Teaching Tibetan Buddhism in the Western Academy with Jan Willis

Through personal and practical anecdotes from her own life and teaching, Dr. Jan Willis describes in this talk how, over the course of fifty years, she both learned and taught Tibetan Buddhism in undergraduate academic settings in the West. Looking at the obstacles and challenges of teaching an “esoteric” religious tradition, the talk is as much about pedagogy as about Tibetan Buddhism.
Speaker: Jan Willis, Professor of Religious Studies Emerita, Wesleyan University, has studied with Tibetan Buddhists in India, Nepal, Switzerland, and the U.S. for five decades, and has taught courses in Buddhism for over forty years. She is the author of The Diamond Light: An Introduction to Tibetan Buddhist Meditation (1972), On Knowing Reality: The Tattvartha Chapter of Asanga’s Bodhisattvabhumi (1979), Enlightened Beings: Life Stories from the Ganden Oral Tradition (1995); and editor of Feminine Ground: Essays on Women and Tibet (1989). Additionally, Willis has published numerous articles and essays on various topics in Buddhism-Buddhist meditation, hagiography, women and Buddhism, and Buddhism and race. In December of 2000, TIME magazine named Willis one of six “spiritual innovators for the new millennium.” In 2003, she was a recipient of Wesleyan University’s Binswanger Prize for Excellence in Teaching. Newsweek magazine’s “Spirituality in America” issue in September of 2005 included a profile of Willis and, in its May 2007 edition, Ebony magazine named Willis one of its “Power 150” most influential African Americans.
Moderator: Gray Tuttle, Leila Hadley Luce Professor of Modern Tibetan Studies, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Columbia University.
This event is part of the Modern Tibetan Studies (MTSP) “Women in Tibetan Studies” Series, with funding from the Weatherhead East Asian Institute.