Kurtis R. Schaeffer is Professor of Tibetan and Buddhist Studies at the University of Virginia and Chair of the Religious Studies department. His primary topics of research are the history of the regions of Nepal, India, Tibet, and China, with a focus on the forms of Buddhism present in these areas, most especially Tibetan Buddhism. Some specific issues he has been concentrated on include Indo-Tibetan poetry, the development of classical learning and printed literature in Tibetan cultural regions, and the history of women, saints, and Dalai Lamas in Tibet. For his work, Schaeffer has received Fulbright, Ryskamp, and Whiting fellowships.
Schaeffer has written and edited several books, as well as numerous scholarly articles. Schaeffer's first book, Himalayan Hermitess: The Life of a Tibetan Buddhist Nun, was published by Oxford University Press in 2004. In this book, Schaeffer examines the autobiography of a seventeenth-century Nepalese Buddhist nun, Orgyan Chokyi. Scaheffer is particularly interested in how the autobiography reveals women's voice within Tibetan Buddhist practice, voices which are often overlooked, ignored, or silenced. Through this, he explores the unique perspectives on Tibetan Buddhist doctrine and practice Orgyan Chokyi brings to light through her autobiography, including a more localized religious life, an emphasis on the physicality of the body in practice, and a particular focus on the day-to-day reality of suffering. Schaeffer followed Himalayan Hermitess with Dreaming the Great Brahmin: Tibetan Traditions of the Buddhist Poet Saint Saraha, where he works to broaden the idea of "tradition" as it relates to the Tibetan cultural world from the actions of a singular historical author to the multivariant roles and agencies of a given text throughout Tibetan life. In this work, Schaeffer seeks to explore the creative traditions which surrounded the figure of Saraha and gave him life throughout the Tibetan Buddhist world long after his death, including exposing conflicted, and at times, contradictory visions of the century Indian figures life, actions, and teachings. Schaeffer has continued to encourage a broad understanding of Tibetan culture and tradition, particularly through his 2014 book, The Culture of the Book in Tibet, published through Columbia University Press. This work explores the contours of Tibetan book production, consumption, and use to reveal the significant, yet incredibly variable, role of books in Tibetan cultural life. Through this, Schaeffer reveals not only the crucial role of textual criticism and scholarship in Tibetan Buddhist practice, but also how Tibetan books simultaneously functioned as relics and sites of devotional activity. Beyond his monographs, Schaeffer has also edited several volumes, including Among Tibetan Texts: Essays on Tibetan Religion, Literature, and History by E. Gene Smith,, Power, Politics, and the Reinvention of Tradition: Tibet in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Most recently, Schaeffer edited two volumes in 2013 for Columbia University Press--Sources of Tibetan Tradition and The Tibetan History Reader --both of which make the recent research into Tibetan history, doctrine, and culture available for both academic researchers and for students in college classrooms. Continuing to produce foundational texts for classroom settings, Schaeffer has recently produced a translation of a life of the Buddha written by eighteenth-century Bhutanese intellectual Tenzin Chögyel. This work not only provides a clear translation of the Buddha's life narrative with helpful explanatory notes, but also includes an introduction by Schaeffer exploring the stylized format of the Buddha's life narrative and its potential to contain multiple interpretations of the Buddha's ontological identity. Beyond monographs and edited volumes, Schaeffer has also written a number of academic papers and encyclopedia articles.
