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About The Program
A highlight of the program included a study of the Silk Road, the main route of cultural transmission between Chinese and Islamic culture. What better place to study this than New York City, the center of modern global multiculturalism! The program united twenty-nine high school and middle school educators from around the nation who together embarked upon an intellectual journey into the cultural, economic, and political contacts between two of the world's great civilizations: Chinese and Islamic.
China is home to 20 million Muslims, yet China's long history of interaction with the Muslim world is little understood. China and the Islamic World participants studied both Islam and China and Islam in China. Together, they worked at untangling a history of conflict between sedentary and steppe peoples; mapping the cultural and religious diffusion of both Islam and Buddhism; exploring trade and travel along the Silk Road; questioning the brutal competition for empire building and quest for national identity; and finally, contemplating the complex global, religious, and socio-economic forces that continue to shape current events.
Thanks to this institute, the China and the Islamic World participants now possess a deeper understanding of the patterns of interaction between two of the oldest and most important civilizations of this century. Through lectures, field trips and materials presented, they also gained the knowledge base to teach expertly about two of the world's great non-western civilizations.
Daily Structure and Program Content
China and the Islamic World met every weekday for four weeks. Each day began with a presentation by Professor Morris Rossabi. He was followed by a guest speaker selected for his or her expertise in that topic. After lunch, workshops offered opportunities for group discussion with the faculty, slide presentations, internet and library use and group or individual visits to places of interest in New York.
During the first week of the seminar, faculty and seminar participants examined China's contact with the pre-Islamic world of Central Asia (220 BCE through 907 CE). Chronologically, this period covers China's Han Dynasty through the Tang Dynasty. More importantly, they studied evidence of the silk routes on which trade, religious diffusion, and rivalry between settled and steppe peoples took place. They contrasted the lifestyles of the nomad, oasis dweller, and farmer, examining the intertwining of physical and human geographies. It was also during this period that Buddhism and Islam entered China. The first week concluded with a guided tour of the world famous Metropolitan Museum of Art by Dr. Stefano Carboni, curator of Islamic Art.
In a series of lectures, museum visits, film, and discussion, the second and third weeks of the seminar explored questions of territorial expansion and cultural dominance. The Mongol conquest of Eurasia achieved a vigorous flow of trade, as well as increased cultural and religious exchange between China and Central Asia. In China, Mongol rule and Chinese governance created a dynamic tension. Mongol dominance in Central Asia resulted in the Islamicization of the Mongol rulers. China and Islam's contact in early modern times delves into the question of China's supposed closing-off to outside influence under the Ming. The program participants considered the drive for imperial dominance in the competition of the "Great Game" rivalry between Russia and Great Britain. The group paid a second visit to the Metropolitan Museum to tour it's collection of artworks from the Silk Road, and took a guided tour of the Brooklyn Museum's superb collection of Islamic art.
The concluding week of China and the Islamic World covered China's late imperial disintegration, Communist revolutions in Russia and China, and the post-Cold War imbalance of power that shape current events today. The promise of Communist ideology in the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China hoped to unify and enrich populations living in chaos and poverty. Yet, the breakdown of Communist systems has given rise to Central Asian nationalist aspirations and fundamentalist Islamic identities. Program participants considered China's large Muslim population with respect to its wide diversity of ethnicities. Finally, the fact that Central Asia and the western provinces of modern China are oil- and mineral-rich compelled the group to take stock of economic, political, and global tensions that afflict current events.
Readings
Because readings for an Institute of this sort must come from a variety of sources, the comprehensive reading list developed for this institute is an extremely valuable resource. Click here to access a pdf version of the program reading list.
The Faculty
Morris Rossabi, Professor of History of the City University of New York and Columbia University, served as the lead academic of the Institute. As the pre-eminent scholar of Central Asian and Mongolian history, Professor Rossabi has had a long-standing interest in the interrelations among China, Central Asia, and the peoples of the Middle East. Professor Rossabi, who speaks seven languages, has been dedicated to pre-collegiate education throughout his career, which he began as a student teacher of high school history. He was the lead academic for China Institute’s successful 2001 China and the World NEH Summer Institute, receiving extraordinary evaluations from participants, and was co-director of the USDE-funded curriculum project From Silk to Oil: Cross Cultural Connections along the Silk Road, produced by China Institute.
Dr. Nancy Jervis, Vice President and Director of Education at China Institute for sixteen years, served as Project Director. Dr. Jervis was responsible for establishing China Institute's outreach program to teachers (of which this Summer Institute is a part) and has lived and traveled extensively in China, where she conducted anthropological research. In addition to her teaching and research, Dr. Jervis has led study tours to China for teachers, is co-project director (with Professor Rossabi) on the From Silk to Oil curriculum project and serves as a consultant to the New York State Department of Education. With her doctorate in anthropology from Columbia University, she provided a continuity and familiarity with Columbia that strengthened the seminar.
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