Nancy J. Schuster

Nancy J. Schuster (later publishing as Nancy Schuster Barnes and Nancy J. Barnes) is a Buddhist studies scholar who earned her Ph.D. from the University of Toronto in 1976 with a dissertation titled "The Ugraparipṛcchā, the Mahāratnakūṭasūtra and Early Mahāyāna Buddhism" (2 vols.), specializing in Sanskrit and Indian Studies with a focus on Buddhism in India and China. She has taught at Wesleyan University, the Hartford Seminary Foundation, Hartford College for Women, the Religion Department at Trinity College, and the Art History Department at the University of Hartford.

Her scholarship centers on women in Buddhism and Mahāyāna Buddhist thought and practice, building directly on her dissertation research into the Ratnakūṭa sūtra collection. Her best-known publication, "Changing the Female Body: Wise Women and the Bodhisattva Career in Some Mahāratnakūṭasūtras" (Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 4/1, 1981), examines narratives of female bodhisattvas and bodily transformation within that collection and remains a frequently cited early contribution to gender-critical readings of Mahāyāna literature.