Jingyuan Zhang
Associate Professor Emerita
Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures

It is with great sadness that we report the passing on September 23 of Jingyuan Zhang, Associate Professor Emerita in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Georgetown University, and member of the Steering Committee for the Comparative Literature Program. Professor Zhang joined the faculty at Georgetown in 1994, and retired this past summer. She held a B.A. and M.A. in English from Sichuan University of International Studies, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Cornell University. She held a tenured position in the Chinese Department and Institute of Comparative Literature at Peking University for three years before returning to the United States to teach at Cornell, U.C. Berkeley, and finally Georgetown. Her main research interests were in modern Chinese literature and culture, particularly in the relationship between Chinese psychoanalytic thought and literary practice, on which topic she was a leading authority. She published in both English and Chinese (including short stories and a newspaper essay column), and her work as a translator also made works by a number of important Chinese scholars accessible to English-speaking audiences. As Georgetown’s specialist on modern Chinese culture, she taught on a wide range of topics including Lu Xun and other major writers of the May 4^th era, images of women in contemporary Chinese film, contemporary Chinese women writers, modern Chinese drama, and Chinese avant-garde fiction. Above her desk hung framed portraits of the leading Chinese authors of the 1930’s, alongside Virginia Woolf. At various times she also taught the introduction to Comparative Literature, bolstered the basic Chinese language program by teaching upper-level language courses, and mentored countless senior projects for both the Chinese and Comparative Literature programs. Continue reading →

Source: China File (8/27/20)
The Future of China Studies in the U.S.: A ChinaFile Conversation
The ChinaFile Conversation is a weekly, real-time discussion of China news, from a group of the world’s leading China experts.

Melissa Sue Gerrits—Getty Images. A student wearing a face mask studies outside the closed Wilson Library on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, August 18, 2020.

As an extraordinarily fraught school year begins, the study of China on U.S. campuses (or their new virtual equivalents), as well as China’s role in university life more broadly, has recently become a subject of scrutiny and debate. Last week, a group of China-focused political scientists outlined the “unique challenges” they feel educators now face when teaching about China in an atmosphere colored by Hong Kong’s new National Security Law, potential surveillance of online teaching platforms, stepped-up repression of dissent in China, the mass internment and persecution of members of ethnic minority groups in Xinjiang, and a growing hostility in U.S.-China relations. Their statement came on the heels of calls for Western universities to close satellite campuses in China, as well as an unusual letter from a U.S. Under Secretary of State to university governing boards urging a variety of measures to counteract what he described as the “the malign actions of the CCP [Chinese Communist Party]” threatening academic freedom, human dignity, university endowments, and intellectual property. Meanwhile, in China, Peking University last week issued rules requiring professors to seek permission 15 days in advance to attend international academic webinars (including those held in Hong Kong and Macau). And all of this is occurring against a backdrop of the various changes to study and teaching wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic. Continue reading →

The 2021 Newman Prize for Chinese Literature Nominations are in! Its an amazing group of authors (and jurors)!: Xu Xiaobin 徐小斌 nominated by Chen Xiaoming (Beijing University); Lung Yingtai 龍應台 nominated by Eileen Chow (Duke University); Su Tong 苏童 nominated by Huang Yunte (UC Santa Barbara); Wu He 舞鶴 nominated by Andrea Bachner (Cornell University); and Yan Lianke 阎连科 nominated by Eric Abrahamsen (Paper Republic).

The Newman Prize is sponsored by the University of Oklahoma’s Institute for US-China Issues, and is awarded every other year in recognition of outstanding achievement in prose or poetry that best captures the human condition. It is given solely on the basis of literary merit: any living author writing in Chinese is eligible. A jury of five literary experts nominated the five candidates and will select the winner in October through a transparent voting process. The winner will receive $10,000USD, a commemorative plaque, and a bronze medallion at an academic symposium and award banquet at OU in Norman in early March 2021. The event will be hosted by Jonathan Stalling, the Harold J. and Ruth Newman Chair for US-China Issues and Co-Director of the OU Institute for US-China Issues, which seeks to advance mutual trust in US-China relations. The inaugural Newman laureate Mo Yan (2009) went on to win the 2012 Nobel Prize in Literature, and other Newman Prize winners have included Han Shaogong, Yang Mu, Chu T’ien-wen, Wang Anyi, and Xi Xi. The Newman Prize honors Harold J. and Ruth Newman, whose generous endowment of a chair at the University of Oklahoma enabled the creation of the OU Institute for US-China Issues. The University of Oklahoma is also home to Chinese Literature Today, the Chinese Literature Translation Archive, World Literature Today, and the Neustadt International Prize for Literature.

Posted by: Wah Guan Lim <wglim@unsw.edu.au>
Source: Sydney Herald News (3/10/20)
Torchbearer for Chinese studies at the University of Melbourne
By Andrew Endrey, Christopher Nailer and Carol Simon

Harry Simon.

Harry Felix Simon: September 13, 1923-July 7, 2019

Professor Harry Felix Simon, who led Chinese studies at the University of Melbourne for a remarkable 27 years, was born in Berlin on September 13, 1923.

His father, Professor Walter Simon, was lecturing in Chinese at the University of Berlin. Unable to retain his position following the Nazis’ rise to power, Walter departed with his family for England in March 1936, where he became professor of Chinese in the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London.

Harry, aged 12, adjusted swiftly to England at the Thames Valley Grammar School. Following in his father’s footsteps, he studied Chinese at SOAS during the early years of World War II and was commissioned as a lieutenant in the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry Regiment. By 1944, he was a service instructor in Chinese at London University; in 1947, he took up an appointment there as lecturer in Chinese. Continue reading →