Scholarship in an Unparalleled Environment
Each year the Elling Eide Center welcomes scholars for workshops, small conferences, and seminars. Our tranquil, waterfront setting encourages deep thinking and supports engaged conversations that bridge historical concerns and contemporary ideas. Researchers and advanced students have opportunities to present their work, build networks, and advance the study of Asia’s rich traditions.
The Elling Eide Center hosts conferences and workshops devoted to Premodern Asia and Ancient and Medieval China. As a leading research institution in the field, we are committed to supporting scholarly collaboration by connecting researchers with opportunities to present their work, build networks, and advance the study of Asia’s rich historical traditions.
Please check back soon for information regarding our upcoming conferences.
Upcoming Programs
scholar programs
Material Culture & the Natural World in Early Medieval China
January 14-15, 2027
Organized by Dr. Rebecca Doran (University of Miami) and Dr. Xiaofei Tian (Harvard University), this interdisciplinary workshop will explore the texture of material culture during the late Han through Tang periods of early medieval China. How were fashion, food and drink, gardens, wild animals, plants, pets, potions, textiles and ritual vessels of these periods represented in texts and images? Transmitted records, tombs, and caves will all be examined as rich resources for studying how the people of medieval China interacted with their natural environment. Participating scholars represent a broad array of fields, including history, art history, archaeology, visual culture, religious studies, and literary studies.
“Standing Court Lady” (Tang dynasty) and is object number 1991_253_8. Source: The Metropolitan Museum of Art
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scholar programs
The Contemplative Spaces of Daoist Poetry: Form, Sound, and Environment in Tang China
April 7-12, 2027
This workshop, organized by Dr. Yiyi Luo (University of Massachusetts Amherst) and Dr. Jonathan Pettit (University of Hawai’i), takes as its premise that Daoism shaped perceptions of sacred geography, ritual space, visionary landscape, and sacred time in China’s early centuries. Its poems are inseparable from ritual performance, visionary experience, and imagined movement through mountains, grotto-heavens, and celestial realms. This workshop will train participants to read Daoist poetry not merely as literary expression, but as ritualized language embedded within specific religious, textual, and spatial worlds. Workshop leaders will model methods of close reading, translation, and contextual interpretation. The Elling Eide Center’s nature preserve and location on Little Sarasota Bay will make it a resonant site for thinking about landscape, ecological perception, and cultivated retreat. The workshop will incorporate the Center’s grounds, surrounding environment, and library into discussions of how Daoist poetry organizes relations among textual study, contemplative practice, and religiously shaped perception of place. Close reading sessions will be combined with guided walks, preserve tours, and discussions of the local coastal environment.
Zhuang Zhou in front of a waterfall. In Taoism, downward flow of water is a commonly used analogy for naturalness.
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Research
Environmental Humanities for Buddhist Studies Winter School
December 2027
This Eide Center Winter School will introduce key terms and approaches to environmental humanities and offer space to explore how emerging scholars of East Asian and Central Asian Buddhism might draw on these resources for their own research and career development. We distinguish environmental humanities from environmental history in its focus on literature, philosophy, and material culture.
Check Back for Call for Papers
Rokuonji-tempel
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Tangut Winter School
January 5 – 9, 2026
The Tangut Winter School 2026 is an intensive training program for graduate students and early-career scholars, offering foundational instruction in the Tangut language and an introduction to Tangut history, religion, and art through lectures, close readings, and discussion-based seminars, under the guidance of leading experts in the field.
Looking to the South:
China’s Early Trade through Maritime Spaces
March 6-7, 2026
This workshop brings together scholars of history, archaeology, and anthropology to explore how exotic products moved and transformed Chinese during the first millennium CE.
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Funding
We invite proposals for conferences and workshops related to the culture, history, and literature of China, Inner Asia, or greater East Asia before 1500 CE. Proposals are reviewed on a rolling basis and should be submitted at least six months in advance.
