Last week I was fortunate enough to participate in a session of the Sawyer Seminar on Critical Silk Road Studies at Georgetown organized by the wonderful Jim Millward and Michelle Wang. The seminars take the form of discussions (catered this time with delicious wine, dinnerfood, and cupcakes) of pre-circulated papers, prefaced by brief introductions by the authors (in this case, Pierce Salguero and me) and a commentary by a wonderful person (in this case, Kathy Olesko).  It was an all-around awesome experience.

Here’s the pre-circulated paper that I offered up for collective discussion. It’s very much a work in progress, and in that spirit I’m posting here as the first Working Paper of the website. The Georgetown crew offered some wonderful questions and suggestions that I’ll be incorporating into whatever this metamorphoses into, and I’d always welcome more feedback.

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I support an academic culture that recognizes and acknowledges web-based media as forms of publication. Please feel free to cite anything on this blog using the format indicated below:

For Working Papers: Carla Nappi,”Working Paper: Title of Post,” Date, URL.

For everything else: Carla Nappi,”Title of Post,” Date, URL.