Global Tibet: Culture and Society On the Roof of the World

3 units

Far from the imagined land of snows closed off to the rest of the world, Tibet always had dynamic interactions with Inner Asia, South Asia, and China. With an expansive view on Tibetan history, this course traces these interactions from the sixteenth to the twenty-first century through a variety of topics, ranging from the power of the Dalai Lamas to the spread of Tibetan Buddhism across the world, to the effects of global warming on the third pole. Students will be exposed to religious texts, memoirs, and novels to trace the lives of women saints and Tibetan communists as well as exiled nationalists, and watch documentaries and films to interrogate Tibet's place in China and the Tibetan diaspora's experience in India and the United States. Using Tibet as a lens, students will learn to question larger problems of religion versus secularism, cultural preservation versus globalization, and national identity versus colonization, subjects that continue to matter to Tibet and the world today.