2025-2026 Courses

Spring 2026

RELI 2205UN "Buddhism: Indo-Tibetan"

Faculty: Dominique Townsend

Buddhist teachings came to Tibet relatively late in the history of Buddhism’s travels through Asia. Tibetan emperors adopted Buddhism from India around the eighth century, which sounds like a long time ago now, but by that time Buddhism was already well established in parts of South, Southeast, Central, and East Asia. In addition to being known as a tradition of renunciants and forest dwelling philosophers, Buddhism was associated with cosmopolitanism—literacy, the arts, architecture, higher education and beyond. Tibetan rulers, like so many rulers before them, turned to Buddhism after amassing power through warfare and violence, and they became interested in Buddhism’s methods for cultivating wisdom and compassion as antidotes to ignorance and selfishness. They were also curious about whether Buddhism could help justify and support their claims to power. Because Buddhism was already a complex system, Tibetans were able to uniquely integrate all three of the major traditions of Theravada, Mahayana, and Vajrayana Buddhism. Thanks to the hard work of Tibetan and Indian translators and artists with imperial support, monks and nuns followed the rules of the earliest disciples of Buddha, philosophers pored over Indian Buddhist treatises, and ritualists fine-tuned the tantric, esoteric, intensive path to liberation from dissatisfaction and suffering. The new expressions of Buddhism that emerged in Tibet have shaped religion, education, literary production, the arts, and language across a massive and diverse swath of Asia, from northern India to Nepal, Bhutan, Mongolia, and areas of Western China. More recently, Tibetan Buddhism has spread across the globe. In this course, by analyzing primary textual sources in translation as well as visual and material culture, we will investigate the history and practice of Tibetan Buddhism in all its complexity, from its earliest origins to the present. There are no prerequisites for this introductory lecture

HSEA 6100GR “Ruling Inner Asia from Beijing: Lamas and Emperors”
Faculty: Gray Tuttle

HSEA GU4725: Tibetan Art and Material Culture
Faculty: Elena Pakhoutova
The course introduces how Tibetan art and material culture express the religious beliefs and reflect the movement of artists, art, its forms and methods, as well as the patronage of rulers, religious teachers, and lay people continuing to the present day.

Using an object- or site-centered interdisciplinary approach and resources of the newly developed Project Himalayan Art digital platform, students will learn about modes of visual representation, the relationship between text and image, the social lives of objects and images, the processes of “reading” an object and interpretation. In this course situated at the intersection of Tibetan studies’ students will develop skills applicable across disciplines within a broader context of Asian Studies, relevant to contemporary times.

RELI 4223GU: Dreams
Faculty: Dominique Townsend
This seminar for advanced undergraduates and graduate students investigates the significance of dreams in multiple cultural and historical contexts with a focus on Tibetan Buddhism. Dreams and dreaming are vital aspects of Tibetan Buddhist meditative practice, visionary experience, poetry, narratives, as well as visual arts. Students in the seminar will explore a range of materials that 1) guide Buddhist practitioners to cultivate certain types of dreams, and 2) narrate dream experiences that the dreamer has deemed worth recording, and 3) situate Tibetan Buddhist examples in broader contexts of religious and psychological perspectives, with an emphasis on Freud and Jung’s treatment of dreams. According to Buddhist sources, a dream might be significant because the dreamer understands it to be revelatory, foretelling the future, or it might be recorded simply because the dreamer finds the dream in some way compelling, troubling, or funny. In life writing, dreams often highlight crucial moments in the writer’s life experience. Just as psychoanalysts make use of dreams to engage with analysands, Tibetan medical texts instruct doctors to pay close attention to patients’ dreams in the process of diagnosis. Tibetan ritual texts guide meditators in techniques for lucid dreaming. Visionary dreams are recorded in great aesthetic detail. Narratives of dreams and dreamscapes are an important part of biographies and life writing in general. We will also consider European and American treatments of dreams and lucid dreaming, including psychoanalytic, philosophical approaches to dreaming. A significant element of the course is a daily dream journal.

