The third talk in a lecture series on Introducing Interpretive Semiotics, for the Humanities and Social Sciences.

Professor Fabio Rambelli's main field of research and teaching is Japanese religions and cultural history, and especially the Esoteric Buddhist tradition (mikkyō) and the history of Shinto. In particular, he has been studying the interactions between Buddhism and local cults in several Asian traditions on the one hand, and the history of the development of the Shinto discourse in Japan on the other. He is currently working on the religious and intellectual components of gagaku and bugaku, the music and dance of the Japanese imperial court, and more specifically on a cultural history of one of this genre’s instruments, the shō (a bamboo mouth organ). He is also interested in the impact (often downplayed or ignored) of Indian cultural elements on pre-modern Japan; in issues of cultural identity (especially in Japan and in Italy, and on the representations of Italy circulating in Japan); and in more general themes in the history of religions (such as materiality, semiotics, iconoclasm, and syncretism).