Prof. Sarah Jacoby

By mark

Published on March 24, 2021

Project Consultant

Sarah is an associate professor in the Religious Studies Department at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. She specializes in Tibetan Buddhist studies, with research interests in Buddhist revelation (gter ma), religious biography, Tibetan literature, gender and sexuality, the history of emotions, and the history of eastern Tibet. Sarah leads workshops for our translator trainees and is advising the project on textual interpretation and recruitment.

Sarah received her BA from Yale University, majoring in women’s studies, and her MA and PhD degrees from the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia. She joined Northwestern University after completing a postdoctoral fellowship at the Society of Fellows in the Humanities at Columbia University. She is the author of Love and Liberation: Autobiographical Writings of the Tibetan Buddhist Visionary Sera Khandro (Columbia University Press, 2014); co-author of Buddhism: Introducing the Buddhist Experience (Oxford University Press, 2014); and co-editor of Buddhism Beyond the Monastery: Tantric Practices and Their Performers in Tibet and the Himalayas (Brill, 2009).

Currently, Sarah is working on a full Tibetan-English translation of Sera Khandro’s autobiography, among other projects. She is the co-chair of the Tibetan and Himalayan Religions Group at the American Academy of Religion. At Northwestern, she teaches a range of Buddhist Studies courses for both undergraduate and graduate students, including Introduction to Buddhism; Buddhism and Gender; Buddhist Auto/biography; Tibetan Religion and Culture; Theory and Methods in the Study of Religion; Religion, Sexuality, and Celibacy; and Feminist Theory and the Study of Religion.