Humanities Department (CSCC) and East Asian Studies Center (Ohio State) present:
When East Meets West Symposium
Cross Cultural Exchange along the Maritime Silk Road
Shipwrecks of the Maritime Silk Road: Understanding Material Evidence for Long-Distance Trade
Amanda Respess, The Ohio State University
Mapping Medieval Waters: China and the Islamic World on the High Seas
Hyunhee Park, The City University of New York, John Jay College and the CUNY Graduate Center
Moderator: Kyriakoula (Sandy) Drakatos, Columbus State Community College
Shipwrecks of the Maritime Silk Road: Understanding Material Evidence for Long-Distance Trade
Recent decades have yielded the recovery of multiple shipwrecks from the premodern trade routes spanning the greater Indian Ocean, known as the Maritime Silk Road. What can these wrecks reveal about the economic, religious, and cultural ties between the Persian Gulf, Southeast Asia, and China in the distant past? This talk will examine case studies from shipwrecks dating from the 9th-14th centuries to explore the cultural exchanges that connected the premodern world.
Mapping Medieval Waters: China and the Islamic World on the High Seas
This talk explores the dynamic maritime interactions between China and the Islamic Middle East during the medieval period, focusing on the rich exchanges facilitated by the Indian Ocean’s sea routes. As early as the 8th century, merchants from both regions were actively engaging across open waters, establishing a thriving maritime network that rivaled the more famous overland Silk Roads. This presentation will highlight key geographic accounts and maps that illustrate the development of these maritime routes and the innovations in shipbuilding and navigation that made long-distance trade possible.
Drawing from both literary and cartographic sources, the talk delves into how Chinese and Islamic geographers conceptualized the seas, reflecting broader cultural and intellectual exchanges that went beyond commerce. By comparing the works of geographers like Ibn Khurradādhbih, Jia Dan, and Zhou Qufei and a few surviving medieval world maps, it aims to demonstrate how these societies built shared understandings of sea space that shaped their interactions and contributed to premodern globalization. The session will also consider the legacy of this vibrant maritime connectivity, emphasizing its significance in a world history often dominated by narratives of European expansion. The talk seeks to make these complex topics accessible and engaging for students, inviting them to consider the long history of cross-cultural exchange on the high seas.
If you require an accommodation, such as live captioning, to participate in this event, please contact Janet Smith at smith.12674@osu.edu or 614-292-3345. Requests made at least two weeks in advance of the event will generally allow us to provide seamless access, but the university will make every effort to meet requests made after this date.
Bios
Amanda Respess is an assistant professor of premodern world history at The Ohio State University who specializes in the exchange of medicines, technology, and long-distance trade goods on the Maritime Silk Road. Her work examines the material culture of premodern trade networks in the Persian Gulf, South China Sea, and Java Sea and investigates the long duration of Persianate presence in the eastern Indian Ocean region. She is particularly interested in the intersections between the lived experience of maritime travel, the material culture of medicine and technology, the development of Islamicate science, and Traditional Chinese Medicine. Her work engages a critical museum studies approach to trace the afterlives of long-distance maritime trade artifacts from the Indian Ocean World and decolonizes heretofore-segregated histories of global science. Her current book project draws from an archive of shipwreck artifacts recovered from the seafloor between the 9th and 16th centuries to examine the premodern exchange of medical goods and technology between Iran and China, and how Islamicate artifacts have been represented in Western museums. She earned her Ph.D. in Anthropology & History (2020) and Graduate Certificate in Museum Studies (2020) from the University of Michigan.
HYUNHEE PARK PhD Yale, Associate Professor of History at the City University of New York, John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the Graduate Center, specializes in the history of cross-cultural contacts in East Asia, Islamic World, the Mongol Empire, and global intellectual history focusing on information/knowledge transfers including geographical knowledge, foodways, and distillation. Her book Mapping the Chinese and Islamic Worlds: Cross-Cultural Exchange in Pre-Modern Asia (Cambridge University Press, 2012) explores medieval contact and exchange between the Islamic World and China by utilizing geographic and cartographic information. Her new research projects encompass world mapping and other types of information transfers spanning medieval Afro-Eurasia and the early modern Atlantic World. She is currently serving as an assistant editor of the academic journal Crossroads – Studies on the History of Exchange Relations in the East Asian World. She received various grants and fellowships including a field research fellowship from the Korea Foundation to write a book draft entitled “The Story of Soju: Distillation in Mongol Korea and its Eurasian Roots and Global Context.”
Kyriakoula (Sandy) Drakatos, PhD is a professor of European History at Columbus State Community College. In addition to European History, she teaches The History and Culture of Ancient Greece and The History and Culture of Byzantium. Her area of focus is in Medieval and Byzantine Women's Monasticism. She graduated from Baldwin Wallace College summa cum laude with a BA in History and Art History. She holds a Master’s in History, with honors from Kent State University, and a PhD, with highest honor in Monastic History from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. Throughout her extensive career in higher education, Sandy has served in both academic and administrative roles, including as Dean of North College, a small private college in Thessaloniki, Greece. In her spare time, she enjoys spending time with her family, teaching her granddaughter the importance of a liberal arts education, and learning Mandarin Chinese.
