Telling the Sogdian Story: A Smithsonian Digital Exhibition Project

The Sogdians amassed great wealth through the transcontinental trade known as the Silk Road, and sponsored a flowering of civilization in their homeland, the area around Samarkand in present-day Uzbekistan. They were also purveyors of culture to their imperial neighbors, transporting objects, craftsmen, artists, religious scholars and texts that would transform regions from Europe to Japan during the period from 550 BCE until approximately 1000CE. This project-based course, team-taught with Prof. Kimon Keramidas of NYU’s Draper Interdisciplinary Master’s Program in Humanities and Social Thought, will investigate how best to use digital media to create a fuller, multi-faceted portrait of the Sogdians. As part of an ongoing digital exhibition project at the Smithsonian Institution’s Asian museum of art—the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery—aimed at increasing awareness of the Sogdian culture’s importance in the region, students will work to find ways to tell the story of how the Sogdians’ adaptability and mobility allowed them to influence the art and culture of people across Asia without the traditional trappings of empire wielded by the adjacent Persian, Chinese, and Byzantine empires. 3 credits. Satisfies the pre-1800 or non-Western requirement.