| DATE: | Friday, May 5, 2006 to Sunday, May 7, 2006 |
|---|---|
| PLACE: | Lipman Room, Barrows Hall, UC Berkeley |
| FORMAT: | Conference |
| SPONSORS: | Center for Buddhist Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies, Center for Chinese Studies, Townsend Center for the Humanities |
The 17th and 18th centuries were watershed periods in the history of Tibetan religious and political life. It was during this pivotal era that Tibet witnessed the rise to power of the incarnate Dalai Lamas and the establishment of a centralized government in the capital city of Lhasa under the leadership of the Fifth Dalai Lama (1617-1682). In the century following the political ascent of the Fifth Dalai Lama, far-reaching changes unfolded in almost every sphere of Tibetan cultural life and social organization. The central government's efforts to innovate and exert control were felt in areas ranging from administration to commerce, from monastic curriculum to public festival life, from ritual performance to medical and legal practice. At the same time, response and resistance to these changes fostered a vibrant flourishing among groups at the social and geographic margins of Tibet. These changes in the Tibetan polity also involved complex negotiations of Tibet's relations with Mongolian, Manchu, and Chinese neighbors.
In recent years, the increasing availability of Tibetan language documents, the growth of the academic study of Tibet, and productive collaborations with scholars in China and Tibet have inspired vital new research on the specific events of the period and the broad social and political currents that connect them. This conference will highlight original research by many scholars working on diverse topics within the history of 17th and 18th century Tibet and will seek to redefine our understanding of the period through discussion of the connections between them.