Laurel Kendall

Adjunct Professor of Anthropology, Curator of Asian Ethnographic Collections at the American Museum of Natural History

Email: lk7@columbia.edu

Educational Background

PhD: Columbia University (’79)
MA: Columbia University (’76)
AB: University of California, Berkeley (’69)

Research Interests

Popular Religions in East Asia, Shamans, Sacred Objects, Contemporary Korea

As an anthropologist of Korea, Dr. Kendall has been working with and writing about Korean shamans for nearly thirty years. Having attended their performances in the early 1970s as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Korea, she became interested in the relationship between this largely female tradition and the operation of gender in Korean popular religion. In 1989, Dr. Kendall collaborated with documentary filmmaker Diana Lee in filming the story of a shaman’s initiation, a visual complement to her books.

More recently, Prof Kendall has been examining how changes in the shamans’ world keep pace with the social and economic transformation of South Korean society. This project includes questions of space and landscape, performance, ritual consumption, national identity, and market anxieties. She is also working with colleagues in Hanoi, Vietnam, studyingl “the sacred life of material goods.” Following the work of Alfred Gell, they are exploring the relationship between people and objects, relationships that have rules, obligations, potential benefits, and dangers.

Working between Korea and Vietnam, Dr. Kendall is cautiously interested in regional comparisons. Vietnamese folklorist Dr. Nguyen Thi Hien and her are exploring points of similarity and contrast between Korean shamans and spirit mediums of Vietnam’s Mother Goddess Religion.

Selected Publications

The Museum at the End of the World: Travels in the Post-Soviet Russian Far East (University of Pennsylvania, 2005).

Getting Married in Korea: Of Gender, Morality, and Modernity (University of California, 1996)

The Life and Hard Times of a Korean Shaman: Of Tales and the Telling of Tales (University of Hawaii, 1988)

Lauran Hartley

ADJUNCT LECTURER IN TIBETAN LITERATURE

Office:  300 Kent Hall
Office Hours: By appointment
Phone: (212)854-9875
Email: lh2112@columbia.edu

Educational Background

BA: Northwestern University (’85)
MA: Indiana University (’98)
PhD: Indiana University (’03)

Classes Taught

EAAS GU4553 Survey of Tibetan Literature

Research Interests

Tibetan Literature and Cultural Production, Translation Studies

Lauran Hartley is Tibetan Studies Librarian for the C.V. Starr East Asian Library at Columbia University and occasionally serves as Adjunct Lecturer in Tibetan Literature for the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures. She has also taught courses on Tibetan literature and religion at Indiana and Rutgers universities. In addition to co-editing the book Modern Tibetan Literature and Social Change (Duke University Press, 2008) and serving as Inner Asian Book Review Editor for the Journal of Asian Studies, she has also published several literary translations and articles on Tibetan intellectual history. Her current research focuses on literary production and discourse from the eighteenth century to present.

Selected Publications

Co-editor, Modern Tibetan Literature and Social Change (Duke University Press, 2008)

“The Advent of Modern Tibetan Free-Verse Poetry in the Tibetan Language” in A New Literary History of Modern China (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2017)

“Self as a faithful public servant: The autobiography of Mdo mkhar ba Tshe ring dbang rgyal (1697–1763)” in Mapping the Modern in Tibet. Proceedings of the 11th Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies, 2006 (Andiast, Switzerland: International Institute for Tibetan and Buddhist Studies GmbH, 2011)

“Ascendancy of the Term rtsom-rig [literature] in Tibetan Literary Discourse” in Contemporary Tibetan Literary Studies. Proceedings of the 10th Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies, 2003 (Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2007)

“Tibetan Publishing in the Early Post-Mao Period.” Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie 15 (2005)

 

Patrick Booz

Adjunct Assistant Professor

Office Hours: W 9:00 am-12:00pm
Email: prb2126@columbia.edu

Educational Background

BA: University of Wisconsin (’78)
MPhil: University of Oxford (’06)
DPhil: University of Oxford (’11)

Classes Taught

ASCE 1359                 INTRO TO EAST ASIAN CIV: CHINA

Research Interests

Borderland Studies, Economic History, Transport Geography, Tea, Material Culture, History of Printing

I wrote my thesis on “Tea, Trade and Transport in the Sino-Tibetan Borderlands.” This work focuses on the convergence of geography, history, and anthropology, particularly in the regions of southwest China. Border issues and commodity economics, especially the history of Sino-Tibetan economic relations, are main areas of research. In addition to tea, I have a strong interest in the development of printing, bookmaking and manuscripts in Chinese civilization. In the area of visual culture, I spent several years researching color and painting, and also locating, documenting and preserving historic photographs, art historical and other visual materials related to China and Tibet.

Selected Publications

“Tibet and Tea: A Summary of Trade, Social Customs and Sino-Tibetan Relations Dealing with Ja/Cha.” In Commerce and Communities – Social Status and Political Status and the Exchange of Goods in Tibetan Societies (Mid 17th to mid 20th centuries). Berlin 2018.

“To Control Tibet, First Pacify Kham”: Trade Routes and “Official Routes” (Guandao) in Easternmost Kham.” Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review. Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, e-journal, June 2016.

“In and Out of Borders: The Beifu Tea Porters Encounter Tibet.” Cahiers no. 23, 2014 d’Extrême-Asie. École française d’Extrême-Orient (EFEO), centre de Kyoto. 29 Kita-shirakawa bettō-chō, Sakyō-ku, Kyōto 606-8276, Japan.

“Fear of Indian Tea and the Failure of British India to Break the Chinese Tea Monopoly in Tibet.” In Buddhist Himalaya: Studies in Religion, History and Culture. 2011. Gangtok, Sikkim: Namgyal Institute of Tibetology.