BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//UCLA Humanities - ECPv6.15.20//NONSGML v1.0//EN CALSCALE:GREGORIAN METHOD:PUBLISH X-ORIGINAL-URL:https://humanities.ucla.edu X-WR-CALDESC:Events for UCLA Humanities REFRESH-INTERVAL;VALUE=DURATION:PT1H X-Robots-Tag:noindex X-PUBLISHED-TTL:PT1H BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/Los_Angeles BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:-0800 TZOFFSETTO:-0700 TZNAME:PDT DTSTART:20240310T100000 END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:-0700 TZOFFSETTO:-0800 TZNAME:PST DTSTART:20241103T090000 END:STANDARD BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:-0800 TZOFFSETTO:-0700 TZNAME:PDT DTSTART:20250309T100000 END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:-0700 TZOFFSETTO:-0800 TZNAME:PST DTSTART:20251102T090000 END:STANDARD BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:-0800 TZOFFSETTO:-0700 TZNAME:PDT DTSTART:20260308T100000 END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:-0700 TZOFFSETTO:-0800 TZNAME:PST DTSTART:20261101T090000 END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20250402T160000 DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20250402T180000 DTSTAMP:20260424T031347 CREATED:20250213T074924Z LAST-MODIFIED:20250227T093300Z UID:2190703-1743609600-1743616800@humanities.ucla.edu SUMMARY:Pourdavoud Lecture Series: Yuhan Vevaina DESCRIPTION:Zoroastrian Hermeneutics in Late Antiquity\nThe Sūdgar Nask of Dēnkard Book 9 is a commentary on the ‘Old Avesta’ of the 2nd millennium BCE produced in Pahlavi (Zoroastrian Middle Persian) in the Sasanian (224–651 CE) and early Islamic centuries. This commentary is a value-laden\, ideologically motivated discourse that displays a rich panoply of tradition-constituted forms of allegoresis. It mobilizes complex forms of citation\, allusion\, and intertextuality from the inherited Avestan world of myth and ritual in order to engage with and react to the profound changes occurring in Iranian society. Despite its value and importance for developing our nascent understanding of Zoroastrian hermeneutics and the self-conception of the Zoroastrian priesthood in Late Antiquity\, this primary source has attracted scant scholarly attention due to the extreme difficulty of its subject matter and the lack of a reliable translation. This 2-volume work represents the first critical edition\, translation\, and commentary of this formidable text which will contribute to the philological\, theological\, and historiographical study of Zoroastrianism in a pivotal moment in its rich and illustrious history. Reading the Sūdgar Nask is a hermeneutic process of traversing texts\, genres\, and rituals in both the Avestan and Pahlavi corpora\, thus activating nodes in a web or network of textual and meta-textual relations that establish new forms of allegoreses or meaning making. It is argued that this entire hermeneutical complex of weaving a ‘new’ text composed of implicit proof text and explicit commentary renews\, extends\, and\, ultimately\, makes tradition. \nAbout the Speaker \nYuhan Sohrab-Dinshaw Vevaina is the Bahari Associate Professor of Sasanian Studies and a Fellow of Wolfson College at the University of Oxford. He received his Ph.D. in Iranian and Persian Studies from Harvard University in 2007. Since then he has taught at Harvard University\, Stanford University\, and the University of Toronto prior to coming to Oxford in 2017. He is the co-editor with Michael Stausberg of The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Zoroastrianism. He is particularly interested in the interplay between apologetics\, polemics\, and historicising interpretations of the ancient Avestan scriptures by the Zoroastrian priesthood in the Sasanian and early Islamic periods. In 2023 and 2024 he published a two-volume book project of a critical edition and commentary on the ninth book of the Dēnkard with Harrassowitz Verlag\, Wiesbaden. It was awarded the Association for Iranian Studies Book Prize for Best Book in Ancient Iranian Studies in 2024. He is currently preparing a manuscript entitled: Topographies of Rhetoric and Moral Reasoning in Sasanian and Post-Sasanian Zoroastrianism based on his four lectures at L’École Pratique des Hautes Études\, Paris in Spring 2024\, and he is also working on a co-authored critical edition of the Epistles of Manuščihr with Arash Zeini to be published by Edinburgh University Press. \n \n\n\nPourdavoud Lecture Series – Yuhan Vevaina\n\n \n\n\nName*\n\n \n First\n \n \n Last\n \n\nEmail*\n\n\nAffiliation*\n\n\n\n UCLA Student\n \n\n UCLA Faculty or Staff\n \n\n UCLA Alumnus/Alumna\n \n\n Non-UCLA Student\n \n\n Non-UCLA Faculty or Staff\n \n\n General Public\n \n\n\n\n\n\nAttending Online or In-Person?