I am pleased to announce the draft programme for the 2017 Spalding Symposium. Booking will open in the new year.
Spalding Symposium on Indian Religions
7th-9th April 2017, Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford
DRAFT PROGRAMME
Friday 7th April
3.00-3.45pm Registration, tea and coffee
3.45-4.00pm Welcome, announcements
4.00-5.00pm Opening Keynote Lecture:
Professor Anne MacDonald, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna – ‘Real Illusions, Illusory Realities: Appearance and Reality in Mahāyāna Buddhism’
5.00-5.15 comfort break
5.15-6.15pm Alice Collett, Nalanda University – ‘Literary Motif and Meme in Considerations of Biological Sex as Appearance and Reality’
6.30-7.30pm Dinner
7.30-8.30pm Rafal Stepien, Berggruen Research Fellow in Indian Philosophy, University of Oxford – ‘Illusory Selves in Action, Delusory Views in Thought: A Buddhist Approach to the Abandonment of All ’
Saturday 8th April
9.00-10.00am Marco Ferrante, Austrian Academy of Sciences – ‘Between language and being: Bhartṛhari’s on reality and appearance’
10.00-11.00am Monika Nowakowska, Warsaw University – ‘(Ir)reality of desire: early Mīmāṁsā on decisive craving, enigmatic heaven and insignificant gods’
11.00-11.30am Coffee
11.30am-1.00pm Postgraduate papers:
11.30-12.00 Avni Chag, SOAS, University of London – ‘The Making of a Scripture: The Socio-Religious Context of the Svāminārāyaṇa Sampradāya’s Śikṣāpatrī’
12.00-12.30 Aleksandra (Sasha) Gordeeva, Yale University – ‘Despair (nirveda) and Delusion (moha): The Entanglement of the Divergent Emotions in Rāmacandra’s Dramatic Works’
12.30-1.00 Charles Li, University of Cambridge – ‘Casting Sāṃkhya as Advaita: A falsified quotation from the Pātañjalayogaśāstra’
1.00-3.00pm Lunch and free time to explore the town
3.00-4.00pm Postgraduate papers continued:
3.00-3.30pm Davey K. Tomlinson, University of Chicago – ‘A Buddhist Debate on the Reality of Appearances’
3.30-4.00pm Karen O’Brien-Kop, SOAS, University of London – ‘The entangled discourse of classical yoga’
4.00-4.30pm Coffee
4.30-5.30pm Julie Regan, La Salle University, Philadelphia – ‘The Path to Truth through Appearances in the Literary Works of Aśvaghoṣa’
5.30-6.30pm Eviatar Shulman, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem – ‘Omniscience and Reality: Reflections on Knowledge and Truth in the Jātakas’
6.30-7.30pm Dinner
Sunday 9th April
9.00-10.00am Michael S. Allen, University of Virginia – ‘The Idealist Turn in Late Advaita Vedānta’
10.00-11.00am Victor A. van Bijlert, Faculty of Theology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam – ‘Realistic reasoning and the unreal world: Gaudapada’s use of Nyāya-methodology to argue for illusionism’
11.00-11.30am Coffee
11.30am-12.30pm Closing Keynote Lecture:
Professor David Gellner, University of Oxford – ‘The Politics of Religious Affiliation in Nepal’
12.30-1.00pm Final remarks and information about following year’s Symposium
1.00-2.00pm Lunch, followed by departure