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
