*Event Broadcasted October 29th, 2021*
Speaker: Dominique Townsend, Assistant Professor of Buddhist Studies at Bard College
Discussant: Janet Gyatso, Hershey Professor of Buddhist Studies and Associate Dean for Faculty and Academic Affairs at Harvard Divinity School
Moderator: Lauran Hartley, MTSP Director, Columbia University
A Buddhist Sensibility sheds new light on the forms of knowledge valued in early modern Tibetan societies, especially among the ruling classes. Townsend traces how tastes, values, and sensibilities were cultivated and spread by Tibetan Buddhist teachers of the Nyingma School at Mindröling monastery in the 17th century and onwards, showing what it meant for a person, lay or monastic, to be deemed well-educated. Combining historical and literary analysis with fieldwork in Tibetan Buddhist communities, this book reveals how monastic institutions work as centers of cultural production beyond the boundaries of what is conventionally deemed Buddhist.
Dominique Townsend is Assistant Professor of Buddhist Studies at Bard College. She has a BA from Barnard College, an MTS from Harvard Divinity School, and a PhD from Columbia University. Her research focuses on Buddhist aesthetics and cultural production with a specialization in early modern Tibetan history.
Janet Gyatso is Hershey Professor of Buddhist Studies and Associate Dean for Faculty and Academic Affairs at Harvard Divinity School. A specialist in Buddhist studies with concentration on Tibetan and South Asian cultural and intellectual history, Gyatso was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Science in 2018. She was president of the International Association of Tibetan Studies from 2000 to 2006, and co-chair of the Buddhism Section of the American Academy of Religion from 2004 to 2010.
This MTSP event was co-sponsored by the Weatherhead East Asian Institute and the C.V. Starr East Asian Library at Columbia University.
