Local History in Tibet
Instructor: Gray Tuttle
Email: gwt2102@columbia.edu
Office: 913 IAB (WEAI); Office hours: Tuesday 1-2pm; Phone: 212-854-4096
Media lab section: Tuesday 2-3pm in Studio@Butler
Course overview: Tibetan culture covers an area roughly the size of Western Europe, yet most regions have not been the subject of sustained historical study. This course is designed for students interested in studying approaches to local history that attempt to ask large questions of relatively small places. Historiographic works from Tibetan studies (where they exist) will be examined in comparison with approaches drawn mainly from European and Chinese studies, as well as theories drawn from North/South American and Southeast Asian contexts. Given the centrality of Buddhist monasteries to Tibetan history (as “urban” centers, banks, governments, educational institutions, etc.) much of the course will deal with these.
Evaluation based on: Percentage of Final Grade
1) Participation (on-line, in lab, and in class) 30%
(weekly response papers, due 5pm Wednesday; to be posted on Courseworks)
2) Contributions to media lab mapping of the Tibetan plateau 30%
possible projects include:
a) Polity entry—1000 word entry, mapped location (center, key sites, bounds)
b) Monastery entry—500 word entry, mapped location & networks
c) Kinship/community entry—300 word entry, mapped locations/distribution
3) Final Paper/media project 40%
a) abstract and bibliography due in lieu of mid-term
b) final paper (15-20 pages for BA; 25-30 for grad students)/media project
Required books:
• Harrison, Henrietta. 2005. The man awakened from dreams: one man’s life in a north China village, 1857-1942. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press.
• Hämäläinen, Pekka. 2008. The Comanche Empire. New Haven: Yale University Press.
• Lipman, Jonathan Neaman. 1997. Familiar strangers: a history of Muslims in Northwest China. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
• Mignolo, Walter. 2000. Local histories/global designs: coloniality, subaltern knowledges, and border thinking. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
• Nietupski, Paul Kocot. 2011. Labrang Monastery: a Tibetan Buddhist community on the inner Asian borderlands, 1709-1958. Lanham, Md: Lexington Books.
• Ortner, Sherry B. 1989. High religion: a cultural and political history of Sherpa Buddhism. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
• Yudru Tsomu. 2014. The rise of Gönpo Namgyel in Kham: the blind warrior of Nyarong. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2014.
General Expectations:
As participation is such a key component of the class, attendance at all classes is expected.
Your written work for the class should be entirely your own (see, guidelines for academic integrity) with careful citation of all sources according to an accepted Manual of Style (Chicago, MLA).
Disability Support
Students with disabilities who will be taking this course and may need disability-related classroom accommodations are encouraged to see the instructors as soon as possible. Also, stop by the Office of Disability Services to register for support services.
Week 1: Introduction to the course
Week 2: Themes and Theories: The local, regional, and border thinking
• Mignolo, Walter. 2000. Local histories/global designs: coloniality, subaltern knowledges, and border thinking. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Preface, 1-126, Afterword.
• Sara Shneiderman. “Are the Central Himalayas in Zomia? Some scholarly and political considerations across time and space,” Journal of Global History (2010) 5, pp. 289–312
Week 3: The Local in Relation to the Wider World: Mapping
• Fernand Braudel, “Divisions of Space and Time in Europe” in Fernand Braudel, and Siân Reynolds. 1992. Civilization and capitalism, 15th – 18th century. Vol. 3, Vol. 3. Berkeley: University of California Press. Pp. 21-44.
• Gray Tuttle. “Challenging Central Tibet’s Dominance of History: The Oceanic Book, a Nineteenth Century Politico-religious Geographic History.” The Rise of the Modern in Tibet. Gray Tuttle, ed. Proceedings of the Eleventh Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies. Königswinter, Germany 2006. Andiast, Switzerland: International Institute for Tibetan and Buddhist Studies GmbH, 2011, pp. 135-172.
• Hostetler, Laura. 2001. Qing colonial enterprise: ethnography and cartography in early modern China. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Pp. 1-80.
