Introduction and description
Introduction
The workshop will introduce students to the complicated topic of non-Han empires and dynasties in East Asia. These empires provide a special challenge for historians. Although they governed regions inhabited by Han people, the founders of these empires belonged to other ethnicities in East Asia. However, the most profound data and sources about these empires and dynasties were written in Chinese and paid attention to those regions inhabited by Han people. The sources existing in their own languages and scripts have been for long time difficult to access and remained outside the focus of academic research.
Non-Han dynasties have therefore often been analysed according to their role within a Chinese historical perspective and for a long time it had been mostly neglected that their ethnical and cultural identity was different from the Han, on the basis of the assumption that they gradually assimilated i.e. sinicized to their Chinese subjects. It has not been until the last two decades of the 20th century that the assumption of sinicization was wholeheartedly doubted and academically refuted.
An important aim of the Workshop is to promote an international academic exchange among scholars and graduate students from American and European institutions. The attendees will gain new impulses and deeper insights, not only regarding non-Han empires in China, but also in a more general way regarding the writing of history. The essential idea is to methodologically combine a Sinological perspective with sociological and anthropological theories in order to deal with the problem of the concept of sinicization in historiography and the challenges for Sinologists when dealing with non-Han empires in China.
Each invited lecturer will provide one secondary text (as a basis for the lecture) and one primary source, which will be translated together with the participants. After each lecture and source analysis, the lecturers will guide a feedback discussion.
Participation
The attendees are supposed to read the secondary text each lecturer provides in advance and to prepare the translation of Chinese primary sources intensively.
A graduate level of classical and modern Chinese language skill is preferable. However, graduate students without this proficiency are also most welcome to participate, as the first part of each session requires no such skill. Moreover, Dr. Naomi Standen plans to introduce non-textual sources, and Prof. Veronika Veit will present a trilingual text (Chinese, Mongol, Manchu) in the second part of their sessions.