Chinese Studies at Cambridge - Interview (Part 3) with Prof. T.H. Barrett
This is the third part of my interview with Prof. Timothy H. Barrett, former Professor of Chinese Religions at SOAS. This time he talks about how he went to study Buddhism at Yale University, where he completed some course work and then was about to be sent to Japan for language training. But at this point, a teaching position came up at Cambridge and he applied to this. He was able to get the job but soon realized that he was expected to teach modern Chinese history, in which he had little training. Essentially, he was the third Tang specialist at Cambridge and felt that he could not compete with his senior colleagues in this. This is also when he started writing book reviews, of which he wrote several hundred.
---Video's Table of Contents---
00:00 Intro
00:23 Studying Buddhism
02:37 Job at Cambridge
06:02 Chinese popular religion
07:21 Book reviews
13:37 Teaching at Cambridge
16:26 Research leave