Lectures

Seminars in modern Chinese fiction

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Two Seminars in Modern Chinese Fiction at the Lau China Centre, Kings College London
Thursday 7th and Thursday 14th June, 10-12, at Bush House, KCL

The first seminar will consider ‘I Love Dollars’ by Zhu Wen, originally published in Chinese in the late 1990s, and the second ‘The Story of Ah Q ‘ by Lu Xun, first published in Chinese in 1921.

The seminars are presented by journalist and writer Poppy Sebag-Montefiore, will be discussions on short stories from bestselling classics from either end of the 20th century.

Through close reading, the sessions will explore the ways the texts deal with sexuality, patriarchy, filial piety, women, masculinity, the individual, romantic love, society and the state. They will also consider the tone of the writing, the use of humour, parody and the absurd, and consider the ways in which they experiment with the story form. Continue reading →

Sino-British botanical exchanges in the 18th-19th centuries

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I would like to introduce this incoming talk about the botanical interactions between Britain and China in the 18th century which I will co-present on March 24th in Oxford.

Botanical Art, Botanical Commerce: Britain meets China at the Dawn of Modernity
Oxford (United Kingdom) March 24th (12:45)

Speakers:

Former director of the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew Sir Peter Crane, author and expert in the history of science, medicine and culture Jordan Goodman and expert in Sino-British exchanges and China Trade paintings Josepha Richard discuss the John Bradby Blake collection.

Topic:

The Oak Spring Garden Foundation, Virginia, USA, contains the archive of 18th-century East India Company supercargo John Bradby Blake. Blake first visited Canton in 1767/68 as a trader and, before his death in 1773, his collaboration with the Chinese artist Mauk-Sow-U produced over 150 striking and botanically accurate paintings of Chinese plants. These paintings and the associated archives provide details of an interesting life and previously little-known dimensions of late 18th-century social and scientific interactions between the British and Chinese, including British attempts to secure living plants that could prove useful at home and in its colonies. Continue reading →

Dazibao exhibition

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Source: Sup China (11/14/17)
When Words Kill: ‘Big-Character Posters’ Are Testament To Tenacity And Suffering In One Of China’s Darkest Periods
By ELEANOR GOODMAN

In China in Ten Words, translated into English by Allan H. Barr, author Yu Hua gives a trenchant description of big-character posters (大字报 dàzìbào) as he experienced them as a child:

At the outset of the Cultural Revolution “big-character posters” started to appear. Political screeds rendered in clumsily handwritten characters — and now and again some elegantly written ones, too — these were the first acts of the disenfranchised masses in challenging the power of officialdom. Written on broadsheets are big as decent-sized windows and posted on the walls that ran alongside city streets, shorter versions took the form of two sheets of paper mounted one on top of another, while longer ones involved five or six sheets set out in a horizontal row. In the years to follow, these big-character posters would become the largest exhibition of calligraphy China has ever seen: all across the country, in cities and towns, big streets and small, walls were decorated with them. People would gather in the streets and read the posters with undisguised relish, for although they all employed much the same revolutionary rhetoric, they began to criticize officials and their high and mighty ways. Continue reading →

Xu Zhimo event

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I’m one of the organizers for the Xu Zhimo event in New York tomorrow. The reason that we are conducting the event in Chinese is that the event is not in the form of a symposium, but rather readings of Xu’s poems and music tributes. We do have some speeches and readings in English such as the remarks by Dr. Tony Hsu, Xu Zhimo’s grandson and a UN interpreter (on a poem he translated into English). See the event program at:

http://chineselectures.org/program_en.pdf (in English)
http://chineselectures.org/program_chinese.pdf (in Chinese)

For people who are interested, you are welcome to tune in live streaming from 2 to 4:30 pm tomorrow at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYloBzl4EWCXn0pXIOa9SOg/live.

The event description is at http://chineselectures.org/upcoming.html

Yong Ho <ho@un.org>

US-China Poetry Dialogue

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Source: Notes on the Mosquito (10/24/17)
US-China Poetry Dialogue at University of Oklahoma

Xi Chuan and other Chinese and American poets are at the University of Oklahoma for the US-China Poetry Dialog, organized by Jonathan Stalling.

