Cancelled—Ritual Space and Making Confucian Gods in Imperial China
Thomas Wilson (Hamilton College)
EVENT Cancelled
Due to unforeseen circumstances beyond control, this talk will not be taking place as scheduled.
About the Talk:
This will focus on the imperial sites for liturgies devoted to 昊天上帝 and to Confucius and compare built ritual spaces as a central concern in Confucian ritual theory. The speaker will touch on the role that each of the three teachings played in court rites to the gods; each tradition formulated its own liturgy through which we can gain insight into the nature of the gods that were feasted at the rites and the distinctive relationships between humans and gods implicated in the liturgies.
It is significant that all three teachings conducted rites for the imperial court even while Confucian rites were regarded as the norm 常 and that when Taoists and Buddhists conducted rites for the court, they necessarily did so not at canonical sites (e.g., 圜丘 or 明堂) but at Buddhist or Taoist sites. This might seem like an obvious point, but it raises the question of whether or why a Taoist rite could or could not be efficaciously conducted at a Confucian site.
About the speaker:
Thomas Wilson has written extensively about Confucian ritual and the cult of Confucius and is working on book titled Confucian Gods: An Intellectual History of Devotional Practice funded by a grant from the American Council of Learned Societies. He also received National Endowment for the Humanities fellowships in 1999-2000 and 2006-07. He has been a member of the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study, in Princeton, N.J. and conducted research in Taiwan and the People's Republic of China on Fulbright-Hays grants in 1992-93. He earned his doctorate from the University of Chicago.