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• November 25, 2005
  
• Liberty Grand Entertainment Complex
  
• 25 British Columbia, Way Exhibition Place, Toronto,Ontario
  

• MONDAY, 14 NOVEMBER, 4:00 P.M.
  
• Room 208N, Munk Centre
  
• 1 Devonshire Place, University of Toronto-St. George
  

• THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2005 | 4:00 P.M.
  
• Sidney Smith Hall, Room 2098
  
• 100 St. George Street
  

Download The Event Poster (PDF)

Director of Research at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS, Laboratory of Archaeology, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris); Professor at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (Sorbonne, Paris), section “Religious Sciences”; Chair, Religions of the ancient Iranian world; Director of the French-Uzbek Archaeological Mission at Samarkand; Author of Les pratiques funéraires dans l’Asie centrale sédentaire de la conquête grecque à l’islamisation (Paris, 1984); A History of Zoroastrianism, vol. III: Zoroastrianism under Macedonian and Roman Rule, (Leiden, 1991), in collaboration with Mary Boyce and Roger Beck); and La geste d’Ardashir fils de Pâbag (Paris, Éditions a Die, 2003)

Lecture abstract: The so-called « Ambassadors’ painting » (in fact, a whole cycle covering the four walls of a large reception room) is surely the masterpiece of Sogdian painting. It was discovered in 1965 on the archaeological site of Afrasiab, corresponding to the city centre of Samarkand before the Mongol invasion. Since then it has been the object of various and often conflicting interpretations. There is now a consensus about the “exotic” subjects of two of the walls, which portray China and India, respectively. One wall, and possibly two, illustrates the Zoroastrian New Year (Nowruz) royal ceremonies,
which took place at Samarkand. The lecture will propose a possible key to the overall interpretation: an astronomical synchronism which occurred in 660 and 663, which put together the Sogdian “royal Nowruz”, the summer solstice, and the Chinese festival of the “Dragon Boats”.

• Monday, 12:00-2:00 p.m. 4 April 2005
  
• Bancroft Hall 200B
  
• St. George Campus of the University of Toronto
  

• WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 9, 2005 | 4:00 P.M.
  
• Room 208N, Munk Centre
  
• 1 Devonshire Place - St. George campus
  

Director of Research at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS, Laboratory of Archaeology, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris); Professor at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (Sorbonne, Paris), section “Religious Sciences”; Chair, Religions of the ancient Iranian world; Director of the French-Uzbek Archaeological Mission at Samarkand; Author of Les pratiques funéraires dans l’Asie centrale sédentaire de la conquête grecque à l’islamisation (Paris, 1984); A History of Zoroastrianism, vol. III: Zoroastrianism under Macedonian and Roman Rule, (Leiden, 1991), in collaboration with Mary Boyce and Roger Beck); and La geste d’Ardashir fils de Pâbag (Paris, Éditions a Die, 2003)

Lecture abstract: The high social and administrative status enjoyed in 6th-8th c. Northern China by merchants originating from Sogdian
principalities (Samarkand, Bukhara, etc.) has been established on the basis of written records (Chinese chronicles, Sogdian translations of religious texts found in China). Hitherto unexpected evidence has been provided, mainly since the 1980’s, by a series of reliefs which once adorned six tombs of Sogdian dignitaries who died in the last third of the 6th c. They portray the tomb owners engaged in various social activities (trade, hunt, banquet), and at the same time provide vivid illustrations of their religious sympathies. Quite unexpectedly if one compares the large amount of Sogdian texts pertaining to these religions, Buddhism and Nestorian Christianity are not at all represented, though the artists were obviously familiar with Buddhist symbols and adapted them to specific needs of their new commissioners. Zoroastrian symbols are found in all tombs but one, a fact that can be put in relation with the tomb owners having held the official position of “sabao”, Sogdian community leaders in charge of the national cult. Besides these symbols, the tomb of Wirkak (d. 579) provides the earliest evidence of the spread of Manichaeism in China. One anonymous tomb (in the Vahid Kooros collection, now at the Guimet Museum, Paris) stands apart, as Zoroastrian references are absent and all religious images belonging to the Hindu religion.

• 7-10 July, 2005
  
• The Nissan Lecture Theatre
  
• 62 Woodstock Road, Oxford
  
• Visit the Conference Website

The conference provides a rare opportunity for the articulation of new research agendas for the reconceptualization of modern Iranian history (from the mid 19th century to the present day) by addressing such themes as the historization of personhood, the family, and modes of intimacy, and friendship.

Due to the overwhelming significance of the Islamic Revolution and the political questions that it posed, historians of modern Iran have focused primarily on political history and have rarely explored the (trans)formations of private and public spheres, the changing spaces that have directly shaped the experience of everyday life. Intimacy, sexuality, and sociability-burgeoning fields of historical studies--have similarly remained unexplored by Iranian historians. Despite considerable feminist interest in Modern Iranian history, many studies have largely abstained from exploring domestic and private lives in Iran. Fetishizing the veil, they have rarely inquired about the subjectivity, agency, and personal lives of women. Similarly, the expanding field of Qajar studies (including the Constitutional Revolution) continues to reproduce worn-out political grand narratives without much attention to the important topic of the emergence of new national public spheres and the reconfiguration of domestic spaces. Similarly, studies of post-revolutionary Iran rarely explore the transformation of the private sphere and the emergence on secular and counter-Islamist modes of sociability and ethos. These changes facilitated the development of new conceptions of the self, subjectivity, the family, and national belonging (Iran and Iranianness). As long as the spaces of everyday experience and their concurrent modes of subjectivity, intimacy, and sociability are not historicized, Iranian cultural, intellectual, religious, literary, art, and gender histories continue to remain within the traditional chronological fold of political history, a continuity that retards historical inquiry and understanding.

By placing the interface of private lives and public spaces at the center of historical inquiry, this conference prompts the development of new directions in the writing of Iranian history.

• 4:00 p.m. Wednesday, 18 May 2005
  
• Bancroft Hall 200B
  
• St. George Campus of the University of Toronto
  

• 28 March 2005
  
• Bancroft Hall 200B
  
• St. George Campus of the University of Toronto
  

• Wednesday March 2, 7:00 p.m.
  
• 5 Bancroft Ave., Lower Auditorium, Room 142
  
• Room 3131, South Bulding, 3359 Mississauga Rd
  

Download The Event Poster (PDF)

Before coming to Harvard in 1993, Professor Russell was Lady Davis Fellow and Visiting Associate Professor of Armenian and Ancient Iranian at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. His books include Zoroastrianism in Armenia and Yovhannes T'lkuranc'i and the Mediaeval Armenian Lyric Tradition. He was a Government Fellowship Lecturer at the Cama Institute in Bombay, India, and has
been a frequent guest of the Armenian Academy of Sciences. His recent articles include: “Problematic Snake Children of Armenia”, “On Mysticism and Esotericism amongst the Zoroastrians”, “The Mother of All Heresies: A Late Mediaeval Armenian Text on the Yushkaparik”, “The Armenian Shrines of the Black Youth”, “Polyphemos
Armenios”, “An Epic for the Borderlands... the Mythologem of Alcestis in Armenia”, “Ezekiel and Iran”, and “Scythians and Avesta in an Armenian Vernacular Paternoster.”

• Saturday Feb 5, 2007
  
• UTM Council Chamber
  
• Room 3131, South Bulding, 3359 Mississauga Rd