Holly Gayley

Holly Gayley is a scholar and translator of contemporary Buddhist literature in Tibet and associate professor of Buddhist Studies at the University of Colorado. Her research areas include gender and sexuality in Buddhist tantra, ethical reform in contemporary Tibet, and theorizing translation, both literary and cultural, in the transmission of Buddhist teachings to North America. She is author of Love Letters from Golok: A Tantric Couple in Modern Tibet (2016); co-editor of A Gathering of Brilliant Moons: Practice Advice from the Rime Masters of Tibet (2017), translator of Inseparable Across Lifetimes: The Lives and Love Letters of Namtrul Rinpoche and Khandro Tāre Lhamo (2019), and editor of Voices from Larung Gar: Shaping Tibetan Buddhism for the Twenty-First Century (2021). Her articles have appeared in the Journal of Buddhist Ethics, History of Religions, Contemporary Buddhism, Journal of Religious Ethics, Religions, and Himalaya Journal. She is co-founder of the Tibet Himalaya Initiative at CU Boulder and co-chair of a five-year seminar on “Transnational Religious Expression: Between Asia and North America” at the American Academy of Religion.

Jue Liang

Jue Liang is an Assistant Professor in the Religion Department of Denison University. She is a scholar of Tibetan Buddhist literature, history, and culture. She received her Ph.D. in Religious Studies from the University of Virginia. Her dissertation, Conceiving the Mother of Tibet: The Life, Lives, and Afterlife of the Buddhist Saint Yeshe Tsogyel, examines the literary tradition surrounding the matron saint of Tibet, Yeshe Tsogyel, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. It also presents the blossoming of this literary tradition in tandem with the efforts to trace their religious pedigree and define what counts as authentic Buddhism by Nyingma Tibetan Buddhists. She is currently working on a second project titled Who Is a Buddhist Feminist: Theorizing Gender and Religion in Contemporary Tibet. It is a study on the history, discourse, and social effects of the khenmo program, a gender-equality initiative that has been taking place at Tibetan Buddhist institutions in China for the past three decades. Jue is also an active participant in discussions on Buddhism in both academic and public forums.

Sherab Wangmo

Sherab Wangmo is a Ph.D. candidate in the Religious Studies department at Northwestern University. Her research focuses on gender and sexuality in Bon and Tibetan Buddhism. Her dissertation explores the consort relationship, self-(re)presentation, and agency in (auto)biographies of Sang-Ngak Lingpa (1864-1934?) and Khandro Dechen Wangmo (1868-1935?), two eminent Bonpo treasure revealers in eastern Tibet. Before coming to Northwestern, she received an MA from the University of Colorado Boulder and a BA from the Minzu University of China in Beijing. Her advisor is Sarah Jacoby.