Andrew Quintman
Assistant Professor of Religious Studies
B.A., Hampshire College
M.A., University of Michigan
Ph.D., University of Michigan
Andrew Quintman is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, specializing in the Buddhist traditions of Tibet and the Himalaya. His areas of teaching and research include the study of Buddhist doctrinal literature and sacred biography, visual and ritual cultures of the wider Himalayan region, and the esoteric Buddhist traditions of Tantra in Tibet and South Asia. He is also interested in the religious and literary histories of Tibet’s unique southern border communities. In addition to a number of academic articles, his current book project, Milarepa’s Many Lives: Anatomies of a Tibetan Biographical Corpus, explores the extensive body of early literature recording the life of Tibet’s acclaimed eleventh-century yogin and poet Milarepa. In this work he seeks to broaden existing notions of Tibetan hagiography by examining the relationships between textual history, authorial voice, and narrative representation. He argues that successive versions of the classic story formed an increasingly lifelike biographical corpus that, in its most famous rendering, was both literally and literarily brought to life. He is also completing a new critical study and English translation of the Life of Milarepa to be published by Penguin Classics. Prior to coming to Yale, he served for seven years as Academic Director of the School for International Training’s Tibetan Studies program based in Kathmandu, and since 2001 has led a summer program for Tibetan Studies in Tibet offered through the University of Michigan. He later spent three years in Princeton University’s Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts, where he held the Cotsen-Melon Fellowship in the History of the Book. He currently serves as the Co-Chair of the Tibetan and Himalayan Religions Group of the American Academy of Religion.
