This talk by HU Suqing (Hunan University) will present an exploratory research initiative conducted under the framework of the Agreement on Cooperation between the AILC-ICLA and the UNESCO Memory of the World Programme (MoW), signed on 29 July 2025. In this talk, Dr. Hu will first introduce the project titled “The Ferghana Horse as Multimodal Cultural Memory: Two Millennia of Evolving Heritage Practices.” Since its introduction to China during the Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE), the Ferghana Horse has occupied a vital position in the Chinese cultural imagination, inspiring a tradition that has continued for more than two millennia. Specifically, Dr. Hu will examine the cosmotechnical reconfiguration of the Ferghana horse as a key visual and conceptual mediator of trans-Eurasian exchange along the Silk Road, tracing its transformation from the Han through the Northern–Southern Dynasties. Grounded in Yuk Hui’s theory of cosmotechnics, this study argues that the horse functioned not merely as a technical or military object, but as a culturally embedded medium through which cosmological imagination, political authority, and religious thought were negotiated. Shaped by sustained interactions among Chinese, Central Asian, and steppe-linked traditions, the Ferghana horse became a site of synthesis rather than simple transmission.
Abstract
The introduction of the Ferghana Horse into early China represented far more than an eastward transfer of technical expertise or zoological knowledge. It set in motion a profound process of cosmotechnical reconfiguration, as understood through Yuk Hui’s conceptual framework of cosmotechnics. This talk will investigate the formative stages of this transformation from the Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE) through the Wei–Jin and Northern and Southern Dynasties (220–589 CE), situating it within the broader historical context of Silk Road exchanges and long-term cultural integration. Across this period, the horse was progressively reimagined from a biological and military instrument into a cosmologically charged medium. To substantiate this claim, the talk will adopt a multimodal analytical approach, drawing on a corpus of archaeological artifacts, pictorial representations, and textual sources, in order to examine how visual and textual evidence jointly register and negotiate the evolving semantics of the indigenization of the Ferghana Horse motif in China.
A comparative perspective is also introduced by situating this Chinese trajectory alongside contemporaneous Central Asian traditions and the Late Antique Mediterranean world, where equine motifs likewise retained cosmological resonance but tended to be articulated through more emblematic and ornamental systems of visual order.
Biography
Hu Suqing, Associate Professor, PhD in Comparative Literature, College of Foreign Language Studies, Hunan University, China. Research focuses include human-animal studies, critical animal studies, philosophy of technology and science fiction studies.
Respondent
Professor Wen-Chin Ouyang (SOAS, University of London)
Professor Dame Jessica Rawson (Oxford University)
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The lecture will be hosted by the Centre for Comparative Literature, Goldsmiths, University of London.
The ICLA/MoW Series is coordinated jointly by Professor Lucia Boldrini (Honorary President, AILC-ICLA; Honorary Director, Centre for Comparative Literature, Goldsmiths, University of London), Professor Ipshita Chanda (AILC-ICLA President, 2025-28) and Professor Lothar Jordan (Chair of the MoW Sub-Committee for Education and Research, SCEaR).
More information on the ICLA/ MoW collaboration