Gray Tuttle
· Leila Hadley Luce Professor of Modern Tibetan Studies, Chair of the Department of East Asian Languages and CulturesColumbia University · East Asian Languages and Cultures
Active 1997–2025
About
Gray Tuttle is the Leila Hadley Luce Professor of Modern Tibetan Studies and serves as the Chair of the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University. His educational background includes a BA from Princeton University and both an MA and PhD from Harvard University. Tuttle's research focuses on modern Tibetan history, particularly from the 1600s to the 1950s, with an emphasis on the role of Tibetan Buddhism in the history of twentieth-century Sino-Tibetan relations and Tibet’s interactions with the China-based Manchu Qing Empire. His notable work, Tibetan Buddhists in the Making of Modern China, examines the failure of nationalism and race-based ideology to maintain Tibetan territory as part of the Chinese nation-state, highlighting the significance of pan-Asian Buddhism in Chinese efforts to retain Tibetan regions. Currently, he is engaged in a project analyzing the historical economic and cultural relations between China and Tibet from the 16th to 19th centuries, focusing on the development of monastic education, the bureaucratization of reincarnate lamas, and evolving geographic concepts in Tibet. Tuttle has increasingly incorporated large datasets and statistical tools such as R to explore Tibetan history, including monk longevity and climate data, aiming to offer new perspectives on Tibet’s past. His scholarly contributions include numerous publications and co-edited volumes, emphasizing his expertise in Tibetan history, religion, and their intersections with broader Asian and Chinese contexts.
Research topics
- Art
- Archaeology
- Geography
Selected publications
A Qing Court Lama Dreaming His Place in the World
2025-07-01
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingTuttle’s chapter explores Changkya Rolpé Dorjé’s (1717–1786) sense of self as narrated through dreams involving others—whether buddhas/bodhisattvas, deities, Chinese, Manchus, and Tibetans—as reported in his biography by his student Tukwan Chokyi Nyima (1737–1802). Rolpé Dorjé’s dreams allowed him (and/or his interlocutor Tukwan Chokyi Nyima) to speak to a position of being caught in between the worlds of Manchu, Monguors, Tibetans and Chinese. These were not merely issues of politics; they affected the inner life and practice of figures caught between worlds. And the inner lives of such figures, as captured in these dreams, are precisely what allows us to see how these people negotiated their different relations to the multiple worlds in which they lived. Rolpé Dorjé’s dreams often undermined the common perceptions of the entities and people he encountered, and the reporting of them seems to be designed deliberately to make this point. From these dreams, this chapter aims to recover something of the man, and possibly his inner life, from the emblematic role he has come to serve in understanding and narrating historical relations between Qing China and Tibetan Buddhist lamas.
De Gruyter eBooks · 2023 · 3 citations
- Art
- Geography
- Archaeology
The present volume offers a dozen studies of manuscripts of the Tibetan Bon and Naxi Dongba traditions across time and space. While some of the contributions focus on particular features of manuscripts from either tradition, others explicitly bridge the two by considering common codicological and material aspects of selected examples or common themes in the content of the texts. This is the first primarily object-based study to deal with the cultural history and technology of books from the two traditions. It discusses collections of Bon and Naxi manuscripts, the concepts and history of both traditions, the science and technology of book studies as it relates to these collections, the relationship between text and image, writing materials, and the historical and archaeological context of the manuscripts’ places of origin. The authors are specialists in different fields including philology, anthropology, art history, codicology and archaeometry. The contributions shed light on trade routes, materials and technologies as well as on reading practices and ritual usage of Bon and Naxi manuscripts.
Linking a Critical Buddhist Studies to a Critical Area Studies
Religious Studies Review · 2023-09-01 · 1 citations
articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding9. Uniting Religion and Politics in a Bid for Autonomy: Lamas in Exile in China and America
University of Hawaii Press eBooks · 2017-12-31 · 3 citations
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingEthnic Conflict and Protest in Tibet and Xinjiang
Columbia University Press eBooks · 2016-07-29 · 12 citations
bookSenior authorDespite a decade of rapid economic development, China’s western borderlands have experienced a wave of ethnic unrest not seen since the 1950s. Through on-the-ground interviews and firsthand observations, this volume creates an invaluable record of the conflicts and protests as they have unfolded—the most extensive chronicle of events to date.
Foreign Affairs · 2015-04-20 · 1 citations
article1st authorCorrespondingThe article discusses ethnic prejudices and racism in modern Chinese society, focusing on the impact of prejudice on the treatment of ethnic minorities in China by the Chinese government. Topics include the treatment of Tibetans and international attention given to Tibet; discrimination in the form of ethnic profiling, civil rights restrictions, and restricted access to education and employment; and a discussion of race and nationalism in China throughout the 20th century. Similarities in conception and practice between Han communism and European colonialism is considered.
HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe) · 2013-01-01 · 34 citations
bookSenior authorInternational audience
2013-03-12
article1st authorCorrespondingAbstrActThis article examines Han Chinese who has historically practiced Tibetan Buddhism in the Qinghai-Gansu border region. The main primary sources were published in the 1990s, based on surveys by Chinese social scientists who were sent around in the 1950s to collect data on Tibetan Buddhist institutions as well as additional independent surveys from the 1980s and my own site visits in 2006. On the basis of these sources, I argue that there are at least 100,000 and probably as many as 200,000 Han Chinese on the borders of Qinghai and Gansu (part of the Amdo cultural region for Tibetans) practicing Tibetan Buddhism, following traditions that seem to have been in place for centuries. I also discuss the sixteen historic cases of Han Chinese reincarnate lamas and the over one hundred monasteries in this region affiliated with Han Chinese. Finally, I note the sectarian affiliations (jiaopai: Nyingma, Geluk, etc.) and religious practices of these Chinese communities practicing Tibetan Buddhism.
2013-01-01 · 39 citations
book1st authorCorrespondingHistorian · 2010-06-01
article1st authorCorresponding"Memories of Life in Lhasa under Chinese Rule. By Tubten Khétsun. Translated, with an introduction, by Matthew Akester. (New York, N.Y.: Columbia University Press. 2008. Pp.xx, 318. $32.50.)." The Historian, 72(2), pp. 455–456
Frequent coauthors
- 11 shared
Kurtis R. Schaeffer
University of Virginia
- 9 shared
Nyima Drandul Gurung
Oxford University Press (United Kingdom)
- 9 shared
Robert K. Ritner
Oxford University Press (United Kingdom)
- 9 shared
Agnieszka Helman-Ważny
Federal Institute For Materials Research and Testing
- 9 shared
Sam van Schaik
- 9 shared
Charles Ramble Helman-Ważny
Oxford University Press (United Kingdom)
- 9 shared
Charles Ramble
École Pratique des Hautes Études Commerciales
- 9 shared
Western Tibet'
Oxford University Press (United Kingdom)
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