I am Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, specializing in the Buddhist traditions of Tibet and the Himalaya, in the Department of Religious Studies at Yale. My areas of teaching and research include Buddhist doctrinal literature and sacred biography, visual and ritual cultures of the wider Himalayan region, and the esoteric Buddhist traditions of Tantra in Tibet. I am also interested in the religious and literary histories of Tibet’s unique southern border communities.
My recent book project, The Yogin and the Madman: Reading the Biographical Corpus of Tibet’s Great Saint Milarepa (forthcoming, Columbia University Press), explores the extensive body of early literature recording the life of Tibet’s acclaimed eleventh-century yogin and poet Milarepa. In 2010 my new English translation of the Life of Milarepa was published by Penguin Classics. I am currently working on two new projects, one exploring Buddhist religious and literary culture in the borderlands of Tibet and Nepal, and the other examining the life of the Buddha through the visual and literary materials associated with Jonang Monastery in western Tibet.
I completed my undergraduate studies at Hampshire College and my graduate work at the University of Michigan. Prior to coming to Yale, I served for seven years as Academic Director of the School for International Training’s Tibetan Studies program based in Kathmandu. Between 2001-2007 I also led a summer program for Tibetan Studies in Tibet offered through the University of Michigan. From 2006-2009 I joined Princeton University’s Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts, where I held the Cotsen-Mellon Fellowship in the History of the Book. I currently serve as the Co-Chair of the Tibetan and Himalayan Religions Group of the American Academy of Religion, and I co-lead a five-year seminar at the AAR on Religion and the Literary in Tibet. I am also Faculty Coordinator for the new Yale Himalaya Initiative.
I am on sabbatical during the 2011-2012 academic year.
