An academic workshop titled Knowing Hands: Chinese Hand-Memory Techniques in Situ, Comparison, & Contact will take place from September 12–14, 2025, at the Centre for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (CAS-E) in Erlangen. Organized by ISCSD Vice President Marta Hanson and ISCSD Secretary Stéphanie Homola, this event will bring together leading scholars to investigate the intersection of hands, memory, and cultural practices across different historical and geographical contexts.
The three-day, invitation-only workshop aims to explore the use of hand gestures and tactile memory techniques across a range of academic disciplines, including divination, musicology, healing, and medieval religious studies. Through a series of presentations, discussions, and performances, participants will examine the diverse epistemic roles that hands have played in Chinese and European traditions.
Some of the key themes of the workshop include:
- Divination and Prognostication: Presentations on palm mnemonics, Taoist hand rituals, and divinatory systems across cultures.
- Musical Hands: Exploring hand gestures in music theory, including Sino-European connections and the symbolic use of hands in musical pedagogy.
- Healing Hands: Research on Dao-Buddhist hand charts, Chinese exorcistic rituals, and diagnostic techniques.
- Mnemonic and Calculating Hands: Studying the use of hand gestures in memory systems, including medieval European mnemonic techniques and Japanese divination methods.
The workshop will feature prominent academics and researchers, including Marta Hanson, Stéphanie Homola, Adeline Herrou, Asaf Goldschmidt, François Picard, and more. It will also include performances, live hand music, and visual representations, with opportunities for hands-on skills-sharing in sessions such as Animation 101 Skills using Powerpoint or Keynote.
The event will conclude with discussions of future directions for the Knowing Hands project, including the development of a digital exhibition, scholarly databases, and several edited volumes exploring hand-memory techniques across cultures.
While this is a closed event for members of the Knowing Hands academic network, the ISCSD invites members of its community who are interested in contributing to future initiatives to reach out to the organizers for opportunities to join the network and propose collaborative work.
(Participation via Zoom is possible on an individual basis; please contact the organizers.)
For more information, please contact:
Marta Hanson or Stéphanie Homola
Full workshop agenda
