Tibetan and Himalayan Religions Unit
We are looking forward to another year of excellent THRU programming in 2026 in Denver!
As a reminder, you do not need to be an AAR member to submit a proposal to the annual meeting; however, you do have to become a member to present at the annual meeting.
Khyentse Foundation travel grants will be available for Tibetan and Himalayan scholars whose papers are accepted, so please keep this in mind as you consider your applications, the composition of your panels, etc. And please spread the word about these grants!
We have the option of holding a panel at the June online meeting. This could be a particularly good opportunity for involving scholars from afar, and those who are unable to travel. Please contact us if you have ideas for an online panel in June.
Proposals for the in-person meeting in Denver are welcome on any theme or topic related to the Tibetan and Himalayan Religions Unit. The presidential theme for 2026, suggested by incoming president Laurel Schneider, is "Future/s." Proposals do not need to relate to the presidential theme but we encourage you to read Schneider's summary of the theme, and to engage with it if it speaks to you.
Please see below the proposed in-person panel sessions we've received, and which we are now publicizing through this call for papers. Contact details of the organizers are below, and you should reach out to them to express your interest. And you are more than welcome to propose your own panel or paper outside of what is listed here.
- Ceci n’est pas une Thangka: Attending to the Unexpected in Tibetan Religious Contexts
- This panel seeks to foreground Tibetan religious phenomena that maintain lives distinct from their seemingly intended purposes. These may include the following:
- Religious images that are eaten
- Narrative murals that are not encountered as stories
- Medicine/pills that are never consumed
- Texts that aren't read
- Clothes/ornaments that are not meant to be worn
- Ritual objects never used for their rituals
- Our intention is to move beyond taking objects, practices, and ideas at face value, remaining attentive to the unexpected, and finding meaning in the hidden or unforeseen. Contact: Dominique Townsend (dt80@columbia.edu) and Andy Quintmann (aquintman@wesleyan.edu)
- This panel seeks to foreground Tibetan religious phenomena that maintain lives distinct from their seemingly intended purposes. These may include the following:
- Motherhood in Tibetan Buddhism
- This panel takes next year’s AAR theme of “Future/s” somewhat literally and examines the role of birth and motherhood in Tibetan Buddhism. Papers exploring topics such as amchi natal care, mothering figures like as Queen Maya or Tara, mother Dakinis, the aim of loving all sentient beings as if they were our mother, or other papers related to the literal or symbolic act of motherhood are welcomed. Possible co-sponsorship with the Motherhood and Religions unit. Contact: Maddy Tevonian (madeleinetevonian@hds.harvard.edu)
- Preservation as Future-Making
- This panel will explore how the representations of preservation–– in Buddhist narratives, rituals, spaces, lineages, or material cultures––function as a strategy for constructing Buddhist futures. Studies of any Buddhist tradition or genre are welcome. We hope to bring diverse materials in conversation to illuminate how Buddhists have coped with calamities, theorized continuity, and cultivated future worlds through acts of preservation. Contact: Arushi Bahuguna (arushib@g.ucla.edu)
- Religious Thinkers as Co-Theorists: The Future of Critical Theory on Religion
- Working off the 2026 AAR theme of "Future/s," this panel asks us to imagine a future of critical theory where religious intellectuals outside the academy are not simply subjects to be studied, but colleagues to think alongside. This panel aims to challenge the disciplinary norms that treat the academy as the primary creator of and authority on "theory" about religion. What new terms arise, which ideas fall out of favor, and what networks of relationships appear when we treat religious intellectuals as theorists of religion in their own right? This panel does not aim to valorize religious knowledge as somehow more authentic or true, but rather to extend to it the same interest, scrutiny, and care scholars provide to canonical theorists. What does the future of the field look like if we acknowledge that some of the most sophisticated theorists of religion have been studied, categorized, and provincialized as its objects? Contact: Matthew Drew (matthewdrew2028@u.northwestern.edu and Dominique Townsend (dt80@columbia.edu)
- Promises and Prophecy in 20th–21st century Tibetan Buddhism
- This panel will focus on prophecy and messianism in Tibetan Buddhism and traditions derived from it, such as Mongolian Buddhism, Yellow Shamanism, and Burkhanism, starting from the 20th-century rule of the 13th Dalai Lama and continuing until today and beyond, focusing on the idea of futures and their diversity, ranging from ruinous war (such as in the Iron Dog prophecy) to a golden age of state formation, as in the Burkhanist dream of Oyrot reestablishment. Contact: Gregory Zeldovich (gkzeldovich@gmail.com)
