Visions and Indigenous Scholarship in Inner and Southeast Asia

We are pleased to announce the following workshop to be held at the Department of Mongolian, Korean and Vietnamese Studies, Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University: "Visions and Indigenous Scholarship in Inner and Southeast Asia".

The keynote speaker of the workshop will be Dr Katherine Swancutt, Reader in Social Anthropology at King’s College London and Project Lead of the ERC synergy grant ‘Cosmological Visionaries: Shamans, Scientists, and Climate Change at the Ethnic Borderlands of China and Russia’ from 2020-2026.

The keynote will be followed by two related invited presentations by Yueqi Zuoxi and Jan Karlach, team members of the ERC synergy grant ‘Cosmological Visionaries’.

Presentations by team members of the Czech Science Foundation Junior Star grant ‘Changing Adaptive Strategies of Mobile Pastoralists in Mongolia: Dynamics in Community Histories and Movement Patterns Documented Through Oral Sources (GM23-07108M)’ and the Czech Science Foundation Standard grant ‘Evolutionary interferences of religion and governance in Inner Asia: comparison of mutual impacts with tributary countries: Mongolia, Korea, Vietnam’ will follow

The visit of the keynote speaker was made possible thanks to the Strategic Management Support Programme (PPSŘ) - Internationalization at home for 2024.

This workshop is organized within the projects “Changing Adaptive Strategies in Mongolia” (Czech Science Foundation, GM23-07108M) and “Evolutionary interferences of religion and governance in Inner Asia: Comparison of mutual impacts with tributary countries: Mongolia, Korea, Vietnam” (Czech Science Foundation, GA23-06953S).

All interested are warmly welcome.

Program

08:00 – 08:05 Opening

Southwest China, Nuosu-Yi

08:05 – 08:50 Keynote: Katherine Swancutt: “Visions, Visionaries, and the Visual: The Making of Indigenous Scholarship in Southwest China”
08:50 - 09:00 Discussion
09:00 – 09:25 Yueqi Zuoxi: “Parallel Cosmologies: Mapping Nuosu-Yi Collaborative Visions and Textual Interpretations”
09:25 – 09:50 Jan Karlach: “Animistic Rituals or Scholarly Knowledge? Building Visions from Nuosu-Yi Scroll-Books”
09:50 – 10:00 Discussion
10:00 – 10:10 Coffee break

Inner Asia, Mongolia

10:10 – 10:25 Rachel Mikos: “Cosmic Images and Metaphors in Mongolian Riddles”
10:25 – 10:40 Mijid Sainbuyan: “Tsöög Khairkhan: Recalling Historical Memories and Building Visions of Belonging by Ovoo Offering Rituals in Khyargas Soum, Mongolia”
10:40 – 10:55 Michal Schwarz, Veronika Mattová: “Evolution and visualization of sacred statecraft in continental East Asia”
10:55 – 11:10 Ondřej Srba: “Visions of the Individual and Collective Future in Mongolian Written and Oral Sources: Selected Examples”
11:10 – 11:25 Discussion

Interregional comparisons

11:25 – 11:40 Ondřej Pazdírek: “‘They have two systems of medicine, Chinese and Indian’: medical traditions of Siam in the reports of early Christian missionaries”
11:40 – 11:55 Tereza Kabeláčová, Michal Schwarz & Ondřej Srba: “From visual representations to living traditions: mother deities and female mediums across Baltics, Southeast and Inner Asia”

[move to room J212]

12:00 Discussion, small refreshment, free networking…