Tenzin Dongchung is a second year PhD student in the East Asian Languages and Cultures Department (EALAC) and a recipient of the Sasakawa Young Leaders Fellowship Foundation (SYLFF) summer grant through the Weatherhead East Asian Institute (WEAI). Her research explores the Tibetan Buddhist material culture history through the spread of printing houses during the Qing dynasty. During the 2018-2019 academic year, she was president of the Rikpé Khorlo Modern Tibetan Studies graduate student group, known as Khorlo.
My undergraduate background was in Modern Chinese history and language. I was lucky to have met Professor Pat Giersch at Wellesley College, whose own interest in borderlands and Inner Asian history has shaped my understanding of the field. In my senior year, I took an independent study class with him where one of the books we read was Professor Gray Tuttle’s Tibetan Buddhists in The Making of Modern China. It showed me the possibilities of researching Sino-Tibetan history using both Tibetan and Chinese language sources. I took two years off after graduation, one of which I spent on a traveling fellowship looking at history and language curricula of the Welsh in United Kingdom, Arab Christians in Israel, the Japanese descendants in Peru, and Afrikaans in South Africa. I chose to come to Columbia because it fulfilled my goal of a graduate program where I can continue studying Chinese history while also developing my training in Tibetan history.
As a graduate student in the East Asia-History program, we are encouraged to take many courses outside of one’s own regional field. While I came to Columbia knowing that I would focus on Sino-Tibetan history with Professor Tuttle, taking classes with Professor Dorothy Ko and Professor Pamela Smith spurred my interest in material culture and artisanal history. My current research interest in the material culture history of Tibetan Buddhism under the Qing dynasty is a culmination of the many classes I have taken thus far. For my dissertation, I am studying the Inner-Asian Buddhist printing network by focusing on the institutional development of monastic printing houses on the Sino-Tibetan borderland in the 18th and 19th century. By focusing on the monasteries and the Qing court, I aim to understand the role of these institutions in gathering material resources, recruiting artisans and circulating the printed texts.
Apart from the wide variety of classes offered here, we also have Dr. Lauran Hartley as one of the university research librarians who specializes in Tibetan studies. The acquisition of materials on Tibetan history and literature in multiple languages at the East Asian Library is one of the other core strengths of the program. It is heartening to go into the library and see how prolific the Tibetan language book publishing industry is. Lastly, the Modern Tibetan Studies Program organizes many guest lectures and workshops from scholars in China, Europe and other parts of the US which alerts to new research topics and sources.
When I first came to Columbia to do my MA, Khorlo already existed as the Tibetan studies graduate student group and I joined the group so that I could get to know other members better and learn more about their research topics. Khorlo organizes both social and academic events, some of which are open to the public and some of which are closed-door workshops. For lectures, we invite a speaker to share their research with the larger student body. For workshops, we would circulate a student’s paper and later meet to discuss it in more detail. More generally, if we are looking for a certain source, or just want to share news about articles or books, we actively use our online group to reach out to each other. Over the past year, Khorlo has worked in conjunction with the other area studies groups under EALAC and tried to streamline some of the activities that would be beneficial to everyone in our department. For instance, we jointly ran two workshops; one for new TAs and another one to edit PhD applications of our MA students. All of this has helped to create a lively student body who are supportive of each other.
From 2015 to 2018, I worked at the C.V. Starr library under Dr. Hartley. Apart from cataloging new books, I had the wonderful opportunity to assist Dr. Hartley in creating finding aids for Tibetan Studies archival materials and recording metadata for rare materials processing, including materials objects and original documents. I saw firsthand the effort that goes into not only acquiring new materials but also presenting catalogs in ways that are most accessible to researchers. This experience showed me the tremendous and sometimes underutilized resources of Columbia’s collections and I came away with a new appreciation for all the amazing work that librarians do.
the High Peaks Pure Earth blog during the Spring 2019 term.
The Weatherhead East Asian Institute has provided critical infrastructure in making our graduate experience more fulfilling and enriching. Every summer, we are eligible to apply for grants that we need for our research purpose. After the first year of my PhD, I used the WEAI grant to take a summer course at the University of Virginia’s Rare Book School program. This year, I will be using the WEAI grant to conduct further archival research at the American Museum of Natural History.
During the academic year, the Institute also provides the necessary funding for Khorlo so that we can cover logistical costs to run events. Many of the lectures that foreign scholars give at Columbia or East Asian conferences are coorganized or hosted at WEAI. I see the Institute as an integral part of my graduate school experience at Columbia.
This article originally appeared in the June issue of the WEAI 70 Years newsletter.