- Food and Tibetan Buddhism
- Food serves as a major factor among different social environments, often serving as a communal bridge between individuals and groups to bond over. Within the field of religion such as Judaism and Regla de Ocha-Ifa, food has also been found to connect to a wide variety of factors, from dietary rules and taboos to ethnographic accounts surrounding the preparation of offerings to becoming symbolic vehicles for political ideologies. Following through with the topic of "lived religion," food is meant to offer an alternative intermediary into other parts of Tibetan Buddhist life that may look into such factors as materiality, anthropology, and whatnot. This panel invites papers to explore diverse purposes that food serves in Tibetan Buddhism and the larger Himalayan religious purview. Contact: Demian Choi (dchoi@hds.harvard.edu)
- Contested Futures: Responses to Development Projects in Tibet
- What kind of future is being built in Tibet, and for whom? Development projects—from infrastructure megaprojects and conservation initiatives to resettlement schemes and digital governance systems—materialize particular visions of progress while foreclosing others. This panel examines how Tibetans within Tibet and in exile negotiate, critique, and support state-led development agendas that deliver "modernization" with all of its attendant displacements. Drawing on the conference theme of "future/s," we invite papers that critically analyze the politics of development in Tibetan contexts and the ways Tibetans articulate alternative futures in the face of imposed change. Contact: Matthew Drew (matthewdrew2028@u.northwestern.edu)
- Conquest and Resistance in Tibet and the Himalayas
- In line with the 2026 theme of 'Future/s', this panel invites papers on the way that religion plays a part in acts of and ideas about conquest and resistance in Tibet and the Himalayas. Papers can be on events in the past, the present, or in potential futures. Relevant topics include (but are not limited to): the Buddhist 'conquest' of Tibet; the expansion of a Tibetan Buddhist empire; Mongol and/or Chinese rule in the Himalayas under Buddhist preceptorship; Himalayan artistic depictions of conquest and/or resistance; indigenous Himalayan religions' (e.g., Bönpo) resistance to Buddhism; the gendered body in the context of conquest and resistance; the role of religion in present-day and/or future resistance movements. Contact: Seth Auster-Rosen (sethausterrosen@uchicago.edu)
This Unit’s mission is to create an environment that promotes discussion among scholars taking diverse approaches to the study of Tibetan and Himalayan religions. Our identity and cohesion derive from the fact that we deal with a delimited geocultural space, but the intellectual excitement comes from the fact that we are specialists in different historical periods and cultural areas, from the fact that we are interested in different religious traditions, and from the fact that we have different methodological approaches to the study of religion. In particular, we encourage scholarship that approaches Tibetan and Himalayan religions through a wide range of approaches:
Multidisciplinary focus — we are committed to methodological diversity and to promoting scholarship that challenges the traditional disciplinary dichotomies through which the field has defined itself, such as text/practice, written/oral, philology/ethnography, and humanistic/social scientific study.
Transregional focus — we encourage a holistic approach to the study of Tibet and the Himalaya as a region, albeit a diverse one. One of the most important features of religious traditions in our field — perhaps in every field — is the degree to which they are inextricably connected, and it is only through the exploration of such interconnections that the phenomenon of religion in the Tibeto-Himalayan region can be understood. Such interconnections often cut across ethnonational boundaries.
Focus on cultural history — in recent times, the study of Asian religions has taken a quite drastic cultural/historical turn. Nowhere is this more evident than in the study of Tibetan and Himalayan religions. A previous generation of scholars was concerned principally with elite religious institutions — and more specifically with their doctrinal/philosophical texts. Today scholarship is much more diverse. A new generation of scholars is concerned, for example, with folk religious practices, religion and material culture, the politics of religious institutions, the representation of Tibetan religions in the media, and the historical construction of the field itself.
This Unit is committed to fostering such a multifaceted approach to the cultural history of Tibet and the Himalayas.
| Chair | Dates | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Brandon Dotson, Georgetown University | brandon.dotson@wolfson… | - | View |
| Jue Liang | jl4nf@virginia.edu | - | View |