Dan Hirshberg, assistant professor of religion, delivered a paper titled “Spontaneous Presence: The Rapid Normalization of Padmasambhava’s Iconography in Image (and Text)” at McGill University’s School of Religious Studies (Montréal, Quebec, Canada). Drawn from research he is pursuing for his Jepson Fellowship, this paper focuses on the earliest extant paintings of a renowned 8th ce. master of esoteric Buddhism, and compares them against textual descriptions in Tibetan biographies and liturgies from the same era.