Janet Gyatso

Last updated
Janet Gyatso
Born
Janet Frank

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
NationalityAmerican
Education University of California, Berkeley (BA, MA, PhD)
Occupation(s)Professor of Buddhist Studies, Associate Dean for Faculty and Academic Affairs
Years active1981- current
Employer Harvard Divinity School
Known forStudy of Buddhism and Tibetan and South Asian culture
Notable work (See § Works.)

Janet Gyatso is a Religious Studies scholar currently employed as the Hershey Professor of Buddhist Studies and the Associate Dean for Faculty and Academic Affairs at Harvard Divinity School. [1] She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Gyatso's research interests are in Buddhism and its relationship to Tibetan and South Asian civilizations. [1]

Contents

Education

Gyatso attended the University of California at Berkeley for her BA, MA and PhD. She received her PhD in 1981 in the department of South and Southeast Asian Languages and Literatures [at Berkeley,] with a dissertation on Thangtong Gyalpo and the visionary tradition of Tibetan Buddhism [2] [3] Prior to her PhD, she completed her Master of Arts in 1974 in Sanskrit, and her Bachelor of Arts in 1972 in Religious studies at Berkeley.

Career

Gyatso currently teaches at Harvard Divinity School and has taught with Harvard since 2001. [4] She is the first Hershey Professor of Buddhist Studies at Harvard's Divinity School and is the Associate Dean of Faculty and Academic Affairs. Prior to teaching at Harvard, Gyatso taught at Amherst College (between 1987 and 2001), the University of Michigan (Spring 1999) and Wesleyan University (1986–87; Spring 1988). [3]

From 2000 to 2006, Gyatso held the position of president of the International Association of Tibetan Studies. From 2004 to 2010, she was co-chair of the Buddhism Section of the American Academy of Religion. [1] She has also served as a Humanities jury member for the Infosys Prize from 2020. [5]

Research

Gyatso is known for her work on Tibet, primarily through text analysis and has focused on the twelfth to eighteenth centuries, examining the introduction of Buddhism to Tibet and its eventual status as mainstream in Tibet. Her first monograph explored the writing of autobiography in Tibet, and translated and analysed one of its most beautiful examples, the visionary journals of 'Jigs med gling pa (Apparitions of the Self, Princeton, 1998). Her more recent book, Being Human in a Buddhist World, studied the relationship between Buddhism and medicine in early modern Tibet. [6] Her work has been credited by Barbara Gerke as helping to develop our understanding of the relationship between science and religion in early modern Tibetan culture. [7]

Gyatso has also edited a book entitled Women in Tibet, a compilation of essays on the topic. [8] Gyatso and her fellow editor Hannah Havnevik put this book together to draw attention to the lack of research in the area of women in Tibet. [8] A previous edited collection by Gyatso was "In the Mirror of Memory" (State University of New York Press, 1992), a study of the types of memory theorized and used in Buddhist practice. Other topics of interest have been the reception of Indian poetic theory in Tibetan literature, the nature of experience in Buddhist thought and practice, Buddhist monasticism, and Buddhist conceptions of sex and gender, including the "third sex". She is currently working on animal ethics.

Works

Books

Articles

Awards and accolades

Related Research Articles

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References

  1. 1 2 3 "Janet Gyatso". hds.harvard.edu. Retrieved 2018-12-01.
  2. "Digital Dharma". digitaldharma.com. Retrieved 2018-12-10.
  3. 1 2 hwpi.harvard.edu http://hwpi.harvard.edu/files/hds/files/gyatso_cv_aug2011.pdf . Retrieved 2018-12-10.{{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  4. "Janet Gyatso | Harvard University - Academia.edu". harvard.academia.edu. Retrieved 2018-12-01.
  5. "Infosys Prize - Jury 2020". www.infosys-science-foundation.com. Retrieved 2020-12-09.
  6. Gyatso, Janet (2015). Being Human in a Buddhist World: An Intellectual History of Medicine in Early Modern Tibet. Columbia University Press. ISBN   978-0-231-53832-9.
  7. Barbara, Gerke (2016-05-27). Review of ' Being Human in a Buddhist World: An Intellectual History of Medicine in Early Modern Tibet' by Janet Gyatso. Himalaya, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies. OCLC   954619043.
  8. 1 2 Gyatso, Janet & Havnevik, Hanna (eds.) (2005). Women in Tibet. C. Hurst. ISBN   978-1850656531. OCLC   248178272.{{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  9. Samuel, Geoffrey (2016-08-01). "Janet Gyatso, Being Human in a Buddhist World: An Intellectual History of Medicine in Early Modern Tibet". Social History of Medicine. 29 (3): 634–636. doi:10.1093/shm/hkw024. ISSN   0951-631X.
  10. Salguero, C. Pierce (2016-03-30). "Being Human in a Buddhist World: An Intellectual History of Medicine in Early Modern Tibet by Janet Gyatso (review)". Bulletin of the History of Medicine. 90 (1): 150–152. doi:10.1353/bhm.2016.0007. ISSN   1086-3176. S2CID   76005620.
  11. Kværne, Per (2016-12-21). "Gyatso Janet, Being human in a Buddhist world. An intellectual history of medicine in early modern Tibet. New York, Columbia University Press, 2015, x + 519 pages, ISBN 978-0-231-16496-2". Études Mongoles et Sibériennes, Centrasiatiques et Tibétaines (47). doi: 10.4000/emscat.2843 . ISSN   0766-5075.
  12. Katharina Sabernig, "Janet Gyatso. Being Human in a Buddhist World: An Intellectual History of Medicine in Early Modern Tibet.," Isis 107, no. 1 (March 2016): 148-149.
  13. Geoffrey, Samuel (2000). "Reviewed Work: Apparitions of the Self: The Secret Autobiographies of a Tibetan Visionary by Janet Gyatso". Journal of the American Academy of Religion. 68 (3): 642–644. JSTOR   1465902.
  14. Willis, Janice D. (2000). "Reviewed Work: Apparitions of the Self: The Secret Autobiographies of a Tibetan Visionary by Janet Gyatso". History of Religions. 39 (4): 390–393. doi:10.1086/463608. JSTOR   3176552.
  15. Samuel, Geoffrey (2000). "Reviewed Work: Apparitions of the Self: The Secret Autobiographies of a Tibetan Visionary by Janet Gyatso". Journal of the American Academy of Religion. 68 (3): 642–644. doi:10.1093/jaarel/68.3.642. JSTOR   1465902.
  16. Lavine, Amy (1999). "Reviewed Work: Apparitions of the Self: The Secret Autobiographies of a Tibetan Visionary by Janet Gyatso". The Journal of Religion. 79 (3): 511–512. doi:10.1086/490491. JSTOR   1205529.
  17. Bartholomeusz, Tessa; Gyatso, Janet (1993). "In the Mirror of Memory: Reflections of Mindfulness and Remembrance in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism". The Journal of Asian Studies. 52 (4): 1053. doi:10.2307/2059409. ISSN   0021-9118. JSTOR   2059409. S2CID   165239619.
  18. Fox, Alan; Gyatso, Janet (1997). "In the Mirror of Memory: Reflections on Mindfulness and Remembrance in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism". Philosophy East and West. 47 (4): 616. doi:10.2307/1400312. ISSN   0031-8221. JSTOR   1400312.
  19. "Janet Gyatso Elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences". hds.harvard.edu. Archived from the original on 2019-01-27. Retrieved 2018-12-01.
  20. "Announcements - Buddhist Studies - University of California, Berkeley". buddhiststudies.berkeley.edu. Archived from the original on 2019-01-27. Retrieved 2018-12-01.