Reminder (and a correction): Two lectures with Prof. Christopher Atwood at ACMS US office in Philadelphia THIS THURSDAY (Nov. 20th)
Dear friends of ACMS,
Please be advised of a correction for this week's events at the US office. Events are happening this Thursday, not next week (as was advertised in the "This Month" mailing). Hope to see you there!
Best,
David, ACMS
|
|
|
|
Christopher P. Atwood, Associate Professor of Central Eurasian Studies at Indiana University-Bloomington
"Repackaging Chinggis Khan: Bilingual Histories of the Dynastic Founding in the Yuan Dynasty"
Nov. 20th, 12:30pm at University of Pennsylvania, Williams Hall room 844
For modern scholars and informed layfolk, the Secret History of the Mongols is the premier text for understanding the life and times of Chinggis (Genghis) Khan, founder of the Mongol world empire. But during the time of the Mongol empire and the succeeding Mongol Yuan dynasty in China, the Secret History was just that: secret. Written mostly in 1252, in the wake of Möngke Khan’s coup d’etat and purge, the Secret History was a little too explicit about the fratricidal incidents that accompanied the empire’s founding. After Qubilai Khan came to power, he authorized Chinese scholars to begin adding Chinese versions to the already significant body of Mongolian-language biographies, genealogies, and histories of the empire’s founding. For later reigns, Chinese became the language of record for history writing. Yet over the history of Chinggis Khan and the early empire, Qubilai and his successors retained a tight control using bilingual composition to monitor the telling of the story of the dynasty’s founding. In the 13th and 14th centuries, Chinggis Khan’s history was packaged in several different version that have survived in whole or in part. The story of these versions shows how the Mongol Yuan rulers used control of history to assert their ultimate authority over the compliant Chinese literati.
“Mongolia and China: Politics and Economics of a Difficult Relationship"
Nov. 20th, 4:30pm at University of Pennsylvania Annenberg School for Communication room 111
China has always played an outsized role in Mongolian national consciousness, a role based both on tangible factors such as size, economic weight, and political importance as well as intangible factors derived from historical memories, racial images, and presumed cultural incompatibilities. Since the 1990 transition to multi-party democracy, the “Chinese factor” has become one of the dominant, if subterranean and unpredictable, element in Mongolian anxieties about their trajectory. Since 2008, the salience of China in the Mongolian economy has dramatically increased, alongside significant changes in Mongolian foreign policy and on-going sensitivity over cultural flashpoints. This presentation will present the important changes occurring in Mongolia’s political and economic recent relationship with China and how they are interaction with the profoundly fraught nature of the Mongolian-Chinese relationship. |
|
|
