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November 07, 2004
Indo-European Studies Conference
UCLA is one of the few universities in the world that has bothered to offer a proper programme in Indo-European Studies and through the presence of world class IE specialists, presents students with a credible PhD programme.
One of the best things about this programme is the IE Conference that takes place every year in November. This year, the 16th UCLA IE Conference took place this weekend, and I enjoyed it as usual. Despite the fact that I am a Histoy PhD student, I still love IE studies and hang out around that department a lot.
One aspect of this whole thing is that IE Studies seem to be dominated by linguists. Although papers concerned with prefixes, roots, inflections, and such are very important, still they make for a better reading than presentation! Listening to them can sometimes be extremely exhusting and confusing. I enjoy the papers about archaeology, mythology, or historical matters much better, as well as literature. Victor Mair this year talked about the Tarim Basin mummies which are fascinating, and my own professor, Stephanie Jamison, had a great talk about the Poet of the Gathas ("poet formerly known as Zoroaster" as she calls him!!!:)). Here is a programme of the talks.
Another event was a one day class offered via UCLA Extension in which my friend Prof. Touraj Daryaee had a great presentation about the state of the research on the Sasanian Empire (my field too, yeepee!). Prof. Elizabeth Carter and Prof. Holly Pittman, both well known archaeologists of Iran, also made great presentations. It was enjoyable and interesting, especially looking at the audience!:))
In short, this has been a busy weekend!:))
Posted by Khodadad at November 7, 2004 12:14 AM
Comments
You must've had a good time. Any trash cans flying around at this one?
Posted by: jamak at November 8, 2004 03:10 PM
It sounds like you had a lot of fun this weekend, Khodadad. I think that I would enjoy presentations on archeology, and to a lesser degree, mythology, and history, but linguistics is not something that is very exciting to me. I understand that studies of comparative linguistics can be used to indicate the geographic origin of a people such as the original IE's, however, I like physical objects much more than phonemes.
I read the link to the Tarim Basin mummies. I really would have enjoyed this talk. I am intreged that there may be many more mummies as yet undiscovered. I await with interest future discoveries regarding these very interesting people.
I am curious, when you watched the audience, what did you see that was interesting?
Posted by: David at November 8, 2004 10:35 PM