T'ang Studies: The Next Twenty-five Years

An International Conference to Celebrate the 25th Anniversary of the T'ang Studies Society.

Conference Program:

The goal of the conference is to assess the current state of T‘ang studies and to encourage new avenues of research and collaboration among scholars of medieval China.  Response to the call for proposals was enthusiastic, and the selection of papers for presentation was based both on the quality of the individual proposals and on the need to create panels of papers on related topics that fit with the themes of the conference.  The schedule of papers is:

Panel One

Jonathan Skaff, “Sui-Tang Diplomatic Protocol as Eurasian Ritual”

David L. McMullen, “Disorder in the ranks: Tang court assemblies and fault-lines in the Tang governmental structure”

Norman Harry Rothschild, “Cakravartin, Ceremony and Conflagration: Wu Zhao and the Pançavarsika of 694”

Michael R. Drompp, “(Re-)Packaging the Past: Assessing the Huichang Era”

Panel Two

Patricia Karetzky, “Tang Metropolitan Style in Religious Art”

Michelle C. Wang, “Of Dh?ra??s and Ma??alas:  Mogao Cave 14 and Esoteric Buddhist Art of the Tang Dynasty”

Suzanne Cahill, “Material Reflections of Identity and Hierarchy:  The Essays on Vehicles and Clothing in the Official Histories of the Tang Dynasty”

Panel Three

Mark Halperin, “Transcendents for the Rest of Us:  The Divine and Prosaic in the Shenxian ganyu zhuan”

Jinhua Jia, “Du Guangting and the Hagiographies of Tang Daoist Priestesses”

Sungwu Cho, “Funerary Ritual of Medieval Daoist Priests”

Mario Poceski, “Hagiographic Representation and Historical Reimagining of Tang Chan”

Panel Four

Beverly Bossler, “Entertaining the Elite:  Courtesans and their Patrons from the Eighth to Tenth Centuries”

YAO Ping, “From “Merry Making” to “Great Bliss”: Sexuality in Tang China”

WANGLING Jinghua, “The Shaping of Du Mu’s Fengliu Poetic Personality”

Panel Five

Paul W. Kroll, “On the Study of Tang Literature”

James M. Hargett, “The Record (Ji ?) Form and its Role in the Development of Prose Travel Literature during the Tang”

Luo Manling, “Imagining the Kaiyuan and Tianbao:  The Construction of Mosaic Memory in the Post-Rebellion Anecdotes”

Charles Hartman, “Du Fu in the Poetry Standards (Shige ??) and the Origins of the Earliest Du Fu Commentary”

Panel Six

Jack W. Chen, “Social Networks, Ghosts, and the Question of Anyi Ward”

Oliver Moore, “Flows of Time between Tang City and Province”

Linda Rui Feng, “Crimes and Criminality in Tang Chang’an”

Panel Seven

Alexei Ditter, “The Auto-Inscribed Life:  Self-authored Muzhiming in the Mid- to Late-Tang”

Ian Chapman, “One Foot out of the Grave: Inscribing Holy Lives in Tang China”

Chen Huaiyu, “Tradition and Transformation:  An Overview of Recent Chinese and Japanese Scholarship on Tang Epigraphical Materials”

Jessey J. C. Choo, “A Life Inscribed—The Ritualization of Life and Death in Tang Muzhi”

Round-Table:  Tang Studies in the Next 25 Years

Patricia Ebrey

Eugene Wang

Graham Sanders

For a complete text of the program, click here.

Conference Registration:

The Department of East Asian Studies at the University at Albany will arrange the registration of participants and special guests.  All other attendees will need to register for the conference by April 3, 2009.  If you wish to attend, please fill out the Registration Form (pdf).

There will be a complimentary reception for all participants Friday evening and a banquet, with a separate fee, on Saturday evening.  Because of budgetary constraints in a difficult economic climate, attendees who are neither presenters nor special guests will need to pay a conference fee and, optionally, a banquet fee as listed below.
 
Conference Fee (regular):  $90      
Conference Fee (graduate student) $35
Banquet Fee (optional):  $40