Search

Begin New Search Political Geography Tibet Author Gray Tuttle

1. The Seventh Dalai Lama's Residence in Kham with Yudru Tsomu

Author:
Yudru Tsomu and Gray Tuttle
Publication Date:
02-2023
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
Abstract:
The Seventh Dalai Lama’s residence at Gartar Monastery (Mgar thar dgon, མགར་ཐར་དགོན། ), beginning in 1730, greatly affected the relationship between the Kham region and the Tibetan government as well as the Qing court’s control over Kham. The Dalai Lama’s interactions with various indigenous leaders, local monasteries, monks and lay people increased the influence of the Geluk school in Kham, and also inspired their support for the Dalai Lama. Measures adopted by the Qing court to protect the Dalai Lama, such as stationing troops and inspecting check-points, also strengthened Qing control of Kham. After the Dalai Lama left for Tibet in 1735, Gartar Monastery continued to serve as a religious and cultural center of northern Kham, having the function of “civilizing” and “enlightening” the neighboring regions that were far away from the political center. Successive abbots of Gartar Monastery—all the way up to 1920—came from Drepung Monastery in Lhasa; they and the monks of Gartar influenced, interfered and controlled the local affairs of Gartar and other regions in Kham. In particular, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Gartar Monastery, together with the Tibetan commissioner in Nyarong, was able to assist the Tibetan government’s efforts to extend its sphere of influence in Kham.
Topic:
Government, Religion, History, Buddhism, and Dalai Lama
Political Geography:
Asia and Tibet

2. A Pilgrim’s Diary: Khatag Dzamyag’s nyindep and Tibetan diary-keeping practices

Author:
Lucia Galli and Gray Tuttle
Publication Date:
05-2022
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
Abstract:
This presentation offers an overview of diary-keeping practices in the Tibetan literary and historical milieus by taking as a case study the personal account of a 20th-century Eastern Tibetan trader named Khatag Dzamyag (Kha stag ’Dzam yag, 1896-1961). Belonging to the diaristic genre of nyinto (nyin tho)/nyindep (nyin deb), the work lends itself to multiple approaches. Recent studies in the literary field have already marked the existence of a hybrid form of (auto)biographical narratives, in which the factual and the fictional merge, mix, and intertwine. Facts are constantly subject to manipulation through processes of narrativization, selection, expansion, and omission that all together contribute to the coming into play of fiction. By taking life stories as a metaphor for the phenomena of human life, mind, and action, (auto)biographical narratives thus become a means of “doing living”, i.e. a way to understand the meaning of life while acting, thinking, and living it. Taking a narratological approach, Dr. Galli will reflect upon the dual structural core of Dzamyag’s autobiographical first-person pronoun – as self that is both “narrating” and “narrated”, extending the discussion to the way in which traditional structures and institutions of self-representation are actively engaged and reinterpreted throughout the nyindep.
Topic:
Religion, History, and Narrative
Political Geography:
Asia and Tibet

3. Book Launch: Lineages of the Literary: Tibetan Buddhist Polymaths of Socialist China

Author:
Nicole Willock and Gray Tuttle
Publication Date:
10-2021
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
Abstract:
In the aftermath of the cataclysmic Maoist period, three Tibetan Buddhist scholars living and working in the People’s Republic of China became intellectual heroes and were renowned as the “Three Polymaths”: Tséten Zhabdrung (1910–1985), Mugé Samten (1914–1993), and Dungkar Lozang Trinlé (1927–1997). Lineages of the Literary, by Nicole Willock, reveals how the Three Polymaths negotiated the political tides of the twentieth century, shedding new light on Sino-Tibetan relations and Buddhism during this turbulent era. An interdisciplinary work spanning religious studies, history, literary studies, and social theory, Lineages of the Literary offers new insight into the categories of religion and the secular, the role of Tibetan Buddhist leaders in modern China, and the contested ground of Tibet.
Topic:
Religion, History, Leadership, Literature, Secularism, Buddhism, and Social Theory
Political Geography:
China, Asia, and Tibet

4. Lecture: Reporting Asia: Tibet

Author:
Edward Wong and Gray Tuttle
Publication Date:
01-2020
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
Abstract:
Speaker: Edward Wong, Diplomatic Correspondent, The New York Times Moderated by: Gray Tuttle, Leila Hadley Luce Professor of Modern Tibetan Studies, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Columbia University
Topic:
Diplomacy, Media, and Journalism
Political Geography:
Asia and Tibet