News in the field

BACS Best Doctoral Thesis Award 2025 — nominations

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2025 BACS Prize for Best Doctoral Thesis on China
Calls for Nominations:

The British Association of Chinese Studies invites nominations for the Best Doctoral Thesis Prize on China for 2025. Self-nominations are invited. To enter the competition:

  • A candidate must be a member of the British Association of Chinese Studies. If you are not a member and wish to be eligible, please find details on how to join BACS here: http://bacsuk.org.uk/about-us/membership
  • A candidate must have successfully passed their thesis at any point between 1st January 2024 and 31st December 2024.
  • The candidate must have completed their doctorate at a UK higher education institution OR else be based in the UK at the time of submitting their application.
  • Candidates can have completed their thesis on China in any disciplinary or interdisciplinary (e.g. area studies, development studies, gender studies, social policy studies, media studies) department and with reference to any time period.
  • Candidates should be available to attend the BACS annual conference.

To enter the prize competition, candidates need to email the following documents to the Administrative Chair of the BACS Doctoral Thesis Prize Panel, Chris Berry, (chris.berry@kcl.ac.uk) by 31 May 2025: Continue reading BACS Best Doctoral Thesis Award 2025 — nominations →

ACLS, AHA, and MLA file lawsuit

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I try not to post stuff related to US politics, but this situation strongly affects the work we do in Chinese Studies.–Kirk

Source: ACLS (May 1, 2025)
ACLS, AHA, and MLA File Lawsuit Alleging Illegal Dismantling of National Endowment for the Humanities
By Joy Connolly

The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), the American Historical Association (AHA), and the Modern Language Association (MLA) filed a lawsuit in federal district court today, seeking to reverse the recent actions to devastate the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), including the elimination of grant programs, staff, and entire divisions and programs.

In recent weeks, the NEH has suspended entire divisions, initiated the mass firing of 65 percent of its staff, and suspended entire grant programs. These moves threaten the future of American research into history, literature, languages, philosophy, politics, society, and culture. They restrict Americans’ ability to understand our national history and experiences.

The National Endowment for the Humanities was created in 1965 as a federal agency dedicated to funding the humanities, free of political interference. Over the past six decades, the NEH has awarded over $6 billion in funding and has supported the humanities in every state and US jurisdiction. While the agency’s current budget represents a mere one hundredths of one percent of the federal budget, the NEH has an outsize public impact. It plays a crucial role in connecting Americans to their cultural heritage, facilitating grassroots programs that have enriched K–12 education, promoted understanding of military experiences and supported returning veterans, bolstered local tourism economies, hosted community events, supported public education, produced pioneering research, and much more. Continue reading ACLS, AHA, and MLA file lawsuit →

ACLS joint statement on NEH cuts

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Joint Statement on Cuts to the National Endowment for the Humanities 

The American Council of Learned Societies, the Council of Graduate Schools, and The Phi Beta Kappa Society are deeply concerned by the April 2 notices cancelling grants made by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and by the reported plans to dramatically reduce its staff. As the organizations who played a critical role in helping to establish the nation’s cultural endowments, we urge the administration to reconsider this direction and ask Congress to protect this vital independent federal agency.

In 1963, our organizations jointly convened a National Commission on the Humanities to assess the need for federal support. The Commission concluded that “expansion and improvement of activities in the humanities are in the national interest and consequently deserve financial support by the federal government.” Acknowledging the values of free inquiry as essential for democracy, the founding of the NEH in 1965 with strong congressional support signaled America’s belief that a truly great society invests in the humanities.

The Commission’s findings are as true today as they were decades ago. Critical thought, cultural memory, and wisdom fostered by the humanities remain crucial to a vibrant democracy. The NEH has upheld these values since its founding.  For less than the cost of a postage stamp to every American, the NEH’s thoughtful grantmaking helps community and scholarly life thrive. Continue reading ACLS joint statement on NEH cuts →

Newman Prize events

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Dear MCLC friends,

I hope you can mark your calendar for two events starting today!

