· Author: Jeffrey D. Lerner＆Yaohua Shi 
    · Item Weight : 2.05 pounds 
    · Hardcover : 312 pages 
    · ISBN-10 : 1789254701 
    · ISBN-13 : 978-1789254709 
    · Product Dimensions : 6.75 x 1 x 9.5 inches 
    · Publisher : Oxbow Books (September 22, 2020) 
     In recent decades, there has been a new surge of interest in the history and legacies of the Silk Roads both within academic and public discourses. A field of Silk Roads Studies has come into its own. Consciously mirroring the temperament of its subject, the field has moved out of the narrow niches of particular disciplines to become a truly interdisciplinary endeavor. New research findings about the historical operations of the Silk Roads and interpretations of their legacies for the modern and contemporary world have broken down geographical and temporal divides that once demarcated the Silk Roads as primarily pre-modern and Old World-centered conduits of globalization. In light of these developments, the time is ripe to begin formulating a new definition of the contour of Silk Roads Studies and laying a new foundation for further work in this field.
      Silk Roads: From Local Realities to Global Narratives brings together leading scholars in multiple disciplines related to Silk Roads studies. It highlights the multiplicity of networks that constituted the Silk Roads, including land and maritime routes, and approaches the Silk Roads from Antiquity to China’s One Belt One Road Initiative from Afro-Eurasia to the Americas. This holistic approach to understanding ancient globalization, exchanges, transformations, and movements - and their continued relevance to the present - is in line with contemporary academic trends toward interdisciplinarity. Indeed, the Silk Roads is such an expansive topic that many approaches to its study must be included to represent accurately its many facets.
      The volume emphasizes exchange and transformation along the Silk Roads - moments of acculturation or hybridization that contributed to novel syncretic forms. It highlights the multiplicity of networks that constituted the Silk Roads, including land and maritime routes, and approaches to the Silk Roads from Antiquity to China’s One Belt One Road Initiative from Afro-Eurasia to the Americas. 
    

    Table of Contents 
    

1. Networks, Cities, and Frontiers

James Millward (Georgetown University), What Do We Mean by ‘Cultural Exchange’ on the ‘Silk Road’? Thoughts from a Study of the Eurasian Lute 

    

Tansen Sen (New York University-Shanghai), Against “Silk Road(s)”! Alternatives to Understanding Premodern Cross-Regional Interactions 

    

Nicola Di Cosmo (Institute of Advanced Study), Ecological Frontiers, Economic Exchange, and the Origins of the Silk Road

    

Michael L. Bates (American Numismatic Society), Restructuring Central Asia by Place And Time

    

2. Mobility 

WU Xin (Fudan University), The Achaemenid Empire and the Formation of the Silk Roads

    

Jennifer C. Post (University of Arizona), New Trade Routes, Local Soundways, and Environmental Impact: Changing Pastoral Soundscapes and Lifeways in Inner Asia

    

Aleksandr Naymark (Hofstra University), The Sogdians and the Silk Road: The Emerging Contours of a Complex Relationship

    

QI Xiaoyan (Changzhi University), Sogdians in Shaanxi during the Northern Dynasties(386-618AD): Chinese Literary Sources and Archaeological Evidence

    

3. Art, Architecture, and Dance

Nancy S. Steinhardt (University of Pennsylvania), The Role of Chinese Architecture and Its Decoration along Sixth-Tenth Century Silk Roads

    

LUO Di (New York University-Shanghai/Wake Forest University), Diamond in the Square: Lantern Ceilings in Traditional Asian Architecture

    

Bernadine Barnes (Wake Forest University), Prints and Pilgrims on the Silk Road

    

Judith A. Lerner (New York University), Silk Roads and the Impact of Sogdian Dance

    

Stewart Carter (Wake Forest University), Music for the Sogdian Whirl: Instruments, Ensembles, and Dancers in Buddhist Art of the Tang Dynasty

    

SHI Yaohua (Wake Forest University), From Dunhuang to Uji: Pure Land Iconography And Architecture along the Silk Road

    

4. Maritime Trade

Jeffrey D. Lerner (Wake Forest University), The Case for Shipwrecked Indians in Germany

    

James A. Anderson (University of North Carolina-Greensboro), Pearls and Power: Chōla’s Tribute Mission to the Northern Song Court within the Maritime Silk Road Trade Network

    

Hyunhee Park (The City University of New York, John Jay College and Graduate Center), Local and Global: Canton during the Pax Mongolica

    

John Ruddiman (Wake Forest University), Soldier to Supercargo, Continental to Consul: Samuel Shaw’s Pursuits of Independence on an Oceanic “Silk Road”

    

5. Materials of Prestige

Touraj Daryaee (University of California-Irvine), Hoards and Roads: What Can the Sasanian Silver Drahms Tell Us about the Silk Road?

    

DU Dan (University of North Carolina-Charlotte), Flying Cash: Credit Instruments on the Silk Roads

    

Wayne Silver and Cecil J. Saunders (Wake Forest University), A Transient Receptor Potential (TRP) along the Silk Road: How We Detect and Use Spices

    

Monique O’Connell (Wake Forest University), Silk Road Pharmacy: Apothecaries, Plague Remedies, and Print in Early Modern Venice

    

Eric Dursteler (Brigham Young University), Spice and Taste in the Culinary World of the Early Modern Mediterranean

    

6. Worlds of Discovery

SHI Yunli (University of Science and Technology of China), Charting the Chinese Sky With Western Observations: The Star Maps Made by Jesuit Astronomers in the Late Ming Dynasty Revisited

    

Chapurukha M. Kusimba (American University), Exploring Maritime Networks Between China and East Africa

    

ZHANG Qiong (Wake Forest University), Strange Journeys of the Yakṣas: Politics, Science, and Cultural Imagination in a Triangular Encounter between Early Modern Europe, Ming-Qing China, and Tokugawa Japan

    

7. Contemporary Places

Margaret Sarkissian (Smith College), From Fabled Port to Muddy Lagoon: The Fluctuating Fortunes of One Stop on the Maritime Silk Road

    

Saba Samee (Institute for Art and Culture, Lahore), The Development of the Karakoram Highway into a Global Economic Corridor

    

Chad Haines (Arizona State University), Placing Cosmopolitanism: Global, National, and Local Imaginings of the Silk Route in Pakistan

    

Charles Wilkins (Wake Forest University), Gambling with History? The Persian Card Room at Graylyn International Conference Center