Anna Wolcott Johnson

Research 

Anna’s dissertation research is on the three-vow theory of Tibetan Buddhism, which classifies codes of conduct into distinct strata of practitioners to whom those ethical pre-/proscriptions apply, but also condenses them into practice for a single individual despite apparent contradictions. Her work surveys Buddhist theories of the person across Indian tenet systems and presses larger order questions regarding the methods by which religious traditions resolve internal doctrinal contradictions. Her additional research interests include Buddhist debates on the ethics of vegetarianism and whether it should be considered vowed behavior. In addition, she works on Tibetan historiographical methods for devising lineage lists, and the vow-centered identities that result from genealogical documentation. She will present on this latter topic at the International Association for Buddhist Studies (IABS) Conference in Toronto.

Her broader areas of interest include translation theory as it relates to both language and culture, and particularly how it delineates the bounds of the “religious” in the face of its various opposites. Her methodology is grounded in maintaining an awareness that many of our concepts comprising Buddhist doctrine and practice are fundamentally historical, having been received from a lineage of Western scholarship with its own preferences and privileges.

Before beginning her doctoral program in ALC, Anna studied colloquial and literary Tibetan language at Rangjung Yeshe Institute in Kathmandu, Nepal, and as part of a translator training program funded through the Tara Foundation in Dehradun, India. She also conducted field work on vows in Tibetan scholastic communities in India on a Fulbright Fellowship. She is a previous recipient of the Rackham Pre-doctoral Dissertation Writing Award, and is a current recipient of the 2017 Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Dissertation Writing Fellowship.

Languages (other than English)

• Tibetan
• Sanskrit
• Urdu
• French