Rebecca Bloom

As long as I can remember, India has tugged at my heart. In middle school, I was given my first book about Buddhism; in high school, I devoured novels by Rushdie and Lahiri; and in college, I registered for every class I could about South Asian religious and artistic traditions. I finally traveled to India for my semester abroad to participate in a Tibetan Studies program, which also brought me to Nepal and Tibet. Those months spent immersed in Tibetan communities and within the Himalayan landscape were ineffably life-changing. This study-abroad experience fundamentally impacted my professional and academic trajectory over the last ten years, from my undergraduate thesis to my work at the Rubin Museum of Art to my graduate studies at Yale and now at the University of Michigan. I was attracted to the doctoral program here, in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures, because it is clearly committed to interdisciplinarity, as evidenced by the diversity of intellectual interests and scholarly pursuits among the graduate students and faculty.

Born in the field, cultivated in a museum, and refined in religious studies programs, my own research interests are at home in ALC, which fosters a positive, stimulating environment where I have been encouraged, inspired, and challenged. I have focused generally on Buddhist Studies and Material Culture, with a regional concentration in Tibet and the Western Himalayas. My dissertation, Pictures to Live By: Uncovering an Iconography of the Tibetan Buddhist Monastic Code, focuses on heretofore unexamined text by the largely overlooked Thirteenth Dalai Lama (1876-1933), and the series of murals this work inspired. Composed around 1922, this text recordes his commentary on the Buddhist monastic code. Such a project is conventional for a Buddhist master, yet this work employs an innovative commentarial apparatus: illustrations which not only illuminate the meaning of the text, but also allow its teachings to be transmitted through printed media and painted murals. I examine the genesis of the remarkable text and the elements of its composition, arguing that the block-printed xylograph and its murals established a new iconographic system for portraying monastic life and disseminating monastic rules in a modern Tibet.

While finishing coursework and writing my dissertation in ALC, I have also been able to continue cultivating my interests in museum work and multi-disciplinary projects. I earned a graduate certificate in Museum Studies, completing a research project on monastery museums in the western Himalayan region of Ladakh, and I spent a year co-curating an exhibition of Buddhist art at the Freer|Sackler, the Asian art museums of the Smithsonian, with support from U-M's Freer Fellowship. I was also involved in the "Hyecho's Journey" project, funded by U-M's Humanities Collaboratory, which brought together a multi-disciplinary and multi-generational team to tell the story of the eighth-century Buddhist monk-pilgrim Hyecho in a book, an app, and a website. With the generous support of ALC, Rackham Graduate School, and various other centers at U-M, I have been empowered to pursue amazing scholarly opportunities and research projects

Languages (other than English):

• Classical Tibetan
• Colloquial Tibetan
• Sanskrit
• French