Sarah Jacoby, "Women and Wit in Tibetan Buddhist Literature" (7th Annual Aris Lecture)

Abstract Sera Khandro Dewé DorjéThis talk will consider women’s writing in Tibet, centering on one of the most prolific female writers in Tibetan history, Sera Khandro Dewé Dorjé (1892-1940). Writing in the decades prior to the massive social and political turmoil of Tibet’s incorporation into the People’s Republic of China, Sera Khandro’s works preserve sound bites of a distinctive Tibetan cultural and religious world. We will get a feeling for this world through listening to some key passages from Sera Khandro’s autobiography (c. 1934) in which she silences her interlocutors with her wit. Sera Khandro’s verbal prowess not only demonstrates her spiritual insight and eloquence, but also sheds nuanced light on issues relating to female agency, Buddhist misogyny, and sexual violence. Her works can instruct us about Tibetan Buddhist social history as much as they speak directly and artfully about contemporary concerns, that is if we can catch her wit in the first place, and then avoid losing it in the act of translation. About the Speaker Sarah Jacoby is an associate professor in the Religious Studies Department at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, USA. She specializes in Tibetan Buddhist studies, with research interests in Buddhist revelation (gter ma), religious auto/biography, Tibetan literature, gender and sexuality, the history of emotions, and the history of eastern Tibet. She is the author of Love and Liberation: Autobiographical Writings of the Tibetan Buddhist Visionary Sera Khandro (Columbia University Press, 2014) and co-editor of Buddhism Beyond the Monastery: Tantric Practices and their Performers in Tibet and the Himalayas (Brill, 2009). She has recently published articles on motherhood in Tibetan Buddhism and is currently working on a full Tibetan-English translation of Sera Khandro’s autobiography.