The MacMillan Center | News Release

Religions and Arts of The Himalaya at Yale

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The Department of Religious Studies at Yale is the beneficiary of a grant from the Shelley and Donald Rubin Foundation that aims at fostering undergraduate interest in the religions and arts of the Himalayan region. Relevant courses offered at the department in Fall �08 included classes on Tibetan religion, esoteric Buddhism and the deity Siva-Mahakala in India. A course on Indian ritual to be offered in Spring �09 will comprise a section on Tibetan Buddhist ritual. Visiting scholars have, in the past, given lectures in these courses. Yale has outstanding resources for the study of the Himalaya, including a collection of rare Tibetan books and Sanskrit manuscripts from Nepal. The department continues to develop new courses and teaching materials for the study of the Himalayan region, and is conducting a search for a junior faculty position on the Himalayan/Tibetan region. Students also have the opportunity to avail themselves of a number of associated extra-curricular activities. Interested students enrolled in the three fall-term classes spent a weekend at a Tibetan monastery in upstate New York. They also made a fieldtrip to the Rubin Museum of Art in New York to see an exhibition on Bhutanese Art. These fieldtrips will continue this semester with further visits to the Rubin Museum planned for the spring. In addition, through the grant two students have received some financial support to visit Nepal over Spring Break �09 to volunteer at an orphanage and visit monasteries and temples there.

Support from the Shelley and Donald Rubin Foundation grant as well as other sources, including the Hixon Fund, enabled the department to organize a number of lectures and workshops in the academic year 2007-08. Presentations on Buddhism included Dzogsar Khyentse Rinpoche�s public lecture on �Projecting the Dharma: Film and Transmission of Buddhism to the West� and a one day workshop on Esoteric Buddhism, texts and art, organized by Koichi Shinohara. A series of lectures on Tibetan Buddhism and the contemporary arts was kicked off by Globalization and Sacred Art: An Autobiographical Fragment, a presentation by Douglas Penick, author of the libretto for Liberation, an opera based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Other presentations in the series comprised �Dakini Poetics�, Ann Waldman�s poetry reading and discussion on Buddhism and her poetry, and Robert Spellman, Joan Anderson and Douglas Penick�s lecture on Tibetan Buddhism and contemporary painting; video of a performance piece done by Joan and Douglas. Further presentations on Tibet included a one-day colloquium on the Tibetan Book of the Dead with Donald Lopez, Daniel Kane and Pericles Lewis; Jeff Cupchick�s talk on �Visualizing Music: interpreting performance in the Tibetan Chod Ritual Practice of Machik Labdron�; and two lectures by Christian Luczanits entitled �On the Earliest Mandalas in a Buddhist Context� and �Towards Tibetan Art: A Survey of Early Kagyu Art�. Scholars working on areas ranging from Kashmir to Himachal Pradesh to Nepal also presented their work during the course of the academic year: Rafaelle Torella from La Sapienza, Roma, delivered a public lecture on �Medieval Kashmir Philosophy�; Daniela Berti, a visiting scholar at Yale, spoke to students and faculty on �Political Ideology and Divine Biographies: The Impact of Hindu Nationalism on a Local Pantheon in Himachal Pradesh� and on �Judicial Proceedings and Village Solidarity in a District Court in North India�; and Frank Bernede gave a talk on �Musical Strategies in the context of Ritual Healing Performance in Nepal�.

The lecture series continued into the current academic year 2008-09 with fall-term lectures by Chiaria Letizia from the University of Milan on Contemporary Theravada Buddhism in Nepal, and Hans Bakker from the University of Gronigen on Early Pasupata Saivism. A talk by Professor Robert Barnett from Columbia University on Buddhism in the films of Tibet and Mongolia will be the first in the spring-term series of lectures on Himalayan religions and art. It will take place on January 28th.

In addition to the lectures, the frant from the Shelley and Donald Rubin Foundation also made possible a number of film screenings (and discussions with filmmakers) and musical performances throughout the academic year 2008-09. The films were The Cup, a film by Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche, and Buddhist Orientation in Nepal as a Life Cycle Ritual, a film directed by Alexander Von Rospott from the University of California at Berkeley A music workshop with a visiting group of Tibetan monks preceded a concert by them. These screenings and performances have continued into the current academic year, with the department co-sponsoring an event on Tibetan music at Stiles in the fall semester.

Support from the Shelley and Donald Rubin Foundation, the South Asia Council as well as other sources within Yale, has thus permitted the Department of Religious to devote considerable resources to creating and fostering undergraduate interest in the religions and arts of the Himalaya. In addition to the sustained effort to develop new courses and enhance teaching resources, the organization of associated fieldtrips, lectures, film screenings and music performances has created a challenging and stimulating environment for the study of the region.