• Leibold, James, “Un-Mapping Republican China’s Tibetan Frontier: Politics Warlordism and Ethnicity along the Kham/Xikang Borderland.” Chinese Historical Review 12:2.
Week 4: Local History through Biography
• Harrison, Henrietta. 2005. The man awakened from dreams one man’s life in a north China village, 1857-1942. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press.
• Schaeffer, Kurtis R. 2004. Himalayan hermitess the life of a Tibetan Buddhist nun. New York: Oxford University Press. Pp. 1-44.
• Holmes-Tagchungdarpa, Amy. 2014. The social life of Tibetan biography: textuality, community, and authority in the lineage of Tokden Shakya Shri. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2014. Pp. 15-41.
Week 5: Local History through Irrigation Regimes
• Schoppa, R. Keith. 2002. Song full of tears: nine centuries of Chinese life at Xiang Lake. Boulder, Colo: Westview Press. Pp. 1-82, 143-163.
• Sørensen, Per K., Guntram Hazod, Ṅag-dbaṅ-bstan-ʼdzin-ʼphrin-las, and Tshal-pa Kun-dgaʼ-rdo-rje. 2007. Rulers on the celestial plain: ecclesiastic and secular hegemony in medieval Tibet: a study of Tshal Gung-thang. Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. For Vol 1, read the intro pp. 7-70, skim the translation to get a sense of the text; for vol 2, read appendix 2: pp. 401-550.
Week 6: Local History through Kinship
• Lipman, Jonathan Neaman. 1997. Familiar strangers: a history of Muslims in Northwest China. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Chs 1-4, pp 1-166.
• Bloch, Marc Léopold Benjamin. French Rural History: An Essay on Its Basic Characteristics. Berkeley: UCal, 1966. Ch5: “Social Groupings.”
• Sneath, David. 2007. The headless state aristocratic orders, kinship society, & misrepresentations of nomadic inner Asia. New York: Columbia University Press. Pp. 1-16; 39-67
• For a Tibetan example of this, optional reading: Tsering Gyalbo, Guntram Hazod & Per K. Sørensen, Civilization at the Foot of Mount Shampo: The Royal House of lHa Bug-pa-can and the History of g.Ya’-bzang, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften & Tibetan Academy of Social Sciences (Wien 2000), Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, philosophisch-historische Klasse Denkschriften, 290. Band; Beiträge zur Kultur- und Geistesgeschichte Asiens, Nr. 36. From Dan Martin review: “This book attempts, with admirable success, to link the local developments at the foot of Mt. Shampo with the historical conditions of Tibet as a whole from the 12th through 15th centuries.” For Dan Martin’s full review see: https://sites.google.com/site/tibetological/civilization
Week 7: Local becoming Regional and Imperial
• Yudru Tsomu. 2014. The rise of Gönpo Namgyel in Kham: the blind warrior of Nyarong. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2014. Entire book.
• Fabienne Jagou, “In Search of the Tibetan Translators within the Manchu Empire: An Attempt to Go from the Global to the Local,” IN Charles Ramble, Peter Schwieger, and Alice Travers. 2013. Tibetans who escaped the historian’s net: studies in the social history of Tibetan societies. Kathmandu, Nepal: Vajra Books. Pp. 41-52.
Week 8: “Local” Empires in Regional Contexts
• Borjigidai, Uyunbilig. “The Hoshuud Polity in Khökhnuur (Kokonor),” Inner Asia, 4 (2002): 181‐196.
• Hämäläinen, Pekka. 2008. The Comanche Empire. New Haven: Yale University Press. Intro &Ch 1-3: pp 1-140; Conclusion: 342-361.
Week 9: The Monastery as Institution (Civil and Educational)
• Humphrey, Caroline, and Ujeed Hürelbaatar. 2013. A monastery in time: the making of Mongolian Buddhism. Chapter 2: 65-90, all of Chapters 3-4.
• Le Goff, Jacques, and Edmund King (trans). The Town as an Agent of Civilisation, C. 1200-c. 1500. Vol. 1. Collins, 1971, selections. Read to illuminate the role of large monasteries in Tibetan Buddhists contexts.
