January 20 Horizons of Knowledge Lecture

PRESENTER: Tamara Chin (Comparative Literature, University of Chicago)

TOPIC: The Invention of the Silk Road, 1877
DATE: Friday, January 20, 2012

TIME: 12:00-1:15 p.m.
LOCATION: Ballantine 004

(Light refreshments will be served. You are also welcome to bring your own lunch.)

The Silk Road has become a widely used metaphor of inter-cultural contact.  This talk gives a brief history of the ‘invention’ and popularization of the term.  It returns to Ferdinand von Richthofen’s coining of the term in 1877, not as a generalized figure of exchange, but as a concrete distance along a projected railroad between China and Europe.  Richthofen mapped out the Silk Road (die Seidenstrasse) as the limits of ancient Greek knowledge, alongside which he introduced the scientific content of ancient Chinese texts.   For Richthofen, the Silk Road was a metaphor of visuality rather than space.  He argued for a ‘stereoscopic’ rather than monocular approach to the colonial cartography of Central Asia, within which Greek texts provided only one ‘eye’ or line of vision. 

Tamara Chin is an assistant professor of comparative literature at the University of Chicago.  Her book manuscript "Savage Exchange: Historical Imaginations of Han Trade and Expansion" is currently under review. Tamara Chin's research and teaching interests include Han dynasty literary and material culture; ancient cross-cultural exchange (‘silk road’); economic literature; gender and sexuality studies; Chinese and Greek historiography.

Persons with disabilities interested in attending our events who may require assistance, please contact us in advance at (812) 855-3765.

East Asian Studies Center

Indiana University

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Bloomington, IN  47405

Phone:  (812) 855-3765

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E-mail:  easc@indiana.edu

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