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32. In the Forest of the Blind: The Eurasian Journey of Faxian's Record of Buddhist Kingdoms
- Author:
- Matthew W. King and Gray Tuttle
- Publication Date:
- 04-2023
- Content Type:
- Video
- Institution:
- Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
- Abstract:
- Speaker's Bio: Matthew King is an Associate Professor of Buddhist Studies and Director of Asian Studies at the University of California, Riverside. He is also a visiting scholar at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute for 2022-2023. His research examines the social history of knowledge in Buddhist scholastic networks extending across the Tibeto-Mongolian frontiers of the late Qing empire and its revolutionary ruins. Much of his published work has focused on encounters between Buddhist scholasticism, science, humanism, and state socialism in the 19th and early 20th centuries. He is also broadly engaged with methodological revision in the study of religion and Buddhist Studies, and in revisionist theoretical projects associated with the critical Asian humanities. King's first book Ocean of Milk, Ocean of Blood: A Mongolian Monk in the Ruins of the Qing Empire (Columbia University Press, 2019), was awarded the American Academy of Religion Excellence in the Study of Religion: Textual Studies book award, the Central Eurasian Studies Society's 2020 Best Book in History and Humanities, and the International Convention of Asia Scholars Book Prize (Specialist Publication).
- Topic:
- Religion, History, and Buddhism
- Political Geography:
- Eurasia and Asia
33. Daring to Struggle: China's Global Ambitions Under Xi Jinping
- Author:
- Bates Gill and Elizabeth Wishnick
- Publication Date:
- 04-2023
- Content Type:
- Video
- Institution:
- Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
- Abstract:
- Daring to Struggle focuses on six increasingly important interests for today's China—legitimacy, sovereignty, wealth, power, leadership and ideas—and details how the determined pursuit of them at home and abroad profoundly shapes its foreign relationships, contributing to a more contested strategic environment in the Indo-Pacific region and beyond.
- Topic:
- Sovereignty, Leadership, Legitimacy, Xi Jinping, Strategic Interests, Power, and Wealth
- Political Geography:
- China and Asia
34. Photography and Tibet with Clare Harris
- Author:
- Clare Harris and Lauran Hartley
- Publication Date:
- 02-2023
- Content Type:
- Video
- Institution:
- Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
- Abstract:
- From the earliest attempts to capture Tibet with the camera in the mid-nineteenth century, photographs have been used to create visual narratives about the country and its people and to perform in politicised debates about them. Initially, outsiders from both East and West dominated the practice of enlisting photography to construct representations of Tibet ranging from the positive to the malign. However, by the early twentieth century, Tibetans themselves began to take up the camera and to deploy it in ways that deviate from those externally produced stereotypes. In this talk, Clare Harris, explores some of the modes in which photographs have been instrumentalised by insiders and outsiders and critically evaluates the history of Tibet photography. The talk will be an overview of some of the arguments presented in her book, ‘Photography and Tibet’, and illustrated with many of the rare images she has unearthed in archives and elsewhere over the course of more than twenty years of research on the subject.
- Topic:
- Politics, Aesthetics, Photography, and Agency
- Political Geography:
- Asia and Tibet
35. 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
36. Rejuvenating Communism: Youth Organizations and Elite Renewal in Post-Mao China
- Author:
- Jérôme Doyon and Andrew J. Nathan
- Publication Date:
- 03-2023
- Content Type:
- Video
- Institution:
- Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
- Abstract:
- Working for the administration remains one of the most coveted career paths for young Chinese. Rejuvenating Communism: Youth Organizations and Elite Renewal in Post-Mao China seeks to understand what motivates young and educated Chinese to commit to a long-term career in the party-state and how this question is central to the Chinese regime’s ability to maintain its cohesion and survive. Jérôme Doyon draws upon extensive fieldwork and statistical analysis in order to illuminate the undogmatic commitment recruitment techniques and other methods the state has taken to develop a diffuse allegiance to the party-state in the post-Mao era. He then analyzes recruitment and political professionalization in the Communist Party’s youth organizations and shows how experiences in the Chinese Communist Youth League transform recruits and feed their political commitment as they are gradually inducted into the world of officials. As the first in-depth study of the Communist Youth League’s role in recruitment, this book challenges the assumption that merit is the main criteria for advancement within the party-state, an argument with deep implications for understanding Chinese politics today.
- Topic:
- Communism, Politics, History, Youth, and Elites
- Political Geography:
- China and Asia
37. Teaching Tibetan Buddhism in the Western Academy with Jan Willis
- Author:
- Jan Willis
- Publication Date:
- 03-2023
- Content Type:
- Video
- Institution:
- Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
- Abstract:
- Through personal and practical anecdotes from her own life and teaching, Dr. Jan Willis describes in this talk how, over the course of fifty years, she both learned and taught Tibetan Buddhism in undergraduate academic settings in the West. Looking at the obstacles and challenges of teaching an “esoteric” religious tradition, the talk is as much about pedagogy as about Tibetan Buddhism.
- Topic:
- Religion, Pedagogy, Buddhism, and Tradition
- Political Geography:
- Asia and Tibet
38. Japan's New Security Strategy and the Changing Geopolitics in the Indo-Pacific
- Author:
- Sheila Smith and Gerald Curtis
- Publication Date:
- 03-2023
- Content Type:
- Video
- Institution:
- Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
- Abstract:
- Major changes that have occurred in the global political economy and in international politics in recent years have had a profound impact on nations all around the world. This is nowhere more evident than in the countries in the Indo-Pacific region and especially Japan. This conversation addresses Japan's evolving foreign policy and its impact in the Indo-Pacific.
- Topic:
- Security, Foreign Policy, Political Economy, Geopolitics, and Regional Politics
- Political Geography:
- Japan, Asia, and Indo-Pacific
39. History and Development of the Library of Congress Tibetan Collection with Susan Meinheit
- Author:
- Susan Meinheit
- Publication Date:
- 04-2023
- Content Type:
- Video
- Institution:
- Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
- Abstract:
- With a career spanning 47 years at the Library of Congress, Susan Meinheit has had a pioneering role in the development, management, and conservation of the Library of Congress' vast Tibetan collection, one of the largest in the world. From her first LC position as a library clerk, it was through her area and language expertise -- combined with sheer determination -- that she essentially carved out her role as steward and champion of LC's long-neglected early TIbetan holdings which were based on the collections of three major scholars of Tibet and southwest China and acquired by LC in the early 1900s. Meinheit will talk about the early history of the collection; the growth of the collection through the PL-480 Books program with India, and achievements in bringing wider visibility of the Tibetan holdings through major cataloging and digitization initiatives.
- Topic:
- History, Digitization, Library of Congress, and Archives
- Political Geography:
- Mongolia, Asia, and Tibet
40. Crossing Rivers by Yakhide-Boat and Horsehead-Ferry: Waterways in Pre-1959 Tibet with Diana Lange
- Author:
- Diane Lange
- Publication Date:
- 04-2023
- Content Type:
- Video
- Institution:
- Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
- Abstract:
- Professor Diana. Lange will speak on the significance of waterways for infrastructure, economy and socio-cultural life in pre-1959 Tibet. She focuses on ferry and transport services in the Tibetan corvée tax system, including the nature of taxation on a specific Tibetan village – the fishing village of Jun in Chushur County in Central Tibet. Her research is based on extensive fieldwork in this fishing village conducted during several trips to the area between 2003 and 2012. She also analyzes how fishermen in Southern and Central Tibet adapted to the geographical, ecological and cultural conditions of their environment.
- Topic:
- History, Infrastructure, Economy, and Rivers
- Political Geography:
- Asia and Tibet