The Silk Road: Cultural Pathway Between East and West

With Support from the Center for Slavic, Eurasian, and East European Studies

Time: September 20, 2008

The Silk Road, or Silk Route, is a series of trade and cultural transmission routes that were central to cultural interaction between East and West. It was a region traversed by traders, merchants, pilgrims, monks, soldiers, nomads, and urban dwellers from Chang’an (now Xi’an) in China to Asia Minor and beyond. This is a region that includes such present-day states as Afghanistan, China, India, Iran, Jordan, Mongolia, Syria, Turkey, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Little was known of the heritage of the Silk Road until explorers and archaeologists of the early twentieth century uncovered the ruins of ancient cities in the desert sands, revealing astonishing sculptures, murals and manuscripts. One of the most notable discoveries was the Buddhist cave library near the oasis town of Dunhuang on the edge of the Gobi desert in western China. We will consider the history and legacy of the Silk Road in this seminar, looking at its development as a trade route, a site of religious practice, a place of artistic creation, and as a spur to Western development and expansion.

Topics and Speakers

Silk and Spices from “All Under Heaven”: Imperial China’s Tributary Relations with Kingdoms along the Silk Road
James A. Anderson, Associate Professor of History, UNC Greensboro

From Artifice to Art: Verisimilitude and Sinicization in Central Asian Cave Shrines
Neil Schmid, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, North Carolina State University

Art of the Borderland or Center? The Silk Road in China during the Eighth to the Eleventh Centuries
Wei-Cheng Lin, Associate Professor of Art History

The Western Anchors of the Silk Road
Sarah Shields, Associate Professor of History

Encounters and Exchanges along the Silk Road
Professors Anderson, Schmid, Lin, and Shields

Time and Cost

9:15 a.m.-5:15 p.m., Saturday, September 20, 2008. The tuition is $120 ($105 by September 10). The optional lunch is $15. Tuition for teachers is $60 ($52.50 by September 10). 10 contact hours for 1 unit of renewal credit.

For more information, please visit http://www.unc.edu/depts/human/level_3/2008_fall/2-SilkRoad.htm