Conferences
WSWG 23
6-8 Oct 2006 / University of Massachusetts at Amherst

The Formation of Ancient Song Collections

WSWG 23 was meant to bring together specialists in Chinese and other early literatures to discuss the structure and evolution of ancient song collections, focusing on the Chinese Shr ("Poems") repertoire, and its parallels in the Indian Rg Veda and the Hebrew Psalms. Data from unwritten song traditions (Chippewa, Sioux, and Tikopia) were also to be noticed. The topics listed below were merely initial suggestions made to participants in advance, in expectation of more precise suggestions as plans developed in the months before the Conference.

The Conference proper had to be cancelled due to lack of funding, and was never rescheduled; only the associated Public Lecture went ahead as planned.

Thursday 5 Oct 06

4 PM: Public Lecture: 100 Things to Do with a Literature Degree (Alice Cheang)

 

Program

Friday 6 Oct 06

6 PM: Kennedy Memorial Banquet (Lord Jeffery Inn, Amherst)

Saturday 7 Oct 06

9 AM: Folk Procedures

Template Songs in the Shr (Bruce Brooks)
Phonological Implications (Chris Beckwith)
Secular Poems in the Rg Veda: 1/126B and Others

10:30 AM: Tea Break

11 AM: Literary Relations

Duplicated Poems and the Yahweh> Elohim Shift in the Psalms
Common Lines and the Female > Male Shift in the Shr (Taeko Brooks)
The Selah Problem and Habakkuk 3 in the Psalm Tradition

12:30 PM: Lunch

1:30 PM: Poem Boundaries

Psalm 9/10 and Their Analogues
Shr 220 and Its Cousins (Bruce Brooks)
Social and Material Extensions in the Shr

3 PM:Tea Break

3:30 PM. Poem Sequences and Groupings

Subsets in Rg Veda and their Aetiology
Order of Ya Poems in the Han School Shr
The Qumran Psalm Groupings and Sequences

4:30 PM: Larger Formal Constraints

Decade Structures in the Shr (Bruce Brooks)
Early and Late Endpoints in the Psalms
The Shang Sung and their Rg Veda Counterpart

6 PM: Chinese Banquet (Hunan Garden, Northampton)

Sunday 8 Oct 06

9 AM: Poetry and Law-Giving

Reformed Jvng Poems: The Shr as Exempla
Psalms and Codes in Hebrew Tradition
Rg Veda and Aryan Identity

10:15 AM: Tea Break

10:45 AM: Sacrifice and Its Sequels

An Atharvaveda Hymn and its Canonic Implications (Tim Lubin)
Sacrifice and Devotion in the Psalms
Ancestor Worship and Dynastic Legend in the Shr

12 Noon: Lunch

1 PM: Conference closes

 

Roster
In Person / *In Absentia

Christopher I Beckwith (Indiana)
A Taeko Brooks (UMass/Amherst)
E Bruce Brooks (UMass/Amherst)
Alice Cheang (Harvard-Yenching Institute)
Alvin P Cohen (UMass/Amherst)
*Loren D Crow (Northwest Christian College)
Mary E Franck (Warring States Project)
Stanley Insler (Yale)
Tim Lubin (Washington and Lee)
Haun Saussy (Yale)
*Raphael Sealey (Berkeley)
James W Watts (Syracuse)
Michael Witzel (Harvard)

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