Friday, April 23rd, 2010 Language of the Gods Workshop

Description

This workshop involves a roundtable discussion of the 2006 monograph, The Language of the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture, and Power in Premodern India (www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/10277.php) with the author, Professor Sheldon Pollock of Columbia University, along with Professor Yigal Bronner of the University of Chicago and Professor Lawrence McCrea of Cornell University.

Pollock’s work, a landmark in contemporary Indology, is “the kind of scholarly synthesis and insightful interpretation that comes along, at
most, once in a generation or two” (Journal of Asian Studies). Cutting across the boundaries of comparative literature, history, and religious studies, The Language of the Gods in the World of Men forms an ideal site for area studies specialists across the disciplines to come together to explore critical issues in social theory. Pollock explores culture and power in South Asia, charting two historical shifts: 1) the use of Sanskrit, previously exclusively a sacred language, in public political discourse and poetry from the first centuries of the Common Era; and 2) the rise of vernacular literary cultures and displacement of Sanskrit from the beginning of the second millennium.

The roundtable discussion culminates a year-long reading of The Language of the Gods in the World of Men by faculty and graduate students at the University of Toronto. All are welcome to attend.