Eveline Washul

Phone:

(812) 855-0019

Email:

ewashul@iu.edu

Adjunct Affiliations

Adjunct Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology
Adjunct Assistant Professor, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures 

Education

Ph.D., Indiana University (CEUS and Anthropology)
M.A., Indiana University (Anthropology)
M.A., Columbia University (International Affairs, East Asian Studies)
B.A., University of Colorado, Boulder (Anthropology and Asian Studies)

Geographical areas of specialization

Tibet; Inner Asia; China; Himalayas

Research Interests:

Anthropology of place making; urbanization and development; state power and Indigenous peoplehood; epistemic pluralism; ethnicity and state building in modern China; historical geography; history of Tibeto-Mongol interface; borderlands; genealogies; local histories

About Eveline Washul

I am a sociocultural anthropologist and historian of Tibet. My main research interests focus on the intersections of place-making, peoplehood, and various forms of state power. I consider how these processes shape the contours of social, geographic, and intellectual mobility and boundedness in specific historical and contemporary periods of Tibet. Using an interdisciplinary approach of ethnographic methods and historical research, my research centers ontological perspectives of Tibetan communities in contemporary and historical contexts and connects long durée histories with their ongoing lives in the present. 

My book in progress, High Lands Pure Earth: Place-Making, History, and Affect in Tibetan Urbanisms in China, demonstrates how the Tibetan experience of rapid urbanization in 21^st century China continues to be profoundly shaped by ontologies and senses of being in the world that long pre-date Tibet’s incorporation into the modern Chinese nation-state. Ethnographic research highlights the translocal mobilities of Tibetans—the circuits of mobility that Tibetan individuals take between Tibetan home places and urban centers in China—and the new social landscapes these mobilities open up. Based on ethnographic field work and archival and textual research, my work examines how the geo-body of Tibet’s 7^th to 9^th century empire has been the basis for Tibetan perceptual regions through the centuries and continues to shape spatial imaginaries and mobilities in the present.

My other research examines changing concepts of Tibetan geography, perceptual regions, and boundaries in different historical periods; Tibeto-Mongol histories; and local histories of eastern Tibet. I am currently engaged in a new research project that studies Tibeto-Mongol genealogies, local histories, and oral histories from eastern Tibet alongside traditional written narratives of Tibetan histories and Chinese records of Mongol royal lineages. In doing so, this research reconsiders social and ethnic categories, mobilities, breaking points, and cohesion at the scale of local communities that are specific to the cultural, environmental, and religio-political landscapes from the 16th century onwards, as well as the ongoing engagements of present-day communities with their living histories.

Prior to joining IU, I served as Director of the Modern Tibetan Studies Program and Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University, where I developed a series of collaborative initiatives with the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory on climate change research on the Tibetan Plateau. I additionally bring to my scholarship a background working in cultural and development projects in Tibet spanning over two decades. My research interests and commitments emerge from living and working with Tibetan communities in Tibetan regions and beyond.

At IU, I am part of the Global Indigenous Studies Network and co-direct the Columbia University-Indiana University Climate Research Initiative on the Tibetan Plateau.

Courses Recently Taught

• COLL CAPPS C-104: Space and Place in Urbanizing Tibet: Indigenous Experiences in China
• CEUS-R 270: Civilization of Tibet
• CEUS-R 370/570, HIST-C 300: Introduction to the History of Tibet
• CEUS-R 371/571, ANTH-E300/600, EALC-E350/550: Tibet and the West
• CEUS-R 372/572: Sino-Tibetan Relations in History
• CEUS-R 374/579, ANTH-E 300/600, EALC-E350: Contemporary Tibet

Publication Highlights

• 2024. “Centering the Histories of Tibetan Place Names.” In “Centering the Richness of Tibetan Language in Tibetan Studies” special issue of Yeshe: A Journal of Tibetan Literature, Arts and Humanities.
  https://yeshe.org/centering-the-histories-of-tibetan-place-names/
• 2022. “Amdo: Social Landscapes and Change.” In Michael Heneise and Jelle Wouters, eds. The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Highland Asia. London: Routledge. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9780429345746-5/amdo-eveline-washul
• 2018. “Tibetan Translocalities: Navigating Urban Opportunities and New Ways of Belonging in Tibetan Pastoral Communities in China.” Critical Asian Studies 50(4): 493-517. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14672715.2018.1520606
• 2016. “Tracing the Chol kha gsum: Reexamining a Sa skya-Yuan Period Administrative Geography.” Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines, 37: 550–67.
  https://himalaya.socanth.cam.ac.uk/collections/journals/ret/pdf/ret_37_29.pdf.