Charlene E. Makley's "The Body of a Nun: Nunhood and Gender in Contemporary Amdo" discusses how gender constrains and troubles women pursuing a monastic vocation. At Labrang, in Gansu, China, dominated by its large Tibetan Buddhist monastic complex, Makley met with nuns who related their experiences of marginality and alienation. In a context of dramatic social and economic change, Tibetans in Labrang identified nuns as unwelcome foreign influences, analogous to Muslim Chinese and stray dogs. Informed by her four years of fieldwork, Makley argues that nuns' bodies became sites for contesting gendered social boundaries between lay households and the monastic community, and between sexuality and asceticism.
