Oxford Public Philosophy presents a lecture on Central Asian thought: 'Languages and Arts: How the Kushans communicated in an Urban setting' by Xinru Liu (College of New Jersey), in conversation with Prof. Deven Patel (UPenn)

Xinru Liu (The College of New Jersey)

Languages and Art, How the Kushans Communicated in an Urban Setting 

by Dr Xinru Liu, and discussion with Dr Deven Patel

[Virtual meeting, February 16, 7PM IST/8.30AM GMT-5, 2025] -https://upenn.zoom.us/j/94537677950. We appreciate registration: https://forms.gle/uDPrQ9ebmXBT4e7n9.

We invite you to join us as Dr Liu Xinru speaks on “Languages and Art, How the Kushans Communicated in an Urban Setting” and discusses with Dr Deven Patel as the opening lecture in the series Being and Thought in Pre-Common Era Inner Asia.

“Understanding The Epochs of Asian Lives,” is a broad and multi-series philosophical project by a team from Let’s Talk Tattva (LTT) and Oxford Public Philosophy Journal (OPP). This project aims to explore a philosophical understanding of what constitutes the dense mass of “Being” and “Thought” (or literature and philosophy, when seen in their beyond-academia inclusive sense) of Asian lives when studied on interrelated historical and geographical axes. It strives to learn and acquaint how the five major geographical constituents of Asia (Central/Inner Asia, Middle East-North Africa (MENA), South Asia, East Asia, and South-East Asia) developed their philosophical understandings and how it led to what ensued after each epoch in their lives.

Dr Xinru Liuis Professor Emeritus of History at the College of New Jersey. Her previous books include The Silk Road in World History and Ancient India and Ancient China: Trade and Religious Exchanges, A.D. 1–600. Her most recent work is Dionysus and drama in the Buddhist art of Gandhara written jointly with Pia Brancaccio and published in the Journal of Global History.

Dr Deven M. Patel is an associate professor of Sanskrit language and the literatures of South Asia at the University of Pennsylvania, where he also teaches Indian philosophy. His published works include Text to Tradition: The Naiṣadhīyacarita and Literary Community in South Asia, 2014, and Kavirājamārgam: The Way of the King of Poets (co-authored with R.V.S. Sundaram), 2017.

Organisers: 

Let’s Talk Tattva(LTT) andOxford Public Philosophy(OPP) in collaboration.