Aaron Reich

Aaron K. Reich obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 2018 and is now Assistant Professor at Saint Joseph’s University (SJU) in Philadelphia, where he teaches courses on religion in China and Taiwan, and East Asia more broadly. His research explores the making and use of religious images and objects in both historical and modern contexts. His work to date focuses primarily on material culture that emerges from intersections between Daoism and local ritual traditions in late imperial China and in contemporary Taiwan. In his approach to the study of religious images and objects, Reich draws on a combination of research methods, including ethnographic fieldwork, visual and iconographical analysis, and the close reading of ritual texts. His recent articles appear in the interdisciplinary journals Asian Ethnology; Material Religion: The Journal of Objects, Art and Belief; and the Journal of Chinese Religions.