The Hebrew Univ. of Jerusalem
29th Jun – 1st Jul 2014
Deadline: 1st Nov 2013
The ERC project Mobility Empire and Cross – Cultural Conquest in Mongol Eurasia will sponsor an international conference in 29 June July 2014. The conference will examine how various forms of mobility – of people, ideas and artifacts – were instrumental in creating economic social, cultural and intellectual exchanges in the realm ruled by the Mongol empire and its successor states (and beyond) in the 13th and 14th centuries, and what was the impact of these movements. Culture is meant here in a broad definition, including also reference to religious and artistic and exchanges. The conference also aims to reconstruct and characterize commercial, religious and intellectual/scientific networks that operated in the Empire on a local, regional, and continental scale. Papers, for instance, can also deal with a certain migrant groups, a cultural biography, the study of a text or artifact, or larger questions of an aspect of mobility that led to meaningful transformation. Papers dealing with the Mongol state in Central Asia (the Chaghadaid Khanate) or with the impact of Mongolian culture on the empire’s subjects and/or neighbors are especially welcome.
Among the questions that we like to see addressed:
- How did different migrating groups (e.g., professional, ethnic, and confessional) facilitate or hinder cultural cross-fertilization?
- What were the inter-cultural dialogues that emerged in various contexts? What was their impact? Why were certain features disseminated more easily than others?
- What role did various migrating groups play in different facets of economic exchange? To what extent were different regions, both within and outside the empire, dependent on one another? In other words, how global was the world in the 13th and 14th centuries?
- What Mongolian economic, social, and administrative policies are discernible in all the four khanates? Did these policies merge with the local traditions of each region?
- What was the impact of Mongolian policies and institutions on the future development of each area and the continent at large?
The conference will be followed by a three days summer school (2-4 July 2014) related to the Cambridge History of the Mongol Empire, now being edited by Michal Biran and Hodong Kim. This means that a significant group of scholars of the Mongol empire will attend the conference and serve as presenters, chairs and discussants.
We hope to be able to provide a certain support for accommodation and travel expenses for part of the participants: the exact amount of the support will be determined by early 2014. People applying for both the conference and summer school increase their chances of receiving support.
Please send the paper’s title and abstract (up to 250 words), accompanied by a short (2 pages max) CV to the addresses below:
ercmongol@gmail.com and jeniay@savion.huji.ac.il
Deadline for abstracts’ proposals: November 1st, 2013. For more info about the conference and the summer school see
http://mongol.huji.ac.il/