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The first public events will be on the 24th at 10:30 a.m. in OU’s Bizzell Memorial Library and 7 p.m. at Fred Jones Museum of Art. There will also be a reading on the 25th in Eureka Springs, AR, at 7 p.m. at the Writers Colony at Dairy Hollow, and on the 26th in Bentonville, AR at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art at 6 p.m. Continue reading →

Teaching Global Community in an Age of Anti-Immigration

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PODCAST: Teaching Global Community in An Age of Anti-Immigration, with Eileen Chengyin Chow

Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/fairbank-center/teaching-global-community-in-an-age-of-anti-immigration-with-eileen-chow

iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/teaching-global-community-in-age-anti-immigration-eileen/id1255938359?i=1000390848201&mt=2

What role is there for storytelling and roleplay in teaching about Chinatowns and Chinese diasporas?

The “Harvard on China” podcast talks to Eileen Chengyin Chow, Professor in Duke University’s Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies and Co-Director of Duke’s Story Lab, director of the Shewo Institute of Chinese Journalism at Shih Hsin University, and Harvard alum. She is the author of the forthcoming “Chinatown States of Mind,” as well as the co-translator with Carlos Rojas of Yu Hua’s two-volume novel “Brothers” and the co-editor of the “Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas.”

The “Harvard on China” podcast is hosted by James Evans at Harvard’s Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies.

You can subscribe to the “Harvard on China” podcast on iTunes, or listen on Soundcloud, Stitcher, and other podcast apps.

Dirlik lecture on the rise of China

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Source: Boundary 2 Online Community (7/30/17)
Arif Dirlik: The Rise of China and the End of the World As We Know It
By boundary2

On February 27, 2016, longstanding boundary 2 board member Arif Dirlik gave his final lecture at the University of British Columbia. The talk, The Rise of China and the End of the World As We Know It, is available in full on the UBC Library’s website.

Interview with Wang Hui

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The Role of Intellectuals in China’s History, an Interview with Wang Hui

Harvard’s Peter Bol and Yu Wen interview visiting professor Wang Hui to discuss the changing role of intellectuals in China’s history. By tracing discourse on Chinese intellectuals back to Neo-Confucian debates in the Song Dynasty, Wang Hui examines intellectual history over the longue durée, as discussed in his four-volume work,The Rise of Modern Chinese Thought《現代中國思想的興起》(2004–2009).

Watch the full interview on the Fairbank Center’s YouTube page:

Peter Bol is Vice Provost for Advances in Learning and the Charles H. Carswell Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University.

Wang Hui is a Visiting Professor in East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the Harvard-Yenching Institue, and Professor of literature and history at Tsinghua University.

Yu Wen is a Ph.D. student in history at Harvard University.

This interview was produced by ChinaX and the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University.

 

Chinese Studies Research Group 4/22

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Please join us for the final meeting of the academic year for the Chinese Studies Research Group (San Francisco Bay Area).

This group is designed to create a sense of community among Chinese Studies scholars in the San Francisco Bay Area. Our meetings are an opportunity to hear and discuss interesting research in progress (typically from one faculty member and one doctoral candidate) and to network with people with similar interests.

Date: Saturday, April 22, 2017
Time: 10:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
Location: University of San Francisco, Malloy Hall (MH 405) – Telepresence Conference Room (Please note that this is a new meeting location on campus for the group)

Presentations:

Ethnic Branding and the Politics of (In)Visibility in Late-Socialist Southwest China
Yu Luo, Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for Chinese Studies, University of California Berkeley

Eunuchs and Opium during the Qing and Republican Periods
Melissa S. Dale, Executive Director & Assistant Professor, Center for Asia Pacific Studies, University of San Francisco Continue reading →

Theater, Art, and the CR talks

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Theater, Art, and the Cultural Revolution: A Presentation featuring Zheng Shengtian and Chen Xiaomei
Wednesday, March 29, 6:30-8:00pm
China Institute
40 Rector Street, 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10006

Tickets $5 each, please Register Here

Beginning in 1966, China’s Great Proletariat Cultural Revolution was a mass movement that shook the foundations of Modern China to its core. The movement’s ubiquitous presence disrupted all aspects of Chinese society, and has had a lasting impact on Chinese culture that continues until today. Continue reading →

Chinese Studies Research Group, 3/4

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Please join us for the 2nd meeting of the academic year for the Chinese Studies Research Group (San Francisco Bay Area).

