Greg Watkins in Bhutan

Program in Structured Liberal Education

Greg Watkins, ’85, PhD ’02, is a former associate director of Stanford’s Structured Liberal Education (SLE) program and a former resident fellow of East Florence Moore Hall. Recently, Greg has been designing and facilitating a pilot program at Stanford that brings a course on moral philosophy to high school students at Title 1 high schools across the country. A filmmaker himself, Greg focuses his research on the intersection of film and religion, and, more generally, of art and religion. His interest in Buddhism started in graduate school when he was a teaching assistant for Stanford’s course on Zen Buddhism. Since then, Greg has taught multiple times for Stanford’s Sophomore College and the Bing Overseas Seminars, which has included trips to Bhutan, Mongolia and a number of countries in Southeast Asia. His lectures during this trip will focus on some of the basics of Buddhist thought and on the transmission of knowledge in Buddhism through text and painting and with an emphasis on the Himalayan Buddhism of Bhutan.

Lecturer, Stanford Structured Liberal Education program (SLE)
Instructor, Continuing Studies Program
Co-instructor, Stanford’s Sophomore College and Bing Overseas Seminars to Bhutan, Mongolia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Laos and Burma
BA in Social Theory (’85) and a dual PhD in Religious Studies and Humanities (’02), Stanford University

In conversation with Greg Watkins

What first sparked your interest in Southeast Asia?

I have long had an interest in religious worldviews, but it was my graduate school experiences studying Buddhism, both in the classroom and on trips throughout Asia, that led to my deep and abiding interest in the entire region.

What inspires you about the region and traveling there?

Having spent my teaching career on campus, I relish the opportunity to be able to teach about religious worldviews out in the field—and this particular trip offers such a rich tapestry of religious worldviews and history! To be able to do that comparatively while on the road is an amazing opportunity.

What makes you passionate and enthusiastic about your field or interests?

In my particular approach to teaching, I believe that it is ultimately an act of the imagination to find one’s way into a very different worldview—whether it is an ancient text or a foreign culture. I love the adventure of entertaining very different ways of understanding the world, both for myself and in the classroom.

What have been some of your best experiences in the field?

A highlight from doing a similar trip in the past was the combination of visiting important Buddhist sites on the same day that we had an opportunity to have a pre-dinner discussion with our local guide about his own relationship to Buddhism. It was a powerful mix of cultural history writ large and the religious lives of individual people. I’ve also found my visits to Angkor a very powerful combination of taking in the dramatic environment that surrounds you while making an effort to see that environment in a way closer to those who were there when it was thriving.

To learn more about Greg and his work, visit Searching Together for the Common Good and the Structured Liberal Education website.

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