EAAS GU4565: TIBETAN RIVERS & ROADS: Infrastructure, Environment & Urban Lives
Faculty: Lauran Hartley
This course examines the transformation of natural environments, rural and urban landscapes on the Tibetan Plateau in the 20th and 21st centuries, with a special emphasis on the material and social lives of rivers, roads and infrastructure. We will draw on primary source readings (in English) and maps, as well as secondary readings in anthropology and human geography, to examine the processes of infrastructure creation, national integration, urbanization and adaptation in the Tibetan regions of China.

TIBT UN2603: First Year Modern Colloquial Tibetan II
Faculty: Sonam Tsering
This is an introductory course and no previous knowledge is required. It focuses on developing basic abilities to speak as well as to read and write in modern Tibetan, Lhasa dialect. Students are also introduced to modern Tibetan studies through selected readings and guest lectures.

TIBT UN1600: Second Year Modern Colloquial Tibetan II
Faculty: Sonam Tsering
Completion of UN1600: First Year Modern Colloquial Tibetan or the equivalent required.

TIBT UN1410: First Year Classical Tibetan II
Faculty: Sonam Tsering Ngulphu
This course is designed to meet the needs of both first-time learners of Tibetan, as well as students with one year or less of modern colloquial Tibetan. It is intended to lay the foundation for reading classical Tibetan writings, including religious, historical, and literary texts. By focusing on basic grammatical constructions and frequently used vocabulary, this class offers an introduction to the classical Tibetan language.

TIBT UN3611: Third Year Modern Colloquial Tibetan II
Faculty: Sonam Tsering
For those whose knowledge is equivalent to a student who’s completed the Second Year course. The course develops students’ reading comprehension skills through reading selected modern Tibetan literature. Tibetan is used as the medium of instruction and interaction to develop oral fluency and proficiency.

TIBT UN2710: Advanced Literary Tibetan II
Faculty: Sonam Tsering Ngulphu
This course focuses on helping students gain greater proficiency in reading Tibetan Buddhist philosophical and religious historical texts. Readings are selected primarily from Tibetan Buddhist philosophical texts (sutras) such as shes rab snying po, thu’u bkan grub mtha’ and other Tibetan canonical texts.

TIBT UN2412: Second Year Classical Tibetan II
Faculty: Sonam Tsering Ngulphu
This is the second year in the Classical Tibetan language progression. Students will work with faculty to read classical Tibetan texts from various genres and learn to read a variety of classical Tibetan scripts and seals. Prior completion of UN1410: First Year Classical Tibetan or the equivalent required.

Fall 2025

ASCE UN1365: INTRODUCTION TO EAST ASIAN CIVILIZATIONS: TIBET
Faculty: Lauran Hartley
UNDERGRADUATE ONLY.
This course seeks to introduce the sweep of Tibetan civilization and its history from its earliest recorded origins to the present. The course examines what civilizational forces shaped Tibet, especially the contributions of Indian Buddhism, sciences and literature, but also Chinese statecraft and sciences. Alongside the chronological history of Tibet, we will explore aspects of social life and culture.

RELIG Tibetan Buddhist Aesthetics

Faculty: Dominique Townsend

What does beauty have to do with Buddhism? And what is the role of the senses and the objects of the senses in Buddhist practice? In this course students engage with images, objects, texts, sounds, feelings, and tastes to understand the significance of aesthetics in Tibetan Buddhism. Beyond treating aesthetics as the philosophy of art and beauty, students will consider the profound and variegated role of the senses and their objects in Buddhist experience. When are the senses limiting and when are they liberating? When are artworks objects of attachment for practitioners, and when are they supports for practice? Most fundamentally, together we will investigate how aesthetics can be ethically coded—for example, by asking why beauty is so often associated with virtue. This multidisciplinary seminar is designed for graduate students and is also open to advanced undergraduates with instructor’s approval.

