Bridging Cultures
7:56 AM
Edit
The staff of UVA's Alderman Library showed Bridging Cultures faculty around of the resources of the library together with seduced us amongst tales of the Semester at Sea. We toured Alderman's gorgeous Asian Reading Room, where nosotros were treated to an impromptu storytelling session past times Slavic librarian together with professional person storyteller George Crafts.
Back inwards the Open Grounds classroom, Edith Clowes explained the theological together with (mostly) political segmentation betwixt the Eastern together with Western (Orthodox together with Catholic) churches, together with the characteristics of Orthodox cathedral architecture together with iconography. Next, Natasha Miles presented an intro to Buddhist philosophy together with a detailed life of the Buddha. We finished the twenty-four hr menstruation amongst Rich Cohen's millennia-spanning lecture on Hinduism together with Jainism including their ancient roots together with most influential reformers. Most interestingly, he pointed out that "Hinduism" is a label applied largely past times non-Hindus to endeavour to collect the various beliefs of a huge acre into a convenient conceptual packages. Concepts similar the Ishtadeva, or personal god, hateful that i tin hold back to meet a peachy diverseness of belief together with utilization from portion to region, or fifty-fifty from Hindu to Hindu.
After MD Cohen's lecture, I experience similar I'm already semi-fluent inwards Sanskrit, simply I intend I'm most to larn how petty I know since today's lectures focus on linguistic communication together with linguistics. Once to a greater extent than into the breach!
- Jason Lira
The higher upwardly weblog is a recount of Reynolds faculty fellow member Jason Lira’s experience at the symposium on Bridging Cultures. Seven Reynolds faculty members joined other participants from illustration VCCS institutions inwards a weeklong, National Endowment for Humanities-sponsored symposium on Bridging Cultures. Hosted past times the University of Virginia together with led past times Project Director Rachel Stauffer, Outreach Coordinator of the Asia Institute together with Lecturer inwards Slavic Languages together with Literatures, the Bridging Cultures Symposium provides VCCS faculty amongst the chance to prepare their agreement together with cognition of the culture, geography, history, together with human evolution inwards South Asia, East Asia, Russian Federation together with Eurasia, together with the Middle East.