Beyond the Silk and Book Roads: Rethinking Networks of Exchange and Material Culture (Studies on East Asian Religions, 11)

Silk Road studies has often treated material artifacts and manuscripts separately. This interdisciplinary volume expands the scope of transcultural transmission, questions what constituted a “book,” and explores networks of circulation shared by material artifacts and manuscripts. Featuring new research in English by international scholars in Buddhist studies, art history, and literary studies, the essays in Beyond the Silk and Book Roads chart new and exciting directions in Silk Road studies.
Contributors are: Ge Jiyong, George A. Keyworth, Ding Li, Ryan Richard Overbey, Hao Chunwen, Wu Shaowei, Liu Yi, Lan Wu, Sha Wutian, Michelle C. Wang, and Stephen Roddy.

Michelle C. Wang is Associate Professor of Art and Art History at Georgetown University. A specialist in the Buddhist and silk road art of northwestern China, she has published on maṇḍalas, art and ritual, miracle tales, and text and image.
Ryan Richard Overbey serves as the Robert H.N. Ho Family Foundation Assistant Professor of Buddhist Studies at Skidmore College and studies the intellectual and ritual history of Buddhism, with particular focus on early medieval Buddhist spells and ritual manuals.