Catherine Hartmann

I ​am a professor and scholar of the history of Buddhism at the University of Wyoming. 

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As a teacher, I have four main goals. The first is that students will learn about a time and place distant to their own. The second is that students will develop critical reading skills, and be able to analyze primary and secondary texts in terms of their arguments, methods, and evidence. The third is that students will become persuasive communicators, both in speech and writing. They will be able to make claims and support them with evidence, and to express themselves clearly. The fourth is that students, in learning about times and places distant to their own, will reflect anew on their own ideas and assumptions. The purpose of these four goals is to have student leave my classes with the tools to be informed and conscientious citizens in whatever future path they choose.

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As a scholar, I am interested in how religion shapes our experience of the world, and in the practices religions develop to transform that experience. My primary research project is about intellectual history of pilgrimage in Tibet, but I'm also interested in Buddhist ethics, as well as Buddhist approaches to addiction and recovery.