Tamara
Chin, Assoc. Professor of Comparative Literature, Brown University
“Inventing
Silk Road Studies”
Thursday,
April 2, 2015 at 7:30 p.m.
Knight
Building, 521 Memorial Way (behind Memorial Auditorium), Room 102
Since the
1980s, the term Silk Road has had a popular and academic appeal, suggestive of
an era of premodern globalization in which China played a central role.
Silk Road books, journals, exhibitions, conferences, and institutes are
increasingly commonplace across Asia, North America, and Europe. This
talk introduces the modern idea of the Silk Road as a term first coined by a
German geographer in 1877. It sketches the early translation and
circulation of the term in colonial geography, before its re-appropriation in
diplomatic discourses after the 1955 Bandung Conference and Nixon’s 1972 visit
to China. The talk then addresses the idea of Silk Road studies as an
academic field. Despite a general familiarity with what now falls under
Silk Road studies (e.g., Central Asian art; Dunhuang manuscripts; contemporary
Chinese geopolitics), insufficient attention has been paid to its potential
parameters or usefulness. I ask: as what kind of heuristic device
has the Silk Road served, and in which disciplines? Is a more defined or
institutionalized field of Silk Road studies desirable? If so, which
model should it follow, and which other fields should it position itself with
or against (e.g. Area Studies, postcolonial studies, comparative literature)?
Tamara Chin
received her BA from Harvard College in Classics and Literature and PhD from
U.C. Berkeley in Comparative Literature (classical Chinese, Greek,
Latin). She recently published “Savage Exchange: Han Imperialism,
Chinese Literary Style, and the Economic Imagination “ (Harvard, 2014).
Exciting
lectures coming up:
Stephen F.
Teiser, Professor, Princeton University
“The
Origins of the Dunhuang Manuscripts”
Friday,
April 10 at 7:30 p.m. (Note new day)
Knight
Building, 521 Memorial Way, Room 102
Zhijian
Qiao, Ph.D. candidate in History, Stanford University
“’The Tea
Road’: Shanxi Merchants and the Expansion of Chinese Trading Network in
the Mongolian Steppe”
Thursday,
May 21 at 7:30 p.m.
Knight
Building, 521 Memorial Way, Room 102
Tamara Chin
and Stephen Teiser’s talks are co-sponsored by the Silk Road Foundation, CEAS,
and the Ho Center for Buddhist Studies at Stanford University.
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Posted by:
Connie Chin <csquare@stanford.edu>
