jueves, 28 de abril de 2016

Stanford Silk Road

May 5
“The Story of Mulan:  Women and War in Early Medieval China”
By Scott Pearce, Professor, Western Washington University
Thursday, May 5, at 7:30 p.m.
Knight Bldg. Room 102, at 521 Memorial Way, Stanford University

The story of Mulan, a woman who went to war, has undergone many transformations, in China and beyond. Its earliest version, however, “The Poem of Mulan,”  was not Chinese in origin, but apparently came from among the Inner Asian Tuoba people who in the late fourth century conquered the Yellow River plain to establish the Northern Wei dynasty (386-534). Though the received version of the poem is in Chinese, evidence is strong that this was a translation of a folk song in the Tuoba’s Altaic language. In this paper we examine “The Poem of Mulan” against the background of Northern Wei history to see what it can tell us about the Tuoba army, its relationship to Tuoba society, and women’s role in that society.

Trained in the history of China, inner Asia, and Japan, and in Chinese thought and religion, Professor Scott Pearce specializes in the alien dynasties that ruled northern China during the 5th and 6th centuries AD. He currently is working on a book on the “great reformer” emperor, Xiaowen (r. 471-499), who refashioned his realm from an imposition by force of arms into a state that sought to rest upon the traditions of his conquered Chinese subjects. From this work come scholarly and teaching interests in many related issues, such as the encounter and interaction of cultures, the evolution of Buddhism in medieval China, military history, and the poetry of war. 

May 25
“Ritual Seals as Evidence for Silk Road Studies”
By Prof. Paul Copp, University of Chicago
Wednesday, May 25, at 7:30 p.m.
Knight Bldg., Room 102, at 521 Memorial Way, Stanford University

Strikingly similar uses of seals (including ideas of seals) are widely attested in religious and magical practices across Afro-Eurasian history, in cultures and periods as disparate as medieval Britain, ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, and Tang China. This much is easily shown. What is much more difficult to answer are questions of how to understand these connections. For example, can we--and if so, in what precise ways can we--consider the rich and far-flung evidence for these similar practices and conceptions as evidence for the trade and cultural networks we now call the silk road? Surveying evidence especially from China, India, and Central Asia (but considering broader connections), this talk will ponder this question and the methodological issues connected with it.
Paul Copp is associate professor in Chinese religion and thought at the University of Chicago. He is the author of The Body Incantatory: Spells and the Ritual Imagination in Medieval Chinese Buddhism (Columbia, 2014) and is currently at work on a new book, tentatively titled "Seal and Scroll: Buddhism and Manuscript Culture at Dunhuang."

Sponsored  by the Silk Road Foundation and the Center for East Asian Studies