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Asia

Source

Selections from Ashoka, Rock and Pillar Edicts

The “rock and pillar edicts,” inscriptions that King Ashoka ordered carved in stone on large rocks in prominent places or on tall pillars that he had erected for this purpose, are the best record we have of Ashoka’s reign. The edicts are found in a number of different locations

Teaching

Short Teaching Module: Emperor Ashoka and Buddhism

Buddhism is based on the ideas of a north Indian prince, Siddhartha Gautama (fl. ca. 500 B.C.E.), called the Buddha (“enlightened one”), who through meditation gained insight into what he understood were cosmic truths.

Teaching

Short Teaching Module: European Maps of the Early Modern World

I use images of three historical maps for topics on colonial exploration and for interpreting historical evidence in undergraduate courses on history and historical methodology. I have several aims in using the maps.

Source

From John Bartholomew, Literary and historical atlas of America

This unusual map appeared in a 1911 atlas of America by John George Bartholomew, a prestigious Scottish cartographer and geographer. In this map Bartholomew dramatized the provincialism of European cartography three centuries earlier.

Close-up image of an early modern Ottoman sajjadah rug
Source

Early Modern Ottoman Carpet at the Walters Art Museum

This carpet is a specific type of carpet woven in the Islamic world called a sajjadah or prayer rug.

Close-up image of an early modern Ottoman sajjadah rug
Source

Islamic Carpet made in Ottoman Turkey at The Metropolitan Museum of Art

This carpet is a specific type of carpet woven in the Islamic world called a sajjadah or prayer rug.

Image of a sixteenth-century Ottoman carpet showing a portion of the carpet's main design field that contains a triple arch design with slender double columns and a hanging lamp in the central archway
Teaching

Short Teaching Module: Early Modern Islamic Carpets as Transcultural Objects

Islamic carpets were ubiquitous in the early modern period (1500-1800) in Europe as much as it was in the Islamic world. They were important objects of decor within homes, imperial palaces, and religious buildings.

Close-up image of an early modern Islami Carpet
Source

Islamic Carpets

These three carpets made in the period between the 16th and 18th centuries show two distinct types of carpets produced in the Islamic World for particular culture-specific uses.

Review

Southeast Asia in the Ming Shi-lu

A legendary repository for scholars of Southeast Asia and researchers interested in the Chinese World Order, Southeast Asia in the Ming Shi-lu is a veritable treasure trove of information on a dynamic region during a period of transcendental change.
Review

Beijing Silvermine

A fascinating, confusing, and challenging photographic archive, Beijing Silvermine is on the one hand an important record of the lives of ordinary Chinese citizens living through two decades of transcendental change and on the other a somewhat problematic appropriation of their private lives.