- Language: English
- Lecture Hall, G/F, May Hall, The University of Hong Kong, or Via Zoom
- March 23, 2023 | 12:30 – 2:00 pm (HKT)
- March 22, 2023 | 9:30 – 11:00 pm (PDT)
ABSTRACT
Recent scholarship of pre-modern empires likes to portray pre-modern empires as being tolerant of diversities and differences. This portrayal, however, belies the fact that the religious policies of pre-modern empires differ significantly: some indeed allowed all kinds of religions to exist and flourish, while others persecuted heretics and non-believers, and carried out forced conversions. This talk will examine more than 30 pre-modern empires and investigate how they treat religions outside of their state religion. I rank these empires into different tiers according to their degree of religious toleration, and also provide an explanation of the variations.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Yanfei Sun is currently associate professor of sociology at Zhejiang University. She graduated from University of Chicago with a PhD in sociology in 2010. She was a Mellon Research Fellow of Columbia University Society of Fellows (2010–2013), a visiting associate professor at Harvard University, and a lecturer at the University of Chicago. Her fields of interest include sociology of religion and political sociology. She studies religious changes, religious movements, secularism, religious nationalism, and ethno-religious violence. Her recent research has extended to historical comparative study of empires and nation-states. Her research also touches on environmental NGOS and governance. Her work has appeared on American Journal of Sociology, Theory and Society, Modern China, Social Compass, and leading Chinese sociological journals such as Sociological Studies, Sociological Review of China, The Twentieth-first Century, as well as numerous book chapters. Her 2017 article on American Journal of Sociology and her 2019 article on Theory and Society received the Distinguished Article Award from the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion in 2018 and in 2020 respectively. In 2023–24, she will be a fellow at the Berlin Institute for Advanced Study (Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin).
