Congratulations to Julian Butterfield on His Appointment to Lecturer in the Department of Religion at Princeton University!

Congratulations to Julian Butterfield (PhD '25) on his appointment to Lecturer in the Department of Religion at Princeton University.

Julian Butterfield is a scholar of medieval Chinese Buddhist literature with a special interest in how Mahāyāna Buddhist narratives depict and solicit feeling. His current monograph project recovers the aesthetic and affective dimensions of Lotus Sūtra devotion in fifth-to-eighth-century China, arguing that the transmission of this pivotal Buddhist scripture relied heavily on the cultivation of strong emotions among practitioners. A secondary, public-facing research project investigates the interactions of Buddhist media and musical experimentation from the 19th century to the present. 

Julian holds a BA and MA from the University of Toronto and a PhD in Religious Studies from Stanford University, where his research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and a Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Dissertation Fellowship. His thesis at Stanford was titled "Marvelling at the Dharma: Anumodanā (隨喜 suixi) in the Lotus Sūtra and its Cult in Medieval China," and he discussed it on the HCBSS Podcast in July 2025.

Congratulations again to Julian!