyclopedia of Buddhism.
My second monograph, titled Literature for Little Bodhisattvas was published in the Contemporary Buddhism series at the University of Hawai‘i Press. Literature for Little Bodhisattvas explores the rich and inventive corpus of Buddhist children’s literature, showing how authors and illustrators engage with scriptures, commentaries, and visual traditions against a backdrop of the concerns of global modernity.
Increasingly my attention is drawn to trees and other plants—and how humans relate to them; I see this research as situated at the intersection of plant humanities and religious studies. “Planting Buddhism in Medieval China” has just been published in Plant Humanities (Dumbarton Oaks, 2026), and “The Bodhi Tree / Ficus religiosa” is forthcoming in the Bloomsbury Handbook for Plant Humanities. I am working on two monographs: the first is a religious and cultural history of Alishan, Taiwan. The second takes the apple paintings of Sarah Matilda Parry (1782–1852) as a starting point to consider practices of attention and modes of exploration.
I am a co-editor of The Sheng Yen Series in Chinese Buddhist Studies, and serve on the editorial board of the Kuroda Institute.
Note: I am not currently accepting new graduate students for supervision.