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TITLE: 2008 Kluge Prize Ceremony
SPEAKER: Peter Brown, Romila Thapar
EVENT DATE: 12/10/2008
RUNNING TIME: 69 minutes
DESCRIPTION:
Peter Robert Lamont Brown and Romila Thapar were awarded the 2008 Kluge Prize for lifetime achievement in the study of humanity.
Speaker Biography: Peter Brown brought conceptual coherence to the field of late antiquity, looking anew at the end of the Roman Empire, the emergence of Christianity, and the rise of Islam in the civilizational unit of the Mediterranean world. He launched his career with a biography, "Augustine of Hippo" (1967). Drawing on the massive traditions of historical and ecclesiastical scholarship, he sought to understand the experiences and sensibilities that characterized the various phases of Augustine's life. Brown offered profound interpretations of the most demanding of Augustine's writings, presenting his analyses in vivid prose that does justice to technical scholarly debates while still remaining accessible to non-specialists. In 1971 Brown brought out what remains perhaps his most effective synthesis, "The World of Late Antiquity." Using a vast range of sources, he described the evolution of pagan philosophy and the rise of Christianity as part of a single social world. He also traced the story of late antiquity forward into the rise of new empires and civilizations in Persia, the Islamic world, and in Byzantium as well as Western Europe. Brown saw 200-1000 C.E. as a whole period that had not previously been seen as such; and he set the agenda for a new field of study and influenced many in other areas. Brown in his "Cult of the Saints" (1981) put to rest the tendency to think of a theological elite as separate from a superstitious, pagan populace. His "The Body and Society" (1988), an extension of his work on Augustine, inquires deeply into the meanings of a life devoted to holiness, as seen in the works of great Christian thinkers. It helped create the new field of "body history," so important for psychohistory and gender scholarship.
Speaker Biography: Romila Thapar complicated the view of Indian civilization, which had seemed comparatively unitary and unchanging, by scrutinizing its evolution and searching out its historical consciousness. At the beginning of her career, she challenged the conventional historiography. In her "History of India" (1966), she broke from the prominently held view of an unchanging India characterized by a past and static Golden Age. This work accelerated the adaptation of the social sciences in Indian universities and quickly became a teaching text in Indian schools. Thapar completely revised and greatly increased the size and scope of her "History of India" in 2002. Thapar acknowledges the uncertainties involved in writing history in the absence of a reliable written record. She also presents her view of the most likely interpretation of the evidence. Thapar has written or coauthored 15 substantial books, beginning in 1962 with her major biography of Asoka.