International EASCM-Conference 2014: “Orthopraxy, Orthography, Orthodoxy. Emic and Etic Standards and Classifications of Chinese Manuscripts”

Heidelberg, Germany
11th – 13th Jul 2014

On a scale unprecedented and unmatched anywhere else in the world, China over the course of the last century has enjoyed a tremendous increase of historical source texts through excavation. Manuscript texts retrieved particularly from early but also from medieval sites have multiplied the volume of text that is available to us from those periods and have brought to light whole new genres of literature, breathtaking historical information, and hitherto unknown script styles. Most of these manuscripts have been recovered during well-documented archaeological excavations, but an increasing number are also being discovered by illegal digging and subsequently sold without any information on their archaeological origins.

The pluralistic origins of these sources, as well as the richness of their contents and broad range of their forms, have created new practical, theoretical, and methodological challenges, among them questions of standards and classification. A reappraisal is called for, not only of the explanatory models that historical sources themselves supply us with, such as the narrative of the sudden unification of the script under the First Emperor, but also of long-cherished criteria, beliefs, and practices that we use to apply to our subject, such as criteria to distinguish between different hands, the belief that traditional sources have already provided us with a good grasp of what was considered orthodox and what not, and the practice of studying manuscripts only on the basis of transcriptions of their text.

Twenty of the foremost specialists on ancient and medieval Chinese manuscripts from Europe, the United States, China, and Japan will share the results of their research on theoretical, palaeographical, phonological, historical, hemerological, medical, and institutional aspects of manuscripts and discuss them with an audience of colleagues from various disciplines as well as doctoral and graduate students.

 

List of participants

Presenters

Allan, Sarah (Dartmouth College)
Behr, Wolfgang (Universität Zürich)
Boltz, William G. (University of Washington)
Caboara, Marco (Uppsala Universitet)
Chin Shih-chi (National Chengchi University, Taibei)
Galambos, Imre (Cambridge University)
Giele, Enno (Universität Heidelberg)
Krijgsman, Rens (Oxford University)
Lau, Ulrich (Universität Hamburg)
Meyer, Dirk (Oxford University)
Miyake Kiyoshi (Kyoto University)
Park Haeree (Universität Hamburg)
Richter, Matthias L. (University of Colorado Boulder)
Staack, Thies (Universität Hamburg)
Venture, Olivier (EPHE, Paris)
Vogt, Nicholas (Universität Heidelberg)
Williams, Crispin (University of Kansas)

Discussants

Friedrich, Michael (Universität Hamburg)
Kalinowski, Marc (EPHE, Paris)
Shaughnessy, Edward L. (University of Chicago)



Visit the conference website at: External Link…

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