Buddhism in Mongolian History, Culture, and Society
Edited by Vesna A. Wallace
Author Information
Edited by Vesna A. Wallace, Professor of Buddhist Studies, Department of Religious Studiess,, UC Santa Barbara
Vesna A. Wallace is a Professor of Religious Studies in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her areas of specialization are Indian and Mongolian Buddhist traditions.
Contributors:
Johan Elverskog is Professor and Chair of Religious Studies at Southern Methodist University. He is the author and editor of seven books including Our Great Qing: The Mongols, Buddhism, and the State in Late Imperial China and the Buddhism and Islam on the Silk Road, which won his multiple awards.
Christopher Kaplonski is a Senior Research Associate in Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge and Project Manager of "Oral History of Twentieth Century Mongolia," in Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit at the University of Cambridge. His work over the past twenty years has focused on Mongolia, from remaking identity after the collapse of socialism as one of the first Western anthropologists to work in Mongolia, to the memory of political violence and the relation between violence and sovereignty. He also is interested the role of bureaucracy and archives in reconstructing the past, digital anthropology, and the anthropology of the senses and emotions. He is the author of The Lama Question: Violence, Sovereignty and exception in early socialist Mongolia and Truth, history and politics in Mongolia: the memory of heroes, and has also authored numerous articles.
Matthew King received his PhD from the Department for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto. His dissertation examines Buddhist responses to the "crisis" of the Qing imperial collapse and the embrace of nationalism, science, and socialism in revolutionary Mongolia (1911-1937). He has published research on Buddhist-missionary encounters, Buddhist revival in post-socialist Mongolia, and the impact of Buddhist Modernism on monastic education in Asia. His next major project explores mediations of the humanities and physical sciences in the work of Ngakwang Nyima, a refugee abbot dispatched by the Tibetan diaspora as professor at Leiden University in the early 1960s.
Baatr U. Kitinov is Associate Professor of the Department of the World History, Peoples' Friendship University of Russia in Moscow. He holds a PhD in World History (History of Buddhism) from the Institute of Asian and African Studies of Moscow State University. His research interests are the history of Buddhism in Inner and Central Asia, specifically the interaction of civilizations in the Caspian region and Central Asia. He is the author of The Spread of Buddhism Among Western Mongolian Tribes Between the 13th and 18th Centuries: Tibetan Buddhism in the Politics and Ideology of the Oirat People and many articles.
Richard Taupier is Associate Director of the Office of Research Development at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst and a Visiting Lecturer in the Department of Religion at Smith College. He is currently completing his second PhD in history, with a focus on Central Asian Buddhist cultures, particularly Mongolia, Oiratia, and Tibet. Dr. Taupier has conducted extensive research in the adoption of Buddhism by eastern and western Mongols and on the ways in which Buddhist ideology shaped Mongolian and Oirat political aspirations. He co-edited the volume Mongolians After Socialism and served as a Senior Fulbright Specialist at the National University of Mongolia in Ulaanbaatar.
Karma Lekshe Tsomo is a professor of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of San Diego, where she teaches Buddhism, World Religions, and Comparative Religious Ethics. She studied in Dharamsala for fifteen years and received a doctorate in Comparative Philosophy from the University of Hawai'i, with research on death and identity in China and Tibet. She is a founder and past president of Sakyadhita International Association of Buddhist Women and director of Jamyang Foundation, an innovative education project for women in developing countries. Her publications include Into the Jaws of Yama: Buddhism, Bioethics, and Death; Sisters in Solitude: Two Traditions of Monastic Ethics for Women; and numerous edited volumes on women in Buddhism.
Uranchimeg (Orna) Tsultem received her PhD from the Art History Department at University of California, Berkeley, with a focus on Mongolian and Tibetan art. She currently holds a joint faculty position as a lecturer in the Art History Department at University of California, Berkeley and as an associate professor at National University of Mongolia, where she taught from 1995-2002. Professor Tsultem has curated many Mongolian art exhibitions across Europe and Asia, and her publications include numerous articles on Mongolian contemporary and Buddhist art, a book-length anthology, and three exhibition catalogue essays.
Vesna A. Wallace is a Professor of Religious Studies in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her two areas of specialization are South Asian and Mongolian Buddhist traditions. She has authored and translated four books related to Indian Buddhism and published numerous articles on Indian and Mongolian Buddhism.
Simon Wickham-Smith received his PhD from the University of Washington with a dissertation on the contemporary Mongolian poet G. Mend-Ooyo. He is currently the Ts. Damdinsüren fellow in the Department of Mongolian Language and Literature at the Mongolian National University in Ulaanbaatar. His publications include The Perfect Qualities, which is a translation of Danzanravjaa's poetry, The Secret Life of the Sixth Dalai Lama, and The Interrelationship of Humans and the Mongol Landscape in G. Mend-Oyoo's Altan Ovoo: A Study of the Nomadic Culture of Mongolia (currently in-press).
