Frances Garrett is Associate Professor of Tibetan and Buddhist Studies, and Associate Chair of the Department for the Study of Religion, where she has taught since 2003. Her research focuses on Tibetan religious history and its relations with other forms of Tibetan intellectual and literary culture, especially medicine. Her work has addressed the implications of controversies over human development in Tibetan scholasticism, how Tibetans reconcile medical physiology with Buddhist descriptions of the body, and the formation of intellectual and literary disciplinarity. She has lived for a number of years in various parts of India and China, including most recently a 14-month stay in Amdo (a Tibetan region of Western China) in 2009-10. Dr. Garrett grew up in Oregon, received a B.A. in Philosophy from Columbia University in 1989 and a Ph.D. in Religious Studies from the University of Virginia in 2004. At the University of Toronto, she is also a member of the Asian Institute, the Centre for South Asian Studies, and the Knowledge Media Design Institute. She is the 2010-2011 Director of the Religion in the Public Sphere Initiative.
Academic Interests
- Buddhist Studies
- Tibetan Buddhism
- Buddhism and Medical Traditions in Asia
Primary Teaching
Undergraduate and graduate level courses on Buddhist Studies, Tibetan Buddhism, and Tibetan language and literature.
Selected Publications
Books
2011. Health, Medicine, and Modernity in Tibetan Contexts, eds. Frances Garrett, Sienna Craig, Mingji Cuomo and Mona Schrempf. International Institute for Tibetan and Buddhist Studies GmbH (Germany).
2008. Religion, Medicine and the Human Embryo in Tibet. Abingdon, Oxon; New York: Routledge. Critical Studies in Buddhism series.
Selected Articles
2011. Eating Letters in the Tibetan Treasure Tradition. In Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 32 (1-2).
2010. Tapping the Body’s Nectar: Gastronomy and Incorporation in Tibetan Literature. In History of Religions 49 (3): 300-326.
2009. The Alchemy of Accomplishing Medicine (sman sgrub): Situating the Yuthok Heart Essence Ritual Tradition. Journal of Indian Philosophy 37 (3): 207-230.
2008. Tibetan Buddhist Narratives of the Forces of Creation. In Imagining The Fetus: The Unborn in Myth, Religion and Culture, eds. Jane Marie Law & Vanessa R. Sasson. Oxford University Press. Pgs. 107-120.
2008. With Vincanne Adams. The Three Channels in Tibetan Medical and Religious Texts, including a translation of Tsultrim Gyaltsen’s ‘Treatise on the Three Channels in Tibetan Medicine.’ Traditional South Asian Medicine 8: 86-115.
2007. Critical Methods in Tibetan Medical Histories. Journal of Asian Studies 66 (2): 368-387.
2007. Buddhism and the Historicizing of Medicine in Thirteenth Century Tibet. Asian Medicine: Tradition and Modernity 2 (2): 204-224.
2005. Ordering human growth in Tibetan medical and religious embryologies. In Textual Healing: Essays on Medieval and Early Modern Medicine, ed. Elizabeth Furdel, 31-52. Leiden: Brill Publishers.
Recent Research Awards
2011 SSHRC Partnership Development Grant (2011-2014) for “Mapping an Epic: Religion and Healing in Inner Asia”
2010 Jackman Humanities Institute Program for the Arts Grant for “New Voices, New Visions: Documentary Film in Tibet & Burma”
2010 SSHRC Research Development Initiative Grant (2010-2012) for “Gold, Statue, Text: Visualizing Movement in Tibetan History”
2009 SSHRC Image, Text, Sound and Technology Grant (2009-2010) for “Interpreting Visual Representations of Tibetan Ritual”
2008 SSHRC Standard Research Grant (2008-2011) for “Empowering the Medicine”
2008 Jackman Humanities Institute Working Group Grant for “Scholarly Output in a Digital Age”
2006 David Larson Fellowship at the Kluge Center, U.S. Library of Congress (served in 2007-08)
2006 Individual Research Grant, American Academy of Religion
2004 Connaught Support for International Symposia/Colloquia for “Buddhist and Scientific Approaches to Mental Health and Healing”
2004 Connaught New Staff Matching Research Grant, University of Toronto
Contact Information
170 St. George Street, Room 302
tel: 416.978.1020
email: frances.garrett@utoronto.ca
Website: http://francesgarrett.chass.utoronto.ca/