2017

Nicole Willock

  • Assistant Professor
  • Old Dominion University
Picture of Nicole Willock

Project

Lineages of the Literary: Tibetan Buddhist Scholars Making Modern China

Program

The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Research Fellowships in Buddhist Studies

Department

Philosophy and Religious Studies

Abstract

This book project is the first in-depth study in any language on three of the most prolific Tibetan Buddhist scholars of 20th century China. My research aims to better understand how religious subjects exercise moral agency in modern China. Based on my original translations of select texts by “the Three Great Scholars”—Tseten Zhabdrung (1910-1985), Dungkar Losang Trinle (1927-1997), and Muge Samten (1914-1993), I narrate untold stories that celebrate, adapt, teach, and safeguard classical Tibetan Buddhist culture in China. What we read in their writings redefines current conceptions about the renaissance of Tibetan Buddhism in post-Mao China.