• Le Goff, Jacques. 1980. “How did the Medieval University Conceive of Itself” 122-134 & “The Universities and the Public Authorities in the Middle Ages and Renaissance” 135-149, in Time, work & culture in the Middle Ages. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Additional resources:
• For a Tibetan case study, skim: Jackson, David Paul, and Nam-mkhaʼ-dpal-bzaṅ. 1989. The early abbots of ʼPhan-po Na-lendra: the vicissitudes of a great Tibetan monastery in the 15th century. Wien: Arbeitskreis für Tibetische und Buddhistische Studien, Universität Wien.
• For the Muslim comparison, refer to: Makdisi, George. 1981. The rise of colleges: institutions of learning in Islam and the West. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Middle Eastern Comparison.
Week 10: The Monastery in Social Context
• Ortner, Sherry B. 1989. High religion: a cultural and political history of Sherpa Buddhism. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
• Ellingson, Ter. “Tibetan Monastic Constitutions: the bca’-yig.” Reflections on Tibetan Culture: Essays in Memory of Turrell V. Wylie Lewiston, N.Y., USA : E. Mellen Press, (1990), pp 205-230.
Week 11: The Monastery as Polity/ Political Tool
• Nietupski, Paul Kocot. 2011. Labrang Monastery: a Tibetan Buddhist community on the inner Asian borderlands, 1709-1958. Lanham, Md: Lexington Books.
• Berthe Jansen, “How to Tame a Wild Monastic Elephant: Drepung Monastery According to the Great Fifth.” IN Charles Ramble, Peter Schwieger, and Alice Travers. 2013. Tibetans who escaped the historian’s net: studies in the social history of Tibetan societies. Kathmandu, Nepal: Vajra Books. Pp. 111-140.
• Wellens, Koen. 2010. Religious revival in the Tibetan borderlands the Premi of southwest China. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Pp. 24-62.
Week 12: The Monastery and Its Sponsors
• Brook, Timothy. 1993. Praying for power: Buddhism and the formation of gentry society in late-Ming China. Cambridge, Mass: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University and Harvard-Yenching Institute. Introduction, Part 2 (chapters 4-6), Chapter 9 & Conclusion.
• Astrid Hovden, “Who Were the Sponsors? Reflections on Recruitment and Ritual Economy in Three Himalayan Village Monasteries,” IN Charles Ramble, Peter Schwieger, and Alice Travers. 2013. Tibetans who escaped the historian’s net: studies in the social history of Tibetan societies. Kathmandu, Nepal: Vajra Books. Pp. 209-230.
• Weiwei Luo. “Land, Lineage and the Laity: Transactions of a Qing Monastery.” Late Imperial China, Volume 36, Number 1, June 2015, pp. 88-123.
Week 13: The Monastery in Local and Larger Networks
• Gray Tuttle. “Building up the Dge lugs pa Base in A mdo: The Roles of Lhasa, Beijing and Local Agency,” Zangxue xuekan 藏学学刊/ Journal of Tibetology. 7 (2012).
• Mills, Martin A. 2003. Identity, ritual and state in Tibetan Buddhism: the foundations of authority in Gelukpa monasticism. London: RoutledgeCurzon. Ch2-3: 27-80; Ch6-8: 145-232.
Week 14: Local History as Environmental History
• Hayes, Jack Patrick. 2014. A change in worlds on the Sino-Tibetan borderlands: politics, economies, and environments in northern Sichuan. Lanham: Lexington Books. Introduction, Chs 1-2 (pp. 1-89)
• Elvin, Mark. 2004. The retreat of the elephants an environmental history of China. New Haven: Yale University Press. pp. xvii-xxv, Ch 3, pp. 58-70, pp 78-85
• Ryavec, Karl. A Historical Atlas of Tibet. Chicago: UChicago Press. pp. 34-37 and 170-177.
• Optional: Elverskog, Johan. “The Buddha’s Footprint.” Tricycle (New York, N.Y.) 24.3 01 (Mar 2015): pp. 68-71, 109-110.