Conference directors
:
Ivan Andrijanić , University of Zagreb, Croatia
Mandakranta Bose , The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
James Fitzgerald , Brown University, Providence, United States
Alf Hiltebeitel , The George Washington University, United States
Mislav Ježić , University of Zagreb, Croatia
Sven Sellmer , University of Poznan, Poland
McComas Taylor , Australian National University, Australia
Renate Söhnen-Thieme , School of Oriental and African Studies, London, United Kingdom
Christophe Vielle , Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium
Conference
description:
The participants of the conference will present their current work and research in the field of the Sanskrit Epics and Purāṇas. There will be specialists in all genres of Ancient Indian epic texts, and the exchange of information on their research and results will be beneficient to future work in the field. The special theme of the conference 2020 will be “Literary genres in epic and Purāṇic literature: Indian and Western categories”. The Indian categories mantra and brāhmaṇa, itihāsa, ākhyāna and purāṇa applied to the Vedas, the Mahābhārata, the Rāmayaṇa and the Purāṇas do not simply correspond to Western categories such as myth, mythology, epic, heroic or hieratic poetry, but imply some special shades of meaning.
However, the Western categories may in some respects be quite useful in the theoretic discourse on Indian works, and in some cases the Indian categories may shed light on the nature of some Western works, from the Illiad, Odyssey or the Theogonia, to more recent works, which may not have been ideally categorized in their own tradition. Comparative study of the Indian and Western works and of different traditions of poetics may show that one understands any culture better in a broader framework, in comparison with other cultures, than remaining closed within its own cultural limits. This will be the challenging questions implied by the special theme of this conference.
Conference
lecturers:
Ivan Andrijanić , University of Zagreb, Croatia
Andrzej Babkiewicz , University of Warsaw, Poland
Greg Bailey , La Trobe University, Australia
Ray Balkaran , University of Oxford, United Kingdom
Jonas Buchholz , University of Heidelberg, Germany
Giulia Buriola , Sapienza University of Rome, Italy
Eva de Clercq , Ghent University, Belgium
Diletta Falqui , Sapienza University of Rome, Italy
Danielle Feller , University of Lausanne, Switzerland
Dominik Haas , University of Vienna, Austria
Mislav Ježić , University of Zagreb, Croatia
Krešimir Krnić , University of Zagreb, Croatia
Natalia Lidova , Russian Academy of Sciences, Russia
Maria Marcinkowska-Rosół , University of Poznan, Poland
Valters Negribs , University of Paris III: Sorbonne Nouvelle, France
Sven Sellmer , University of Poznan, Poland
Zuzana Špicova , Charles University Prague, Czech Republic
Péter Száler , Eötvös Loránd University, Hungary
Przemyslaw Szczurek , University of Wroclaw, Poland
Kenji Takahashi , Kyoto University, Japan
McComas Taylor , Australian National University, Australia
Noor Van Brussel , Ghent University, Belgium
Simon Winant , Ghent University, Belgium
