Gender in Translating Devotional Verse
In this collaborative discussion breakout session, Jue Liang (University of Virginia) and Natasha Mikles (Texas State) discuss the dynamics of socially constructed ideas about gender on our readings of classical texts and biographies. The group also explores devotion as a culturally constructed idea and devotional language as gendered. Jue and Natasha lead the group in developing “word banks” of terms that elicit a mood of binary gender constructs and then the discussion naturally unfolds into thoughtful exploration of the deconstruction of the binary and a consideration of the opposites of gender and devotion and the value we place on all of these concepts.
Event: Lotsawa Translation Workshop – Breakout Session
Date: October 7, 2018 – 11:00 am
Speakers: Jue Liang, Natasha Mickles
Topics: Translation, Transmission
Jue Liang
University of Virginia
Jue Liang is a PhD candidate at the Department of Religious Studies, University of Virginia. She is currently writing her dissertation, titled Conceiving the Mother of Tibet: The Life, Lives, and Afterlife of Ye shes mtsho rgyal. This dissertation explores the formation of a literary tradition surrounding Ye shes mtsho rgyal in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and proposes an understanding of this tradition as growing out of and reflecting the theological concerns of the Rnying ma Buddhist communities at the time. Jue's research interests include gender and sexuality in Buddhism, the hagiographical tradition in Tibetan Buddhism, Tibetan historiography and literature, female Buddhist masters and practitioners, and Treasure (gter ma) literature. Jue holds a BA in Chinese Literature and an MA in History from Renmin University of China, and an MA in History of Religions from the University of Chicago.
Natasha Mickles
Texas State University
Natasha L. Mikles is a lecturer in Tibetan and Chinese Religions at Texas State University and the current Secretary-General of the International Seminar of Young Tibetologists. Her research examines the intersection of Buddhist hell literature and the Gesar epic, especially as it relates to the late 19th-century promotion of Dzogchen practices among Nyingma monasteries in Khams. Her articles include “Buddhicizing the Warrior-King Gesar in the dMyal gling rDzogs pa Chen po”(Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines 2016) and “Tracking the Tulpa?: Exploring the ‘Tibetan Origins of a Contemporary Paranormal Idea” (NovaReligio 2015). Prior to her appointment at Texas State, Natasha was completing her doctoral degree at the University of Virginia (2017), for which she received the Charlotte W. Newcombe Dissertation Fellowship.
