Dominique Townsend

Associate Professor of Religion

Primary Academic Program: Interdisciplinary Study of Religions

Academic Program Affiliation(s): Asian Studies, Experimental Humanities

Biography: BA, Barnard College; MTS, Harvard Divinity School; MPhil, PhD, Columbia University. Teaching and research interests include Asian religions, Tibetan Buddhism, Buddhism and culture, Buddhist art and aesthetics, poetry in Buddhist literature, gender and sexuality in Buddhism, Tibetan language and literature, tantric traditions, and contemporary Buddhist practice. She previously taught at Columbia University and Barnard College, where her courses ranged from Asian humanities and topics in East Asian civilization to women Buddhist visionaries in Tibet and East Asia. She also served as assistant director of interpretation at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York City. Fellowships and awards include de Bary Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, Whiting Foundation Dissertation Completion Fellowship, Columbia University Teaching and Research Fellowship, Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Research Fellowship (not completed due to unrest in Tibetan areas of People’s Republic of China), and Spalding Trust Grant for research at Dolma Ling Nunnery and Institute for Buddhist Dialectics, Dharamsala, India, among others. Publications include “Buddhism’s Worldly Other: Secular Subjects in Tibetan Buddhist Learning,” in Himalaya: The Journal for the Association of Nepal and Himalayan Studies (forthcoming), and Shantideva: How To Wake Up a Hero, an introduction to Buddhism for children and families. Language competetency in classical and modern Tibetan and Nepali. At Bard since 2016.
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