WXBC: A Cycle of Collapse and Rejuvenation

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College

The market for commercial mortgage-backed securities among life insurance companies and pension funds

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1994.Includes bibliographical references (leaf 50).by Craig J. Faggen.M.S

Contested Authority of a Tibetan Goddess: Narrating the Tragic and Non-traditional Life Story of the Lay Mother Reincarnate Kelzang Drölma

Most scholarship about Tibetan Buddhist virtuosos, including recent works about Tibetan women, analyzes their exemplarity in auto/biographical life writings. My dissertation introduces an ethnography about the contested creation of a biography of a religious figure whose life did not follow a traditional path. That figure is Kelzang Drölma (1936-2013), the sixth member of the Gungru Yeshé Khandroma female reincarnate lineage at Drakkar Monastery in Gengya in the eastern Tibetan region of Amdo (Qinghai, southwest Gansu and northern Sichuan provinces in the People’s Republic of China). The Gungru lineage is one of the few continuous female reincarnate lineages in Tibetan history. And the story of Kelzang’s life could not be more contested than it is right now before the Seventh Gungru reincarnate returns to Drakkar. (The search for the seventh reincarnate is ongoing). That is because the process to sanctify Kelzang’s life in the Tibetan genre of namtar (liberation story), has collapsed. This happened amidst a conflict among the various stakeholders—Kelzang’s third husband Chödzin, her son Dépön and the monk author Gendün Darjé—to re-create the conditions of Kelzang’s sanctity. The fifth chapter elaborates the stakes to legitimate Kelzang’s authority in a namtar as first established about the Fourth Gungru Rindzin Pelmo (1814-1891) in Chapter 1. This namtar called the White Lotus Vine (1897) legitimates Rindzin Pelmo’s authority as a metaphorical mother figure who exuded universal compassion like the Buddha and for whom the patriarchy glorified as an exemplar and beacon of unity. But reproducing this storyline for Kelzang has been challenging. In his vision of writing a story of sanctity about his wife, Chödzin clashed with the monk author of her now canceled namtar. Specifically, they disputed what material should be included and who should write the text. This stalemate is not surprising given the shocking story of Kelzang’s life. Many monks, nuns, herders, farmers, government workers, administrators and Chödzin spoke about Kelzang’s laicization in 1958; she was sexually assaulted as the PRC halted a Tibetan rebellion against PRC reforms. Some spoke about Kelzang’s out-of-wedlock first child, her divorce from her first husband and the domestic abuse inflicted by her second husband before he died during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). They talked about how Kelzang’s four adult children feuded with Drakkar over land ownership after the Cultural Revolution. Others noted how Kelzang retreated from her duties as a reincarnate because she was a mother who worked in the government. What became apparent is that people’s testimony about the discontinuity in Kelzang’s life became the focal point in which to understand her fluctuating authority as a laicized mother. In other words, I discovered that authority for Kelzang existed in the eyes of the beholder and was never automatic or given, but varied, negotiated and complex. In other words, oral testimony shows that authority became imbricated in the nexus of political, historical social and gendered contexts, and in particular discourses of motherhood. Moreover, Kelzang’s authority became elided with people’s strategies and doubts to discuss her life in various religio-temporal contexts

Bobbie.

Gift of Dr. Mary Jane Esplen.Piano vocal [instrumentation]All day long there's something I keep thinking of [first line]Bobbie my darling Bobbie I've made a hobby [first line of chorus]C major [key]Moderato [tempo]Popular song [form/genre]Photograph: Aileen Stanley [illustration]Publisher's advertisement on front inside cover & back cover [note