IATS 2010 Begins!

The 2010 International Association of Tibetan Studies Conference will open tomorrow morning in Frederic Wood Theatre at UBC in Vancouver. The UBC campus has already been filled with a veritable who’s who of Tibetan Studies and I am looking forward to listening to as many of these eminent scholars as possible. Tomorrow will include a welcoming ceremony including addresses by professor Tsering Shakya and Dr. Charles Ramble. I will then spend most of the day at the Contributions to Tibetan Literature: Texts, Genres and Generic Terms panel, which will include papers titled:

” “Collected Writings” (gsung ‘bum) in Tibetan Literature: Towards a Systematic Study of Their Compilation, Redaction and Composition and its Use for Genre Classifications,”  “Tools of the Trade of the Tibetan Translators,” and  “Classifying Literature or Organizing Knowledge? Some General Remarks on Genre Classifications in Tibetan Literature.”

A more complete list of panels can be found here.

Do leave me a note if there is some discussion you simply must hear about, otherwise I will be attending things I am interested in, such as the Madhyamaka panel, the Tibetological Library and Archive Resources panel, and Buddhist Texts and Philosophy, and The History of the Rang-stong/Gzhan-stong, and the list goes on. It is impossible to attend all of the truly fascinating panels at this years IATS, but I hope to be able to discuss a few of the most interesting here on this blog over the course of the next week.