\n\n\n\n In-Person\n \n\n Online\n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n \n/* = 0;if(!is_postback){return;}var form_content = jQuery(this).contents().find(‘#gform_wrapper_66’);var is_confirmation = jQuery(this).contents().find(‘#gform_confirmation_wrapper_66’).length > 0;var is_redirect = contents.indexOf(‘gformRedirect(){‘) >= 0;var is_form = form_content.length > 0 && ! is_redirect && ! is_confirmation;var mt = parseInt(jQuery(‘html’).css(‘margin-top’)\, 10) + parseInt(jQuery(‘body’).css(‘margin-top’)\, 10) + 100;if(is_form){jQuery(‘#gform_wrapper_66’).html(form_content.html());if(form_content.hasClass(‘gform_validation_error’)){jQuery(‘#gform_wrapper_66’).addClass(‘gform_validation_error’);} else {jQuery(‘#gform_wrapper_66’).removeClass(‘gform_validation_error’);}setTimeout( function() { /* delay the scroll by 50 milliseconds to fix a bug in chrome */ }\, 50 );if(window[‘gformInitDatepicker’]) {gformInitDatepicker();}if(window[‘gformInitPriceFields’]) {gformInitPriceFields();}var current_page = jQuery(‘#gform_source_page_number_66’).val();gformInitSpinner( 66\, ‘https://pourdavoud.ucla.edu/wp-content/plugins/gravityforms/images/spinner.svg’\, true );jQuery(document).trigger(‘gform_page_loaded’\, [66\, current_page]);window[‘gf_submitting_66’] = false;}else if(!is_redirect){var confirmation_content = jQuery(this).contents().find(‘.GF_AJAX_POSTBACK’).html();if(!confirmation_content){confirmation_content = contents;}jQuery(‘#gform_wrapper_66’).replaceWith(confirmation_content);jQuery(document).trigger(‘gform_confirmation_loaded’\, [66]);window[‘gf_submitting_66’] = false;wp.a11y.speak(jQuery(‘#gform_confirmation_message_66’).text());}else{jQuery(‘#gform_66’).append(contents);if(window[‘gformRedirect’]) {gformRedirect();}}jQuery(document).trigger(“gform_pre_post_render”\, [{ formId: “66”\, currentPage: “current_page”\, abort: function() { this.preventDefault(); } }]); if (event && event.defaultPrevented) { return; } const gformWrapperDiv = document.getElementById( “gform_wrapper_66” ); if ( gformWrapperDiv ) { const visibilitySpan = document.createElement( “span” ); visibilitySpan.id = “gform_visibility_test_66”; gformWrapperDiv.insertAdjacentElement( “afterend”\, visibilitySpan ); } const visibilityTestDiv = document.getElementById( “gform_visibility_test_66” ); let postRenderFired = false; function triggerPostRender() { if ( postRenderFired ) { return; } postRenderFired = true; jQuery( document ).trigger( ‘gform_post_render’\, [66\, current_page] ); gform.utils.trigger( { event: ‘gform/postRender’\, native: false\, data: { formId: 66\, currentPage: current_page } } ); gform.utils.trigger( { event: ‘gform/post_render’\, native: false\, data: { formId: 66\, currentPage: current_page } } ); if ( visibilityTestDiv ) { visibilityTestDiv.parentNode.removeChild( visibilityTestDiv ); } } function debounce( func\, wait\, immediate ) { var timeout; return function() { var context = this\, args = arguments; var later = function() { timeout = null; if ( !immediate ) func.apply( context\, args ); }; var callNow = immediate && !timeout; clearTimeout( timeout ); timeout = setTimeout( later\, wait ); if ( callNow ) func.apply( context\, args ); }; } const debouncedTriggerPostRender = debounce( function() { triggerPostRender(); }\, 200 ); if ( visibilityTestDiv && visibilityTestDiv.offsetParent === null ) { const observer = new MutationObserver( ( mutations ) => { mutations.forEach( ( mutation ) => { if ( mutation.type === ‘attributes’ && visibilityTestDiv.offsetParent !== null ) { debouncedTriggerPostRender(); observer.disconnect(); } }); }); observer.observe( document.body\, { attributes: true\, childList: false\, subtree: true\, attributeFilter: [ ‘style’\, ‘class’ ]\, }); } else { triggerPostRender(); } } );} );\n/* ]]> */ \n  URL:https://humanities.ucla.edu/event/pourdavoud-lecture-series-yuhan-vevaina/ LOCATION:306 Royce Hall\, 10745 Dickson Plaza\, Los Angeles\, CA\, 90095\, United States CATEGORIES:Book Launch ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://humanities.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Pourdavoud-Lecture-Series-Vevaina-web-image2-gYRsBl.tmp_.jpg END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR