Tibetan and Himalayan Religions Print

Call for Proposals

This Group promotes discussion among scholars using diverse approaches to the study of Tibetan and Himalayan religions. We solicit proposals for individual papers, papers sessions, or roundtables addressing all aspects of religion in Tibet and the wider Himalaya. We are particularly interested in the following topics:

  • The examination of self-immolation in Tibet

  • Interpolations, emendations, and corruptions of religious texts

  • Tibetan mythology

  • Writing Tibetan women and female lineages in Tibet

  • Discerning social history in Tibetan biographical literature

  • Animals in Tibetan religion

  • Sessions with a specific regional focus (Bhutan, Sikkim, etc.)

We welcome proposals for unconventional formats (especially those that would work well in a ninety-minute session), such as a book review panel or a focused discussion on a particular textual passage or ritual practice. We also encourage proposals that may be cosponsored with other Program Units.

Mission

This Group’s mission is to create an environment that promotes discussion among scholars taking diverse approaches to the study of Tibetan and Himalayan religions. Our identity and cohesion derive from the fact that we deal with a delimited geocultural space, but the intellectual excitement comes from the fact that we are specialists in different historical periods and cultural areas, from the fact that we are interested in different religious traditions, and from the fact that we have different methodological approaches to the study of religion. In particular, we encourage scholarship that approaches Tibetan and Himalayan religions through a wide range of approaches:

  • Multidisciplinary focus — we are committed to methodological diversity and to promoting scholarship that challenges the traditional disciplinary dichotomies through which the field has defined itself, such as text/practice, written/oral, philology/ethnography, and humanistic/social scientific study

  • Transregional focus — we encourage a holistic approach to the study of Tibet and the Himalaya as a region, albeit a diverse one. One of the most important features of religious traditions in our field — perhaps in every field — is the degree to which they are inextricably connected, and it is only through the exploration of such interconnections that the phenomenon of religion in the Tibeto-Himalayan region can be understood. Such interconnections often cut across ethnonational boundaries

  • Focus on cultural history — in the last decade, the study of Asian religions has taken a quite drastic cultural/historical turn. Nowhere is this more evident than in the study of Tibetan and Himalayan religions. A previous generation of scholars was concerned principally with elite religious institutions — and more specifically with their doctrinal/philosophical texts. Today scholarship is much more diverse. A new generation of scholars is concerned, for example, with folk religious practices, religion and material culture, the politics of religious institutions, the representation of Tibetan religions in the media, and the historical construction of the field itself

This Group is committed to fostering such a multifaceted approach to the cultural history of Tibet and the Himalayas.

Anonymity of Review Process

Proposer names are visible to Chairs but anonymous to Steering Committee members.

Questions?

Sarah Jacoby
Northwestern University
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Andrew Quintman
Yale University
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Method of Submission