Janet Gyatso

Janet Gyatso

Hershey Professor of Buddhist Studies
Janet Gyatso

MA, PhD, University of California at Berkeley

Janet Gyatso is a specialist in Buddhist studies with concentration on Tibetan and South Asian religious culture. Her PhD is from University of California at Berkeley in Buddhist Studies. Her books include Being Human in a Buddhist World: An Intellectual History of Medicine in Early Modern Tibet; Apparitions of the Self: The Secret Autobiographies of a Tibetan Visionary; In the Mirror of Memory: Reflections on Mindfulness and Remembrance in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism; and Women of Tibet. Her current book project is on animal ethics, drawing on phenomenology and philosophical ethics as well as animal studies. She is also working on Indo-Tibetan poetics, and modern Tibetan literature. Previous topics have included traditional medical science in Tibet and the notion of the early modern for Tibetan studies; conceptions of sex and gender in Buddhist monasticism and in Tibetan medicine; visionary revelation in Buddhism; issues concerning lineage, memory, and authorship; philosophical questions on the status of experience; and autobiographical writing in Tibet.

Professor Gyatso was president of the International Association of Tibetan Studies from 2000 to 2006, and was co-chair of the Buddhism Section of the American Academy of Religion from 2005-2010. She teaches lecture courses and advanced seminars on Buddhist history, literature, ritual, ethics, and ideas, and on Tibetan literary practices and religious history. In both teaching and writing she draws on cultural and literary theory, and is concerned to widen the spectrum of intellectual resources for the understanding and interpretation of Tibetan Buddhist history. Professor Gyatso taught at Amherst College before coming to Harvard as the Divinity School's first Hershey Professor of Buddhist Studies.

Contact Information

Harvard Divinity School
45 Francis Avenue
Cambridge MA 02138

office hours: see Harvard Divinity School
p: 617-496-1950

Research Areas of Doctoral Students