EALAC GU4616: Climate Change: The Tibetan Plateau as a Case Study

Instructor: Tashi Dekyid Monet

This course examines the intricate interplay between climate change, human activities, and environmental policies on the vulnerable Tibetan Plateau, the source of rivers for 3 billion people downstream. Topics to be covered include ecology, historical climate shifts, glacial retreat, water resource management, rangeland degradation and restoration, socioeconomic impacts, climate adaptation, and urbanization. With a multidisciplinary approach, and through lectures, discussions and guest speakers, students will gain a holistic understanding of this critical issue and learn skills to interpret and synthesize scientific research into a broader humanities context.

RELIG GR6101 THEORY & METHOD-STUDY OF RELIG 

Faculty: Dominique Townsend

“Theories and Methods” courses in any field are commonly unwieldy beasts. They cannot but be a compromise-formation between contemporary questions and texts, ideas, and definitions (alongside a whole lot of problems) that we have inherited as “canonical” in a field. In the best case, such a course is a passageway into deeper engagement with a field, its histories, its complexities, and its possibilities from which we might wrest and build viable futures. Disciplinary fields are structures where power and knowledge are produced and reproduced. The study of religion is no exception. The questions of “how is ‘religion’ constructed as a category here?” and “what work does the designation of something or someone as ‘religious’ do?” will, therefore, accompany us throughout our work over the course of this semester. We will also examine how different methodological commitments shape what objects of study and which questions come to the fore for the study of religion. This course will explore how the study of religion is not reducible to the study of traditions and communities that are readily recognized as “religious.” However, the vexed histories of the construction of “religion” as a category of knowledge production does also not negate that there are large, varied, and flourishing communities of practice beyond the university for whom whether or not “religion” exists is not at all a question. Holding these layers of complexity in play, this course seeks to introduce students exemplarily to key texts and concepts that have shaped the study of religion as we encounter it today as an academic discipline.

TIBT UN1600: First Year Modern Colloquial Tibetan I

Faculty: Sonam Tsering 

This is an introductory course and no previous knowledge is required. It focuses on developing basic abilities to speak as well as to read and write in modern Tibetan, Lhasa dialect. Students are also introduced to modern Tibetan studies through selected readings and guest lectures.

TIBT UN2603: Second Yr Modern Colloquial Tibetan I

Faculty: Sonam Tsering 

Completion of UN 1600: First Year Modern Colloquial Tibetan or the equivalent required.

TIBT UN3611: Third Year Modern Colloquial Tibetan I

Faculty: Sonam Tsering 

For those whose knowledge is equivalent to a student who’s completed the Second Year course. The course develops students’ reading comprehension skills through reading selected modern Tibetan literature. Tibetan is used as the medium of instruction and interaction to develop oral fluency and proficiency.

TIBT UN1410: First Year Classical Tibetan I

Faculty: Sonam Tsering Ngulphu

This course is designed to meet the needs of both first-time learners of Tibetan, as well as students with one year or less of modern colloquial Tibetan. It is intended to lay the foundation for reading classical Tibetan writings, including religious, historical, and literary texts. By focusing on basic grammatical constructions and frequently used vocabulary, this class offers an introduction to the classical Tibetan language.

TIBT UN2412: Second Year Classical Tibetan I

Faculty: Sonam Tsering Ngulphu

This is the second year in the Classical Tibetan language progression. Students will work with faculty to read classical Tibetan texts from various genres and learn to read a variety of classical Tibetan scripts and seals. Prior completion of UN1410: First Year Classical Tibetan or the equivalent required.

TIBT UN2710: Advanced Literary Tibetan

Faculty: Sonam Tsering Ngulphu

This course focuses on helping students gain greater proficiency in reading Tibetan Buddhist philosophical and religious historical texts. Readings are selected primarily from Tibetan Buddhist philosophical texts (sutras) such as shes rab snying po, thu’u bkan grub mtha’ and other Tibetan canonical texts.