During a ceremony at the Alumni House, the Center for Buddhist Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and Bukkyō Dendō Kyōkai (Numata Foundation) presented the 2016 Toshihide Numata Book Award to Professor Janet Gyatso (Harvard Divinity School) for Being Buddhist in a Human World: An Intellectual History of Medicine in Early Modern Tibet (Columbia University Press, 2015).
The symposium, titled "Buddhist Bodies, Medical Bodies, Human Bodies," opened with a keynote address by Professor Gyatso: "Categories, Mentalities, Individuals: Historiography in a Buddhological Vein." This was followed by presentations by three eminent scholars. The first was by Vincanne Adams, a medical anthropologist at the University of California, San Francisco, whose talk was titled, "Bodies, Biologies, and the Anthropology of Tibetan Medicine." The second talk was by Evan Thompson, a philosopher from the University of British Columbia, and was titled "Empirical Bodies in Science and Buddhism." Finally Stacey Van Vleet, a historian at UC Berkeley, presented a paper titled "Teaching the View vs. Teaching the Methods: Medical Pedagogy at the Fifth Dalai Lama’s Court." Janet Gyatso and Jacob Dalton served as respondents, and the various presentations were followed by a lively discussion that included many members of the audience. The celebratory evening ended with a dinner-buffet reception.
2016 Toshihide Numata Book Award Presentation and Symposium
Toll Room, Alumni House, UC Berkeley
Buddhist Bodies, Medical Bodies, Human Bodies
A symposium in celebration of this year's award winner Being Human in a Buddhist World: An Intellectual History of Medicine in Early Modern Tibet by Janet Gyatso.
3:10-3:15 Introductory remarks
Robert Sharf (University of California, Berkeley)
3:15-3:20 Award Presentation
George Tanabe (Bukkyo Dendo Kyokai)
3:20-4:15 Keynote
"Categories, Mentalities, Individuals: Historiography in a Buddhological Vein"
Janet Gyatso (Harvard Divinity School)
4:15-4:30 Break
4:30-6:30 Symposium
Chair: Robert Sharf (University of California, Berkeley)
Discussants: Janet Gyatso (Harvard Divinity School) and Jacob Dalton (University of California, Berkeley)
"Bodies, Biologies, and the Anthropology of Tibetan Medicine"
Vincanne Adams (University of California, San Francisco)
"Empirical Bodies in Science and Buddhism"
Evan Thompson (University of British Columbia)
"Teaching the View vs. Teaching the Methods: Medical Pedagogy at the Fifth Dalai Lama’s Court"
Stacey Van Vleet (University of California, Berkeley)