Tibet

Gray Tuttle

Gray Tuttle

Leila Hadley Luce Professor of Modern Tibetan Studies

Office: 401 Kent Hall
Office Hours: On leave fall 2021
Phone: (212) 854-4096
Email: gwt2102@columbia.edu

Educational Background

BA: Princeton University (’91)
MA: Harvard University (’96)
PhD: Harvard University (’02)

Classes Taught

ASCE UN1365 Introduction to East Asian Civilizations: Tibet
EARL GU4310 Life Writing in Tibetan Buddhism
HSEA GU4720 20th Century Tibetan History

Research Interests

Tibetan History & Religion

Gray Tuttle studies the history of twentieth century Sino-Tibetan relations as well as Tibet’s relations with the China-based Manchu Qing Empire. The role of Tibetan Buddhism in these historical relations is central to all his research. In his Tibetan Buddhists in the Making of Modern China (Columbia UP, 2005), he examines the failure of nationalism and race-based ideology to maintain the Tibetan territory of the former Qing empire as integral to the Chinese nation-state. Instead, he argues, a new sense of pan-Asian Buddhism was critical to Chinese efforts to hold onto Tibetan regions (one quarter of China’s current territory). His current research project, “Amdo Tibet, Middle Ground between Lhasa and Beijing (1578-1865),” is a historical analysis of the economic and cultural relations between China and Tibet in the early modern periods (16th – 19th centuries) when the intellectual and economic centers of Tibet shifted to the east, to Amdo — a Tibetan cultural region the size of France in northwestern China. Deploying Richard White’s concept of the “Middle Ground” in the context of two mature civilizations — Tibetan and Chinese — encountering one another, this book will examine how this contact led to three dramatic areas of growth that defined early modern Tibet: 1) the advent of mass monastic education, 20 the bureaucratization of reincarnate lamas’ charisma and 3) the development of modern conceptions of geography that reshaped the way Tibet was imagined.

Selected Publications

“An Unknown Tradition of Han Chinese Conversion to Tibetan Buddhism: Han Chinese Incarnate Lamas and Parishoners of Tibetan Buddhist Temples in Amdo, Zangxue xuekan/Journal of Tibetology (2014)

Sources of Tibetan Tradition (co-editor, Columbia, 2013)

The Tibetan History Reader (co-editor, Columbia, 2013)

Tibetan Buddhists in the Making of Modern China (Columbia, 2005)

Konchog Tseten

Konchog Tseten

ADJUNCT LECTURER IN TIBETAN

Office: TBA
Office Hours: TBA
Phone: TBA
Email: kt2590@columbia.edu

Educational Background

MA: Tibetan Medicine, Qinghai Tibetan Medical College
BA: Northwest Normal University

Classes Taught

TIBT UN1410 First Year Classical Tibetan I
TIBT UN1411 First Year Classical Tibetan II

Research Interests

Tibetan Language

Konchog Tseten is originally from Rebgong (Qinghai, PRC) where he earned his language teaching certificate at the Rebgong Prefecture Teacher Training School. He later earned a BA at Northwest Normal University and a Master’s Degree in Tibetan medicine from Qinghai Tibetan Medical College. He taught Tibetan language for two years at the Gendun Chophel Middle School and has assisted researchers and anthropologists in collecting and interpreting field materials in Amdo (Tibet). Since 2015 he has taught Classical Tibetan language at Columbia University. He is currently a student of eastern medicine at the Pacific College of Oriental Medicine, NYC.

Sonam Tsering

Sonam_Profile_Picture_sm

Sonam Tsering

Lecturer in Tibetan, Director of the Tibetan Language Program

Office: 502A Kent Hall
Office Hours: WR 4:00-5:00
Phone: (212) 854-0596
Email: st2931@columbia.edu

Educational Background

BA: Social Anthropology, University of London

Classes Taught

TIBT UN1600 First Year Modern Colloquial Tibetan I
TIBT UN1601 First Year Modern Tibetan II
TIBT UN2603 Second Year Modern Colloquial Tibetan I
TIBT UN2604 Second Year Modern Tibetan II
TIBT UN3611 Third Year Modern Colloquial Tibetan I
TIBT UN3612 Third Year Modern Tibetan II

Research Interests

Tibetan Language

Sonam Tsering is the director of the Tibetan language program at Columbia. Sonam previously taught at the University of Michigan, where he also remotely taught students at Yale and Ohio State University, via live video technology. Originally from Rebgong (Qinghai, PRC), Sonam later lived in the Tibetan community in exile in India, founding and editing Bod kyi Dus bab (Tibet Times newspaper).

Online publications

Introduction” for the English Translation of The Division of Heaven and Earth – on the peaceful revolution of the Earth Rat year by Shokdung, Xining (unpublished yet, 2008)
“The Historical Polity of Repgong” (The Tibetan and Himalayan Library, 2011) http://places.thlib.org/features/23751/descriptions/1225
Translation: Clear Sky and Red Earth – A Himalayan Story by Sienna Craig, Illustrations by Tenzin Norbu, (Mera Publications, 2004)
“Ipolito Desideri” (Latse Library Newsletter, 2004)
“La dwags kyi ag bar and its background” (Latse Library Newsletter, 2005)
New York Regular contribution to Nyenchen Thanglha, Nor Od, Tibetan Review, Mangtso and Tibet Times, Dharamasala, India 1987 – 1993
Numerous Articles in Qinghai Zangwen Bao (Qinghai Tibetan Language Newspaper), Qinghai Fazhi Bao (Qinghai Law Magazine), Xining, PRC