This lecture highlights the impact of conflicting views regarding Bodhgaya with especial attention to the efforts of Angarika Dharmapala and Ananda Coomaraswamy.  One question to be considered is how to balance the pursuit of knowledge about its past while the site continues to develop new meaning through the pressures of increasing international attention.   

Janice Leoshko, an associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin, researches Buddhist art in South Asia, especially focusing on Bodhgaya (“About Looking at Buddha Images in Eastern India”), including its impact on Western culture (“What Is in Kim?: Rudyard Kipling and Tibetan Buddhist Traditions;”  “Gauguin’s Buddhism”).   She also writes about the influence of museums and exhibitions, partly a result of time spent as a curator at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (“Inside Out: Views of Jain Art;” Aśoka and Museums”). Recent study of Sri Lankan art led to her current project on the significance of the early writing of Ananda Coomaraswamy.