• Instructor, Religious Studies Department
• Ph.D. expected June 2009, Harvard University

Contact Information

• Humanities 290
• 303-492-6984
• gayley@colorado.edu

Primary Teaching Areas and Opportunities for Student Supervision

• Buddhism, Tibetan Religions, Buddhist Modernism
• Hagiography, Relics and Ritual Theory
• Gender, Subaltern Agency, Minorities in China
• The Role of the Senses in Ritual

Recent Publications

• "Soteriology of the Senses in Tibetan Buddhism." Numen 54/4 (2007): 459-499.
• "Ontology of the Past and its Materialization in Tibetan Treasures." In The Invention of Sacred Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2008.
• "Buddhist Modernism in Mkhan po 'Jigs phun's Advice to Tibetans of the 21st Century." In The Rise of the Modern in Tibet. Sankt Augustin, Germany: International Institute for Tibetan and Buddhist Studies, (forthcoming).
• "Patterns in the Ritual Dissemination of Padma gling pa's Treasures." In Bhutan: Traditions and Changes. Leiden: Brill, 2007.

 

 

 

Overview

Holly Gayley became interested in the academic study of Buddhism through her travels among Tibetan communities in India, Nepal, and China. She completed a Masters in Buddhist Studies at Naropa University in 2000 and went on to pursue a Ph.D. at Harvard University in Tibetan and Himalayan Studies. Recently, she spent a year engaged in field research in and around the Tibetan region of Golok on a Fulbright-Hays Fellowship.

Holly Gayley is currently completing her dissertation on the life and writings of a contemporary female tertön or "treasure revealer," Khandro Tāre Lhamo, who played a significant role in the Buddhist revival in Golok since the 1980s. Her second project explores the emergence of Buddhist modernism in Tibetan areas of the PRC, particularly in the writings of Khenpo Jigme Phuntsok and scholars at the Buddhist Academy he founded in Serta.