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 →

Source: McGill Reporter (11/15/19)
Julia Lovell wins 2019 Cundill History Prize
Julia Lovell, China expert and translator of Chinese literature, wins major prize for her book Maoism: A Global History
By McGill Reporter Staff

“Julia Lovell’s Maoism embodies everything the Cundill History Prize is here to celebrate,” said Antonia Maioni, Dean of the Faculty of Arts. “Deeply researched, beautifully written, and truly global in its scope, this book will find audiences right around the globe.”

The China expert and translator of Chinese literature Julia Lovell has been named the winner of the 2019 Cundill History Prize for Maoism: A Global History, published by The Bodley Head (UK) and Knopf (US). At a time when tensions between China and the west are on the rise, Lovell’s sweeping work of history provides a re-evaluation of Maoism as a force that played out around the world – and continues to shape political practice in China today.

The British historian and professor of Modern China at Birkbeck College, University of London – was awarded the US$75,000 prize, administered by McGill, at a Gala at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts on November 14. She was chosen in what the twice Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Alan Taylor, Chair of the Jury, called “a very close call.” Continue reading →

On October 25th, 2019 Rudolf G. Wagner died, surrounded by his family. He was 77 years old.

Heidelberg has lost one its great inspirations, one of the great European sinologists, who built one of the most important China libraries in Germany and Europe and became Spiritus Rector of Heidelberg’s Excellence Cluster Asia and Europe in a Global Context. From these beginnings, he built the Heidelberg Centre for Transcultural Studies and from it an entire Asia Campus has come into being, CATS, the Centre for Asian and Transcultural Studies.

Rudolf G. Wagner was, if one may say so, a living specimen of “transcultural dynamics”: going back and forth between not just Harvard and Heidelberg, but Taipei and Beijing, Tokyo and Paris, and a variety of other places, too, he has been a constant presence to many of us, nevertheless (and he will continue to, in our memories). His frequent emails from anywhere and everywhere, tenor “get this, read this, buy this,” have been an unceasing stimulation. He has made us expand our visions and trajectories by fostering a spirit of openness, of discussion and often fierce, but always fair debate–full of bon mots, in the truest sense of the word–that involved the body and mind and that always included good food, good music, good art. He made us go to Théatre du Soleil, he took us to exhibitions of panopticons and much more, and he always reminded us, not to “never forget class struggle” (although that was also one of his concerns) but, “never to forget the Heidelberg opera.” He taught us multiple–and always intensive–ways of seeing, feeling, hearing. Continue reading →

Colleagues who are members of the MLA: If you have not affiliated with FIVE Forums, you may do so before October 15 and then vote in the upcoming Forum election for those five. I encourage you to consider one outside your comfort zone, such as TC Anthropology and Literature. I could use your vote! I am running for the TC Anthropology and Literature Forum Exec Ctte and am asking for your vote! Here is a little information about me. As a Chinese specialist, I may be unfamiliar to most of you but I’ve actually been a member of the MLA for 30 years and now am a Life Member. I am Professor of Chinese Cultural Studies and Chair of East Asian Studies at the University of Alberta. My research encompasses literature and film. I am the author most recently of The Sinophone Cinema of Hou Hsiao-hsien (Cambria, 2016) and a co-editor of the Wiley-Blackwell Companion to World Literature (5 vols.) due out in January. I am currently writing a book on filiality (intergenerational relations, respect for one’s elders, ancestor worship, kinship structure) in modern and contemporary Chinese literature and film, a topic traditionally considered the province of anthropology and ethnography. This study arises from his previous discussions of Hou Hsiao-hsien and Chinese/Taiwanese authors such as Bai Xianyong and Wang Wenxing, on whom I previously have published articles. I also have published an extended review article of Steven Sangren’s book Filial Obsessions in the most recent issue of China Review International. I have another review article on three recent books on filiality in the Qing dynasty that is forthcoming from CLEAR: Chinese Literature, Essays, Articles, and Reviews. I view serving on the Literature and Anthropology Forum Executive Committee as an opportunity more broadly to pursue such topics as family relations, kinship, the relationship of gender identity to biological and social reproduction, and ritual, as well as such efforts as linking literary and cinema studies scholarship with certain sectors of social science, such as cultural anthropology. I also see it as an opportunity for the Forum to branch out a bit and into non-Western literary and cultural studies. Previously, I served on the East Asian Division Executive Committee, the LLC Modern Chinese Forum (founding chair), the Delegate Assembly (three terms), the Elections Committee (one year as chair), and the Advisory Board of PMLA. I also have been President of the Association of Chinese and Comparative Literature and President of the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association. I sincerely hope I can make it on to the Anthropology and Literature Forum. This will push me in new directions, allow me to bridge the gap between East Asian Studies and what have been more mainstream studies in the MLA, and meet a lot of new people. Thank you for considering this!

Christopher Lupke, Ph. D.  陸敬思
Professor and Chair, Department of East Asian Studies
Faculty of Arts
University of Alberta
3-32A Pembina Hall
Edmonton, AB T6G 2H8, Canada
780-492-1131
lupke@ualberta.ca