AAR “Religions in Chinese and Indian Cultures” Group CFP: Emotions

Dear colleagues,

AAR CFP deadline (March 1) is fast approaching. Here is the CFP of our group:

“This Group wishes to explore the various representations of emotions
within the Chinese and Indian religious traditions — particularly
engaging textually with both Chinese and Indian materials. We
especially encourage presentations by a specialist in one tradition to
engage a text from the other tradition….

…While the session does not
explicitly address methodological issues, we assume that there is
always a continuum of limitations when we read texts from context to
context, and here we are trying to turn a limitation into a means of
understanding. It has always been possible for specialists in one area
to read or hear those in another, although to have a forum for such
interaction on Chinese and Indian materials is rare. We hope that the
challenge of unfamiliarity in engaging texts from another tradition
will add a new dimension of reflexive understanding for both presenter
and audience. Furthermore, we think the provisional context of a
session will suit this form of comparative study and lead to genuine
mutual exploration of critical intellectual themes. Possible topics
include, but are not limited to:

The taxonomy of emotions (aesthetic, moral, etc.)
The exploration and cultivation of emotions
The disciplinary, gnoseological, and soteriological dimensions of emotions, etc.

We are interested in how certain texts within the two traditions deal
with having, expressing, controlling, and transforming emotions and
exploring the contexts within which one might entertain these
strategies. For example, one could look at art and its expression in
classical India and China or the equanimity or radical transcendence
of emotion and investigate why certain emotional states (or lack
thereof) are privileged over others.”

Here’s the link to the proposal site:
http://papers.aarweb.org/content/religions-chinese-and-indian-cultures-comparative-perspective-group

If you have any question, please reply to the two co-chairs whose
email addresses are shown.

Warm regards,
Tao Jiang (Rutgers University)
Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad (Lancaster University)

One reply

  1. This sounds quite intriguing and a very worthwhile endeavor. I recall being disappointed by the entry on emotion in “classical Indian philosophy” in the SEP if only because it failed to discuss emotions in Indian aesthetic theory (especially its ‘rasa’ variant), although the entry’s author, Dr. Joerg Tuske, assured me in correspondence that “The emotions entry will be expanded to include rasa theory in the future (or possibly it will become a separate entry).” For what it’s worth, I’ve long been interested in the role of emotions in Chinese (including later ‘Tibetan’) medicine.

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