Kurt Spellmeyer is a Zen teacher and professor in the English Department at

Rutgers University Rutgers University ( ), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a Public university, public land-grant research university consisting of three campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's C ...

Zen lineage

Kurt Spellmeyer, Kankan Roshi, trained with Takabayashi Genki and Kangan Glenn Webb, founders of the

Seattle Seattle ( ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Washington and in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. With a population of 780,995 in 2024, it is the 18th-most populous city in the United States. The city is the cou ...

Zen Center. In 1985, Spellmeyer completed his training under Webb Roshi and was authorized to teach. He received the

dharma name A Dharma name is a new name acquired during both lay and monastic Buddhist initiation rituals in Mahayana Buddhism and Pabbajjā, monastic ordination in Theravada Buddhism (where it is more proper to call it Dhamma or Sangha name). The name is ...

''Kankan'' (Ch. Guan Han, “Sees the Cold”), at a private ceremony with Webb in 1991. Kankan Roshi has practiced

Zen meditation ''Zazen'' is a meditative discipline that is typically the primary practice of the Zen Buddhist tradition. The generalized Japanese term for meditation is 瞑想 (''meisō''); however, ''zazen'' has been used informally to include all forms ...

for 40 years. He has directed the Cold Mountain

Sangha Sangha or saṃgha () is a term meaning "association", "assembly", "company" or "community". In a political context, it was historically used to denote a governing assembly in a republic or a kingdom, and for a long time, it has been used b ...

since 1994. The Cold Mountain (Kanzan) lineage of ''Rinzai Zen'' can be traced back to the Han Shan Temple in

Suzhou Suzhou is a major prefecture-level city in southern Jiangsu province, China. As part of the Yangtze Delta megalopolis, it is a major economic center and focal point of trade and commerce. Founded in 514 BC, Suzhou rapidly grew in size by the ...

, China.

Teaching

From 1985 until 2021, Spellmeyer served as Director of the School of Arts and Sciences Writing Program. Spellmeyer earned a PhD from the

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW and informally U-Dub or U Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington, United States. Founded in 1861, the University of Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast of the Uni ...

. The Writing Program at Rutgers, which offers courses at all levels from developmental writing to advanced writing for the sciences and the professions, currently serves 17,000 each year and employs roughly 250 faculty.

Writing

Spellmeyer is the author of ''Buddha at the Apocalypse: Awakening from a Culture of Destruction'' (

Wisdom Publications The Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition (FPMT) was founded in 1975 by Gelugpa Lamas Thubten Yeshe and Thubten Zopa Rinpoche, who began teaching Tibetan Buddhism to Western students in Nepal. The FPMT has grown to encompas ...

, 2010)'', Arts of Living: Reinventing the Humanities for the Twenty-first Century'' (

SUNY Press The State University of New York Press (more commonly referred to as the SUNY Press) is a university press affiliated with the State University of New York system. The press, which was founded in 1966, is located in Albany, New York and publishe ...

, 2003), ''The New Humanities Reader'' (

Houghton-Mifflin Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Company ( ; HMH) is an American publisher of textbooks, instructional technology materials, assessments, and reference works. The company is based in the Boston Financial District. It was formerly known as the Houghto ...

, 2002), ''Common Ground: Dialogue, Understanding, and the Teaching of Composition'' (

Prentice Hall Prentice Hall was a major American publishing#Textbook_publishing, educational publisher. It published print and digital content for the 6–12 and higher-education market. It was an independent company throughout the bulk of the twentieth cen ...

, 1992). In ''Arts of Living'', Spellmeyer asks readers to separate the explicit content of academic knowledge from the way that this knowledge helps perpetuate enduring forms of

structural inequality Structural inequality occurs when the fabric of organizations, institutions, governments or social networks contains an embedded cultural, linguistic, economic, religious/belief, physical or identity based bias which provides advantages for som ...

. He is critical of both conservative elitists like

Allan Bloom Allan David Bloom (September 14, 1930 – October 7, 1992) was an American philosopher, classicist, and academician. He studied under David Grene, Leo Strauss, Richard McKeon, and Alexandre Kojève. He subsequently taught at Cornell Un ...

and self-professed "

leftists Left-wing politics describes the range of Ideology#Political ideologies, political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy either as a whole or of certain social ...

" who claim an oppositional status while reinforcing

class Class, Classes, or The Class may refer to: Common uses not otherwise categorized * Class (biology), a taxonomic rank * Class (knowledge representation), a collection of individuals or objects * Class (philosophy), an analytical concept used d ...

distinctions of the kind described by

Pierre Bourdieu Pierre Bourdieu (, ; ; ; 1 August 1930 – 23 January 2002) was a French sociologist and public intellectual. Bourdieu's contributions to the sociology of education, the theory of sociology, and sociology of aesthetics have achieved wide influ ...

. Although Spellmeyer's research has been influenced by

sociologists This list of sociologists includes people who have made notable contributions to sociological theory or to research in one or more areas of sociology. A * Peter Abell, British sociologist * Andrew Abbott, American sociologist * Margaret ...

like Bourdieu,

Charles Derber Charles Derber is an American academic, author and political activist. He is Professor of Sociology at Boston College. His work focuses on capitalism, globalization, corporate power and oligarchy, populism, authoritarianism and democracy, milita ...

, and others, he is particularly indebted to Barbara and John Ehrenreich's work on the rise of "new class"—the professional-managerial elite, including academics, who have become the core of the Democratic Party in the U.S., displacing a working-class constituency. In a review of ''Arts of Living'', one critic said: Spellmeyer has also published articles on theories of composition/rhetoric,

critical theory Critical theory is a social, historical, and political school of thought and philosophical perspective which centers on analyzing and challenging systemic power relations in society, arguing that knowledge, truth, and social structures are ...

, and the

sociology of knowledge The sociology of knowledge is the study of the relationship between human thought, the social context within which it arises, and the effects that prevailing ideas have on societies. It is not a specialized area of sociology. Instead, it deals w ...

and of academic institutions, in journals that include ''

College English ''College English'' is an official publication of the American National Council of Teachers of English and is aimed at college-level teachers and scholars of English. The peer-reviewed journal publishes articles on a range of topics related to th ...

'', ''

College Composition and Communication ''College Composition and Communication'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal that was established in 1950. It covers research and scholarship in the field of rhetoric and composition studies. The journal is published by the National Council of T ...

'', ''The Journal of Advanced Composition'', ''Pedagogy'', '' Transformations'', and ''Religion and the Arts''. Spellmeyer is a contributing editor at '' Tricycle: The Buddhist Review''.

Awards

In 1993 he won the Ross Winterowd Award for his 1992 book ''Common Ground: Dialogue, Understanding, and the Teaching of Composition.'' In 2004, he received Rutgers' Teacher-Scholar Award for outstanding contributions to the scholarship on teaching.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Spellmeyer, Kurt Kankan Rutgers University faculty Living people American spiritual writers Engaged Buddhists Zen Buddhism writers 21st-century American Buddhists American Zen Buddhists Rinzai Buddhists American Zen Buddhist spiritual teachers American academics of English literature 1953 births