This group is designed to create a sense of community among Chinese Studies scholars in the San Francisco Bay Area. Our meetings are an opportunity to hear and discuss interesting research in progress (typically from one faculty member and one doctoral candidate) and to network with people with similar interests.

Date: Saturday, March 4, 2017
Time: 10:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
Location: University of San Francisco, Fromm Hall, Maier Room

Blogging in A Heritage Language: Epistemic Stance and Identity Positioning of Chinese Heritage Language Learners 
Yang Xiao-Desai, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, San Francisco State University

A Re-examination of He Zhu’s 1096 Restored Poem of Being Moved and Lodging the Feelings in Words
Stuart Sargent, Independent Scholar Continue reading →

5th Newman Festival

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The University of Oklahoma is hosting the 5th Newman Festival March 2-3, 2017. All listed events are free and open to the public.

THURSDAY, MARCH 2

2:30–4pm   Salon on Chinese Literature, in Chinese 

Featuring Newman laureate Wang Anyi, scholars Dai Jinhua and Wang Ban, and translator Andrea Lingenfelter; moderated by Ping Zhu

(Reception 2-2:30pm)

Bizzell Memorial Library, Fourth Floor, West

7–9pm   Poetry reading by Taiwanese poet Ye Mimi and her translator Steve Bradbury

Featuring His Days Go By the Way Her Years: Poems by Ye Mimi

Mainsite Art Gallery, 122 E Main St, Norman, OK Continue reading →

Paper Republic events in London

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Three (yes, that’s 3!) Paper Republic events in London in December

Tuesday December 6th: Poetry Translation Centre – Translation Workshop 

Venue: Free Word Centre

Dave Haysom will be introducing raw crib translations of works by the poet Yu Youyou, before Clare Pollard workshops them into the stuff of poetry.

Monday December 12th: Dragonworld – Speed bookclubbing

Venue: Free Word Centre

Following our sell-out speed-book clubbing event in March, Read Paper Republic is delighted to be partnering with Free Word for a follow-up event with a fantastical flavour:

A police officer investigating a brutal murder interrogates his chief suspect, but the details of the crime itself are constantly shifting. A woman hopes a knight in shining armour will offer her an escape from the road she seems destined to pace forever. A dispute between two witnesses to a killing results in a fatal duel. A teenage gamer must find a way to deal with the concrete-hungry dragons that are somehow taking over his town. Continue reading →

Chinese Studies Research Group, Nov. 12 meeting

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Please join us for the first meeting of the academic year for the Chinese Studies Research Group (San Francisco Bay Area).

This group is designed to create a sense of community among Chinese Studies scholars in the San Francisco Bay Area. Our meetings are an opportunity to hear and discuss interesting research in progress from one faculty member and one doctoral candidate and to network with people with similar interests.

Date: Saturday, November 12, 2016 Time: 10:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
Location: University of San Francisco, Fromm Hall, Maier Room

Presentations:

Painted in Oil, Composed in Ink: Late Imperial Chinese Literati Poems on Western-Style Oil Paintings
Frederik H. Green, Assistant Professor, Modern Languages and Literature;
Assistant Director, Chinese Flagship Program, San Francisco State University

What’s “love” got to do with it?: “patriotic piety” and Chinese-Muslim nationalism
Lesley Turnbull, Kiriyama Fellow, Center for Asia Pacific Studies, University of San Francisco Continue reading →

Chinese masculinity lecture

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“Chinese Masculinity Ideals in a Globalized World”
Keynote Lecture by Prof. Kam Louie 
at the University of San Francisco Center for Asia Pacific Studies
Thursday, Nov. 3, 2016, 4:30 p.m.
University of San Francisco, McLaren 252
Free and Open to the Public

To register:

https://www.usfca.edu/event/2016-11-03-1630/chinese-masculinity-ideals-globalized-world Continue reading →