Academic Course

Tibet: Myth and Reality

HIS 295/AS 394

Thomas W. Burkman
Course Coordinator

Spring Semester 2006 (Jan. 18 - Apr. 26)
Wednesdays 7-9:40 p.m.
20 Knox Hall

This interdisciplinary course will introduce you to the history, society, and cultures of Tibet. The course will also address Tibetan Buddhism as practiced in China, India, and across the world, as well as the career, teachings, and mission of the Dalai Lama. The curriculum will draw upon UB scholars of Tibet, China, and Buddhism; guest lecturers; and media resources. The course registration number is 225396. | Register

Schedule of Topics and Lecturers

UB students may register for the course for full credit. Nonstudents may register for the entire course as auditors. Visitors are welcome to attend guest lectures without preregistration or cost. Evening parking is free on the North Campus.» Click for map.

Biographies

January 18. Introduction

Thomas W. Burkman, course coordinator, is research professor and director of Asian studies at UB. Burkman received his Ph.D. in modern Japanese history from the University of Michigan. His research focuses on Japan's relationship to world order from World War I to the 1930s. He has published numerous scholarly articles on the subject of Japan and the League of Nations, and a monograph on the subject will appear from the University of Hawaii Press in 2006. He has also edited three volumes of scholarly papers on the Allied occupation of Japan. He has been a Fulbright scholar and a visiting research professor at the University of Tokyo. Before coming to UB in 1994, he taught at Kwansei Gakuin University in Japan, Colby College, Old Dominion University, the University of California-Davis, and Hamilton College.

Jeffrey Albert is project manager/designer for Foit-Albert Architects and Engineers, PC, an architectural firm long established in Buffalo and associated with projects at UB. He traveled across Tibet in 1999. Other travels have taken him frequently to India, China, Thailand, and Malaysia.

January 25. Land, Livelihoods, and Environments

Kenneth Bauer is an environmental and social scientist who focuses on pastoralism, with more than a decade of research and development experience in Tibetan communities. He received his B.A. in history from Brown University in 1992 and an M.Sc. in range management from the University of California-Berkeley in 1999. He is now completing a D.Phil. in international development studies at the University of Oxford. Bauer worked as a consultant to the World Wildlife Fund Nepal Program (1994–96) and was responsible for developing and overseeing integrated conservation and development projects in some of Nepal's largest national parks. He has conducted research in Dolpo, Nepal, as a Fulbright scholar. His monograph based on this research, High Frontiers: Dolpo and the Changing World of Himalayan Pastoralists, was published by Columbia University Press in 2004. His dissertation, based on research conducted among pastoralists in Central Tibet, is a multidisciplinary analysis of property regimes and land use change over two centuries of nomadic life. He is the author of several peer-reviewed articles and contributions to edited academic volumes, and is a contributing editor to Nomadic Peoples. As a researcher and grassroots activist, Bauer has developed expertise in land use, grazing regimes, and the impacts of development policies on human–environment interactions. He has particular expertise on land use planning with geographic information systems (GIS) and participatory mapping, which can be used to support appropriate development policies and practical land management systems. As a consultant to the Digital Himalaya Project (www.digitalhimalaya.com) he has managed a team of programmers and social scientists to develop multimedia Internet applications about the Himalaya and Tibetan Plateau for research and education purposes.

Sienna Craig is a medical and cultural anthropologist with general expertise in non-Western medical systems, social studies of science, international development studies, and action research, as well as Tibetan medicine. She has been conducting research among Tibetan communities in the greater Himalaya and Tibetan Plateau since 1993. Craig received her B.A. in religious studies from Brown University in 1995. She began studies toward her Ph.D. in 1999, earned her M.A. in 2002, and will complete her doctorate this year. Before beginning graduate studies, Craig conducted research in Mustang, Nepal, as a Fulbright scholar (1995–96). Her book based on this research, Horses Like Lightning: A Passage Through Mustang, is forthcoming from Wisdom Publications. Craig's dissertation research focuses on the transformation of Tibetan medical production and clinical practice in Nepal and Tibet. She has also worked extensively with practitioners of Tibetan medicine in Nepal on conservation and development issues, in part through consultancies at the World Wildlife Fund Nepal Program and the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development. From 2002 to 2004, Craig worked as an anthropologist and research coordinator on a Lhasa-based maternal and child health clinical research project, funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH/NICHD) and the Gates Foundation. She has published widely in peer-reviewed and editorial venues.

In 1998, Bauer and Craig cofounded Drokpa, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to partner with pastoral communities in Central Asia and the Himalaya to support grassroots development and cultivate social entrepreneurship. Drokpa has funded projects in alternative energy, community health, education and training, and local entrepreneurs in Nepal; Ladakh, India; Bhutan; the Tibet Autonomous Region; and Kham (Sichuan province), China.

February 1. Premodern History

Matthew Bingley is a Ph.D. candidate in the history of Asian religions program at the University of Iowa. His area of research is in comparative Buddhism and Hinduism in South Asia. Formerly, he was the instructor in Buddhist philosophy on the Antioch College Buddhist studies in India program. He is currently teaching in the Buffalo area.

February 8. Tibet from the Perspective of China

Roger Des Forges did his undergraduate work in public and international affairs at Princeton and his graduate work in Asian studies and Chinese history at Yale. He first became aware of Tibet at a Model United Nations in the late 1950s when there was a question whether the status of that polity should be brought before the General Assembly. In his first book, Hsi-liang and the Chinese National Revolution (1973), he analyzed Qing (1644-1911) policy toward Tibet in response to Western missionary and commercial activities in Sichuan province and a British military expedition to Lhasa in 1904. In more recent work he has focused on the history of Henan province in central China, but he remains very interested in the problem of defining what is—and what is not—"Chinese" over the centuries, including the twentieth and twenty-first.

Herbert Batt completed his Ph.D. in English literature at the University of Toronto, specializing in Renaissance drama. He taught at the University of Toronto, and then for eight years taught English in a Chinese university where he began to translate Chinese fiction. He then taught English for eight years in Polish universities, continuing his translations of Chinese fiction. His first collection of Chinese translations, Tales of Tibet, appeared from Roan and Littlefield in 2001. It is the first multiauthor anthology of contemporary Chinese-language fiction about Tibet published in the West. It features fiction by Chinese writers, as well as such Tibetans as Taishi Dawa and Alai. It also includes the first English translations of Tibetan women writers Yangdon and Geyang. His subsequent anthologies are Song of the Snow Lion and Mystified Boat. His translation of Fang Fang's novel, Children of the Bitter River, is soon to appear from Eastbridge Press. Batt resides in Buffalo.

February 15. Buddhism

Jeanette Ludwig received her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in romance linguistics from the University of Michigan. She also holds an M.A. in theology from Christ the King Seminary. Her expertise lies in the areas of second language acquisition, history and structure of French, world religions, and Asian religions. Her current research themes include a comparative study of prayer and meditation using a performance theory model. She is a recipient of the Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching. In fall 2006, she will teach AS 394/RSP394: Buddhism.

February 22. Tibetan Buddhism

Ivette M. Vargas is assistant professor of Asian religions in the Department of Religious Studies at Austin College, Sherman, Texas. She received two M.A.s and a Ph.D. from Harvard University and a B.A. from Barnard College. Dr. Vargas' major field is South Asian and Tibetan Buddhist studies with a subfield in Hinduism. Her particular interests include the rhetoric of illness in Indian and Tibetan Buddhist literature, religion and science in Tibetan medicine, and healing and fasting in South Asian literature. She is presently conducting a research study on demon diseases in Tibetan medicine and expects to explore a study on the role of women in Tibetan medical history. She is a contributing author to an anthology on teaching about illness and healing (Oxford University Press, 2006). Her other articles include "The Life of dGe slong ma dPal mo: The Experiences of a Leper, Founder of a Fasting Ritual, and Transmitter of Buddhist Teachings on Suffering and Renunciation in Tibetan Religious History," Journal for the International Association of Buddhist Studies (2001); "Snake-Kings, Boars' Heads, Deer Parks, and Monkey Talk: Animals as Transmitters and Transformers in Indian and Tibetan Buddhist Narratives," A Communion of Subjects: Animals in Religion, Science, and Ethics (Columbia University Press, forthcoming); and "Nun Palmo: A Legend Across Tibetan Communities," Journal Proceedings of the Eighth Sakyadhita International Conference on Buddhist Women (Seoul, Korea, 2004).

March 1. The Dalai Lama

Thupten Jinpa was born in Tibet in 1958. He received his early education and training as a monk at Zongkar Chöde Monastery in South India and later joined the Shartse College of Ganden monastic university, South India, where he received the Geshe Lharam degree. He taught Buddhist epistemology, metaphysics, Middle Way philosophy and Buddhist psychology at Ganden for five years. Jinpa also holds B.A. Honors in Western philosophy and a Ph.D. in religious studies, both from Cambridge University, United Kingdom. Since 1985 he has been a principal English translator to His Holiness the Dalai Lama and has traveled extensively in this capacity. He has translated and edited more than 10 books by the Dalai Lama.

From 1996 to 1999, he was the Margaret Smith Research Fellow in Eastern Religion at Girton College, Cambridge University, United Kingdom. At present he is the president of the Institute of Tibetan Classics in Montreal, Canada, and the editor-in-chief of the translation project The Library of Tibetan Classics, being developed by the institute. He also teaches in the Religious Studies Program of McGill University. He lives in Montreal with his wife and two young daughters.

