About
Welcome to Aster's Asterisms! I'm Aster Michael Boschet (they/them), a 20 year old originally from Kekionga (Fort Wayne) on occupied Myaamia land. I am now a junior at Indiana University Bloomington, studying Religious Studies, Philosophy, and East Asian Languages and Cultures with a concentration in Chinese through the Chinese Flagship Program. I am also pursuing a certificate in French and Francophone Global Studies. My research centers around pilgrimage, holy sites, and monasticism in contemporary Chinese Buddhism, supplementing it with research into pilgrimage, holy sites, and monasticism in other religions; smaller religious movements in China, particularly Maitreya millenarian movements; religion in communist states, primarily the USSR and contemporary Vietnam; the Cultural Revolution and subsequent Reform and Opening Up; and state-sangha relations in other nations.