Kragh

M05 Dodd Hall
Florida State University
Tallahassee, FL 32306
Office: Dodd 120E
Phone:(850) 644-9879
Fax: (850) 644-7225
Email: utkragh@fsu.edu
Office Hours: M, 10-12

Ulrich Timme Kragh (Ph.D. Copenhagen University, 2004; post-doc Harvard University, since 2004) teaches world religions, Buddhist traditions, Buddhist ethics, and the religions of Tibet and China. He has published several Tibetan language primers, papers on Indian scholasticism, literary studies of Indian and Tibetan Buddhist texts, and a book on metaphysical models for ethical theories entitled Early Buddhist Theories of Action and Result: A Study of Karmaphalasambandha in verses 17.1-20 of Candrakirti's Prasannapada. The theoretical issues investigated in his research include authorship, pseudepigrapha, the inscribed author, the mechanisms of commentarial traditions, scribal traditions, the impact of printing on a textual tradition, the reproduction of scriptural images in philosophical metaphors, and the shifting relationship between textual authority and canonization. He has focused on the religious themes of Buddhist monasticism, Indo-Tibetan Tantrism, Indian philosophical and epistemological literature of Abhidharma, Madhyamaka and Pramana, neo-Madhyamaka as formulated by Candrakirti, the formation of new religious traditions in 12th century Tibet, Gampopa as a founding father of the Kagyü traditions, practices of Tibetan yoga, and Chinese influences on Tibetan Buddhism. He studied with native Tibetan scholars for nine years in India, Nepal, Sikkim and Bhutan while completing his Western academic education in the European universities of Copenhagen and Hamburg. For the past fifteen years, he has functioned as a Tibetan translator and interpreter, language instructor and academic teacher in the field of South-Asian and Himalayan studies. He continues to be a post-doctoral research fellow at Harvard University studying and translating meditation manuals of the Tibetan Kagyü tradition. His other research interests are 8th-9th century female Buddhist masters from northwestern Pakistan and the male reception of their tradition in India and Tibet as well as the textual horizons in the Madhyamaka writings of Candrakirti.

Indian, Tibetan, and Chinese Buddhism
Buddhist Philosophy, Pramana, Madhyamaka, and the Commentator Candrakirti
Buddhist Practices in Mahayana and Vajrayana
Gender Studies in Buddhism
Tibetan Yoga
Gampopa and the Kagyu Traditions

Fall 2007

REL3180-02 Buddhist Ethics
REL3340 Buddhist Tradition
REL1300 Introduction to World Religions