On November 2nd, the Department of Central Eurasian Studies hosted Janet Gyatso, Hershey Professor of Buddhist Studies at Harvard Divinity School, for a lecture titled “Doing Tibetology through the Lens of the Literary, and what that does to Tibetology,” as part of the Jean and Denis Sinor Faculty Fellowship Lecture Series.
In her lecture, Dr. Janet Gyatso discussed the current movements in Tibetan studies, emphasizing the increase in the presence of ethnic Tibetan scholars in the literature published internationally. Dr. Gyatso believes that for Tibetology to thrive as a field, it must go beyond the conventional focus on Buddhist studies and philology. Understanding modern Tibetan society is equally crucial for further developing Tibetan studies as a field that builds dialogues with other disciplines. Dr. Gyatso offers to look at the modern literary works produced by ethnic Tibetan writers under the rule of the PRC and exile as a way to go beyond what is traditionally understood by Tibetan studies and learn more about Tibet as a contemporary state.
As a scholar working in pre-modern Tibetan literature, Dr. Gyatso seeks to follow the thread from the question of the place of modern literature in Tibetan studies to the study of everything we call literature and Tibetan literature. Incorporating modern Tibetan literary works into the international body of literature, especially those by female Tibetan writers, would contribute to understanding and appreciating Tibet by a broader audience. Dr. Gyatso shared her own experience of participating in the efforts to bring focus to the writing of young female writers in the past three years. The writing workshop organized by the University of Virginia (2020) is just one of these efforts.
Dr. Gyatso concluded in statit that although Tibetan studies were traditionally primarily interested in recovering ancient Buddhist scriptures that were not available in Sanskrit but were translated into Tibetan, it is essential to understand that Tibet is more than a container of religious heritage, but a society that is a part of the modern world with its own economic, political, or technological change, even if it means dilution of their traditional ways of life.