March 22. Art History

While working on a master's degree of religious studies (M.T.S.) at Harvard University, Melissa Kerin investigated sociological issues surrounding sacred art practices within contemporary Tibetan Buddhist exiled communities. After attaining her M.T.S., Kerin had the opportunity to carry out fieldwork in the western Himalaya, which piqued her interest in archaeological and historical issues of Tibetan Buddhist art. Currently, her Ph.D. work at the University of Pennsylvania, and in particular her dissertation on 15th- to 17th-century wall painting traditions of the western Himalaya, reflect her interests in discerning the various interpenetrating ideological systems embedded within the image and the viewer.

March 29. Society

Jan Willis (B.A. and M.A. in philosophy, Cornell University, 1969 and 1971; Ph.D. in Indic and Buddhist studies, Columbia University, 1976) is professor of religion and Walter A. Crowell Professor of the Social Sciences at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. She has studied with Tibetan Buddhists in India, Nepal, Switzerland, and the United States for more than three decades, and has taught courses in Buddhism for over twenty-five years. She is the author of The Diamond Light: An Introduction to Tibetan Buddhist Meditation (1972), On Knowing Reality: The Tattvartha Chapter of Asanga's Bodhisattvabhumi (1979), Enlightened Beings: Life Stories from the Ganden Oral Tradition (1995); and the editor of Feminine Ground: Essays on Women and Tibet (1989). One of the earliest American scholar-practitioners of Tibetan Buddhism, Professor Willis has published numerous essays and articles on Buddhist meditation, hagiography, women and Buddhism, and Buddhism and race. Her latest published project was the memoir Dreaming Me: An African American Woman's Spiritual Journey, published by Riverhead Books in 2001 and reprinted in paperback as Dreaming Me: From Baptist to Buddhist, One Woman's Spiritual Journey. In December of 2000, Time magazine named Willis one of six "spiritual innovators for the new millennium." In 2003, Professor Willis was a recipient of Wesleyan University's Binswanger Prize for Excellence in Teaching. In September of 2005, Newsweek magazine's "Spirituality in America" issue included a profile of her.

April 5. Law and Society

Rebecca French is professor of law at UB. She studied law at the University of Michigan and Yale University, and obtained a Ph.D. in anthropology also at Yale. Before coming to UB, she taught law at the University of Colorado. A rare specialist in Tibetan law, she is the author of The Golden Yoke: The Legal Cosmology of Buddhist Tibet (Cornell, 1995) and continues her research on law in Buddhist societies.

April 12. Health and Healthcare

Richard V. Lee, M.D., is a graduate of Yale University (B.S.) and of the Yale University School of Medicine (M.D., 1964). His clinical training in internal medicine and infectious/inflammatory disease was at Yale. He is presently professor of medicine at the State University of New York at Buffalo with secondary or adjunct appointments as professor in pediatrics, obstetrics, anthropology and social and preventive medicine. He has been certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine and the American Board of Family Practice. Lee teaches geographic medicine for graduate students in social and preventive medicine, anthropology, and nursing. His research and clinical interests have covered a broad range of issues, including the health status of geographically isolated human populations, international health, and the complexities of managing medical complications of pregnancy. He is an associate editor of the International Journal of Environmental Health Research.

In 1986, Lee and his family (his wife Susan and sons Matthew and Ben) joined Iqbal Kana's trans-Himalayan trek from Kashmir to Ladakh. Their adventures are part of the local lore and resulted in the formation of the Medical Trek Program of the State University of New York at Buffalo which has researched and provided health care to the people of the Warwan Valley in Kashmir, the nomads of the Northern Frontier District of Kenya, and the villages of Zanskar in Ladakh. Because these populations are markers for environmental change and development, the medical treks have systematically examined the villages of Zanskar: Kanji, Hanupatta and Lingshed. Lee's friendship with the Geshe Ngawang Jangchup from the Lingshed Gompa has produced a unique alliance between Western allopathic physicians and traditional Tibetan amchis.

April 26. Current Political Status of Tibet

Claude Welch is SUNY Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Political Science at UB, where he also directs the Human Rights Program. He is the author or editor of Protecting Human Rights in Africa (2001), NGOs and Human Rights: Promise and Performance (2000), Asian Perspectives on Human Rights (1990), and Human Rights and Development in Africa (1984).

Lodi Gyari is the special envoy in Washington, D.C. to His Holiness the Dalai Lama. He is also president of the International Campaign for Tibet, a Washington-based organization dedicated to the promotion of human rights and democratic freedoms for the people of Tibet. He has served in both the Tibetan parliament and cabinet-in-exile in Dharamsala, India.