Re-Enacting the Silk Road: Transnational Encounters for the 21st Century

根据AHRC的“翻译文化”重点通知，该研究网络将调查丝绸之路作为文化传播，翻译和交流的看似特权网站的概念，以考虑其挑战仍然决定“东方”和“西方”传统类别的有限，对立的地缘政治的根本潜力。该网络是一个国际性、跨学科和跨部门的论坛，旨在激发学者、旅游作家、博物馆、艺术画廊和旅游业的专业人士以及创意和视觉艺术从业者之间的新对话和合作。这样做，将有助于更广泛的公众重新想象这条连接中国东部和西欧城镇的古老的长途贸易路线，使其成为21世纪全球关注的焦点。丝绸之路在欧洲和亚洲的历史地理中占据突出地位超过世纪，并且仍然是一个强有力的令人回味的隐喻，围绕它构建了东西方关系的叙述。对欧洲和亚洲之间的经济、文化和知识交流的研究几乎与相互作用本身一样古老。然而，对古代陆上贸易路线的系统研究直到世纪后期才开始，当时欧洲历史学家、地理学家和考古学家首次对主要的跨大陆通道进行了学术性的描述，沿着的人员和商品，特别是丝绸等高价值、低体积的纺织品，在许多世纪里都在不断地流动。关于丝绸之路的早期经典著作包括苏格兰东方学家亨利·尤尔（1820-1880）和德国探险家、学者费迪南德·冯·里希特霍芬（1833-1905）的著作，前者将威尼斯旅行家马可·波罗的冒险经历重新介绍给维多利亚时代的阅读大众，后者在1877年创造了“塞登大街”一词。这些开创性的想法是在世纪早期由探险家、收藏家和作家发展起来的，比如备受争议的瑞典冒险家斯文·赫定（Sven Hedin，1865-1952）和匈牙利出生的著名旅行家奥莱尔·斯坦因（Aurel Stein，1862-1943），还有更多定居的地缘政治理论家，比如哈尔福德·麦金德（Halford Mackinder，1861-1947）。自第二次世界大战以来，新形式的历史和考古研究已经改变了对丝绸之路的解释，拒绝了早期帐户的帝国主义内涵，而是强调由相似但不同的经济，社会和知识力量塑造的地区之间的共同传统和相互构成的遭遇。然而，尽管有这些更关键的方法，这条路线上充满想象力的异国情调的地理环境仍然存在。丝绸之路的故事不仅再现了不同文化间交流的画面，也再现了奢华、异国情调和冒险精神的画面，这一点在西方和东方国家生产和消费的当代游记、文学小说、电视节目和其他文化表演中显而易见。在中国、印度和其他亚洲大国经济快速发展的背景下，为了响应公众对丝绸之路日益增长的兴趣，该网络寻求对东西方经济、文化和知识翻译和交流进行重新评估，以扩大其在旅游、遗产和艺术等公共部门的影响。虽然该网络将包括丝绸之路研究专家，但研讨会的主要目的不是促进历史和考古研究。相反，这些活动将汇集来自创意和旅游行业，旅游写作和视觉艺术的学者和非专业人士，探讨丝绸之路的最新学术如何促进更广泛的公众重新想象这条古老的贸易路线。

Informed by the AHRC's 'Translating Cultures' highlight notice, the research network will investigate the concept of the Silk Road as a seemingly privileged site of cultural transmission, translation and exchange, in order to consider its radical potential to challenge the bounded, oppositional geopolitics that still determine the conventional categories of 'East' and 'West'. An international, inter-disciplinary and cross-sectoral forum, the network is intended to spark new conversations and collaborations between academics, travel writers, professionals from museums, art galleries and the tourist industry, and practitioners in the creative and visual arts. In doing so, it will serve to enable a wider public re-imagining of this ancient, long-distance trade route linking towns and cities from eastern China to western Europe, so that it speaks to 21st century global concerns.The Silk Road has featured prominently in historical geographies of Europe and Asia for more than a century, and remains a powerfully evocative metaphor around which narratives of east-west relationships are constructed. Investigations into the economic, cultural and intellectual exchanges between Europe and Asia are almost as old as the interactions themselves. The systematic study of ancient overland trade routes however, only began in the late 19th century when European historians, geographers and archaeologists produced the first scholarly accounts of the main trans-continental conduits along which people and commodities, particularly high-value, low-bulk textiles such as silk, moved in waxing and waning cycles over many centuries. Classic early works on the Silk Road include those by Scottish Orientalist Henry Yule (1820-1880), who re-introduced the adventures of the Venetian traveller Marco Polo to the Victorian reading public, and German explorer and academic Ferdinand von Richthofen (1833-1905), who coined the phrase 'Seidenstrasse' in 1877. These pioneering ideas were developed in the early 20th century by explorers, collectors and writers such as the controversial Swedish adventurer Sven Hedin (1865-1952) and the remarkable Hungarian-born traveller Aurel Stein (1862-1943), as well as by more sedentary geopolitical theorists such as Halford Mackinder (1861-1947). Since World War Two, new forms of historical and archaeological research have transformed the terms in which the Silk Road has been interpreted, rejecting the imperialist connotations of earlier accounts and emphasising instead the shared traditions and mutually constitutive encounters between regions shaped by comparable though different economic, social and intellectual forces. Despite these more critical approaches however, exoticising imaginative geographies of the routeway persist. Stories of the Silk Road reproduce images not only of intercultural exchange, but also of luxury, the exotic and the adventurous, as evident in contemporary travelogues, literary fiction, television programmes and other cultural performances produced and consumed in both western and eastern countries.In the context of the rapid economic development of China, India and other Asian powers, and in response to increasing popular interest in the Silk Road, this network seeks to develop recent critical re-assessments of east-west economic, cultural and intellectual translation and exchange, so as to extend their impact within such public sectors as tourism, heritage and the arts. Although the network will include specialists in Silk Road studies, the workshops are not primarily designed to advance historical and archaeological research. Rather, these events will bring together academics and non-specialist professionals from the creative and tourist industries, travel writing, and the visual arts to explore how recent scholarship on the Silk Road might facilitate a wider public re-imagining of this ancient trade route.