The Scholarship Committee of The Manuscript Society is pleased to name Kyle Bond, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Religion at Princeton University, as the 2018 recipient of the Richard Maass Research Grant.  Mr. Bond will use the $5,000 award for research in Japan in order to complete his dissertation, entitled “Illuminated in Dreams: The Practice of Asceticism and the Production of Revelatory Dreams in Early Medieval Japan.”

Bond will attend a workshop at Nagoya University on manuscripts embedded inside Buddhist statues. He will continue his research in Tokyo, studying dream records preserved by medieval Buddhist monks. Individuals of the period between 900 and 1400 made pilgrimages to religious shrines, hoping to stimulate dreams, which were then interpreted as sacred messages from deities.  The influence of these recorded dreams was both secular and sacred, swaying court politics as well as leading to the formation of new monastic orders and temples.

Kyle Bond has a BA from Seattle University, an MA from the University of Washington, as well as an MA in Asian Religions from Princeton.  He joins a list of distinguished scholars who have received the Maass Grant, named in memory of Richard Maass, one of the founders of The Manuscript Society

Applicants must be pursuing a graduate degree at an accredited university that is an institutional member of The Manuscript Society and be recommended by at least two faculty advisors. The $5,000 grant is to be used for expenses related directly to research using original manuscripts.

Application acceptance for the 2018 Richard Maass Research Grant begins Decembers 1, 2018 with a deadline of February 14, 2019.