Faculty

Elena Pakhoutova

Adjunct Lecturer of Tibetan Art

Office: 401 Kent Hall
Office Hours: M 4-5 PM
Email: ep3329@columbia.edu

Educational Background

PhD: University of Virginia (Art History)
MA: University of Virginia (Art History)

University Diploma (MA/BA History and Historical Archival Research): Russian State University for Humanities, Moscow, Russia

Courses Taught

HSEA GU 4725 Tibetan Art and Material Culture

Area of Study

Buddhist Art, Indian Art, Tibetan Art, Cross-cultural exchanges in Inner Asia; Historical and Contemporary Himalayan Art

Research Interests

Dr. Pakhoutova is Senior Curator, Himalayan Art at the Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art. She has taught at University of Virginia and the Eugene Lang College, New School, New York.

Her background in Tibetan Buddhist studies informs her interdisciplinary interests in Buddhist art and ritual, art production and patronage, material culture, narrative in Tibetan visual culture, and contemporary Himalayan art.

She curated several thematic exhibitions that introduce and contextualize Tibetan and Himalayan art, including Death Is Not the End (2023), The Power of Intention: Reinventing the (Prayer) Wheel (2019).

Most recently, the ongoing traveling exhibition Gateway to Himalayan Art is an integral component of Project Himalayan Art which she co-leads with Dr. Karl Debreczeny.

Selected Publications

Himalayan Art in 108 Objects, ed. (with Karl Debreczeny). Scala and Rubin Museum of Art, 2023.

“For One and or for Many: Affluent and Common Patronage of Narrative Art in Tibet.” Material Religion 2021: vol. 17, no. 1

The Second Buddha: Master of Time, ed. The Rubin Museum, The Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery, and Delmonico Prestel, 2018

The All-Knowing Buddha: A Secret Guide (with Karl Debreczeny, Christian Luczanits, and Jan van Alphen). Antwerp: Museum Aan de Stroom. MAS: 2014.

“A Wondrous Great Accomplishment: a Painting of an Event.” PIATS 2010: Proceedings of the Twelfth Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies, Vancouver, 2010. Asianart.com (2012)

Gavin Healy

Office hours: M 10am-12 noon
E-mail: gh148@columbia.edu

Educational Background

BA: Cornell University
JD: Columbia University School of Law
MA: Chinese University of Hong Kong
PhD: Columbia University

Classes Taught

ASCE UN1359 Introduction to East Asian Civilizations: China
AHUM UN1400 Colloquium on Major Texts: East Asia

Research Interests

History of Late Imperial/Modern China, Cold War in Asia, Comparative Labor History, Tourism History,
History and Cinema Gavin Healy is a historian of modern China. In addition to his teaching at Columbia, he is a Center
Associate of the Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies at the University of Michigan. His book, A
Guide to Mao’s China: Showing the Nation to Foreign Guests, examines how personnel within China’s
state tourism bureaucracy struggled to balance the use of tourism as a form of political, historical, and
cultural representation with the demands of developing a revenue-generating service industry in a socialist
economy. His research has been supported by grants and fellowships from the Social Science Research
Council, the American Historical Association, and the Weatherhead East Asian Institute. Prior to his work
as a historian, he practiced law in New York, Hong Kong, and Seoul for ten years.

Selected Publications

A Guide to Mao’s China: Showing the Nation to Foreign Guests (Cornell University Press, 2026).
https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501785900/a-guide-to-maos-china/#bookTabs=1

“Michelangelo Antonioni, Tourist Snapshots, and the Politics of the ‘Backward Scene’ in 1970s China,”
Journal of Contemporary History 59, no. 4 (October 2024): 732-753.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/00220094241271006

“Fuwuyuan on Film: Cinema, Socialist Education, and Service Labor from the Great Leap Forward to
Reform and Opening Up,” Modern China 50, no. 2 (March 2024): 200-230.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00977004231170526

“Touring the Socialist World: The Political and Cultural Economy of China’s Outbound Tourism, 1956-
1965,” Twentieth-Century China 46, no. 1 (January 2021): 83-102.
https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/tcc.2021.0005

Palden Gyal

Postdoctoral Research Scholar, University Committee on Asia and the Middle East
Lecturer, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures

Email: Np2632@columbia.edu

BA: Duke University

MA: Harvard Divinity School

PhD: Columbia University

Palden Gyal, Ph.D., is a historian of empire, statecraft, and frontier governance in early modern and modern Asia. He is a Postdoctoral Research Scholar at Columbia University’s UCAME and a Lecturer in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures.

Frontiers of Empire: Statecraft and Sovereignty in the Sino-Tibetan Borderlands, 1650–1911, a book project developed from his dissertation, reexamines the Sino-Tibetan borderlands as dynamic spaces of ideological contestation and political negotiation rather than passive peripheries shaped solely by imperial power. Drawing on multilingual archival materials, monastic abbatial records, and hagiographies, the study foregrounds the Tibetan princely states of Gyalrong as pivotal actors in Qing imperial expansion, highlighting their political, economic, and religious agency.

In addition to his academic work, Palden is active in literary translation from Tibetan and Chinese into English. His translations and essays have appeared in Himal Southasian, Los Angeles Review of Books (China Channel), and various scholarly journals and edited volumes. Through translation, he maintains an ongoing engagement with contemporary Tibetan literary and intellectual culture.