(1) Panel Discussion, Newman Prize for Chinese Literature, Celebrating the Work of the 2025 Laureate Ling Yu
Thursday, March 27, at 12 noon (central time).

CIS Newman Panel discussion sponsored by the University of Oklahoma Institute for US-China Issues in the David L. Boren College of International Studies. The Newman Prize is awarded biennially to recognize outstanding achievement in prose or poetry that best captures the human condition, based solely on literary merit.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycsaK7dBfL4)

(2) This Friday evening (tomorrow, March 28th), we will celebrate this year’s Newman Prize for Chinese Literature Prize winner Ling Yü, and the Newman Prize for English Jueju winners starting at 7pm (central US time). Here is the live streaming link: link.ou.edu/newmanprize-livestream. Or you can watch on Youtube:

(https://www.youtube.com/live/6XlvSCIS_Bc)

I hope you can join us as we celebrate Sinophone poetry and Chinese poetics across languages!

Jonathan Stalling

Kuo-ch’ing Tu dies at 83

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Source: US-Taiwan Literature Foundation (2/21/25)
Kuo-ch’ing Tu, leading poet and scholar of Taiwanese literature, dies at 83
By Terence Russell and Lucian Tu

Official release by US-Taiwan Literature Foundation and Tu Family

Kuo-ch’ing Tu, celebrated poet and scholar of Taiwanese literature and inaugural holder of the Lai Ho and Wu Cho-liu Endowed Chair in Taiwan Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) passed away on February 21, 2025. Tu played a major role in the Modernist poetry movement in Taiwan beginning in the 1960s, and through his translations of modernist writers such as T.S. Eliot and Charles Baudelaire, he was instrumental in introducing modernist theory and practice in Taiwan. Later, during his tenure as a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, he worked tirelessly to promote awareness of Taiwanese literature on the international stage, especially through the medium of Taiwan Literature: English Translation Series, a journal that he founded in 1996.

Kuo-ch’ing Tu was born in 1941 in the Fengyuan District of Taichung City, Taiwan. After being admitted to National Taiwan University, he studied in the Department of Foreign Languages and became involved with the group of young writers who founded the literary journal, Modern Literature, a seminal publication in the introduction and popularization of modernist literature in Taiwan. In 1964, Tu and Chen Ch’ien-wu, a relative and fellow Taichung native, were among the founders of the Bamboo Hat Poetry Society, which published Bamboo Hat (Li), an influential journal devoted to modern poetry. Continue reading Kuo-ch’ing Tu dies at 83 →

Liu Jiakun wins Pritzker Prize

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Source: NYT (3/4/25)
Chinese Architect Liu Jiakun Wins Pritzker Prize
Liu, known for understated structures that respond to their surroundings, has been awarded the profession’s highest honor.
By Robin Pogrebin

A man with gray hair and a dark shirt stands in front of a brick wall.

“Liu Jiakun takes present realities and handles them to the point of offering a whole new scenario of daily life,” the Pritzker jury said in a statement. Credit…Tom Welsh for The Hyatt Foundation, via The Pritzker Architecture Prize

At 17, Liu Jiakun was sent to labor in the countryside as part of China’s “re-education” efforts during the Cultural Revolution.

“I didn’t see a clear future for me — a lot of things were quite meaningless,” Liu said through a translator (his son, Martin) in a recent phone interview from his office in Chengdu, China. “I thought at the time that life was inconsequential.”

Eventually, Liu, now 68, found meaning in architecture, a pursuit that has earned him the profession’s highest honor: the Pritzker Prize.

Having founded his own practice, Jiakun Architects, in his native Chengdu in 1999, Liu has built more than 30 projects in China — including academic buildings, cultural institutions and civic spaces. He also designed the inaugural Serpentine Pavilion Beijing in 2018 and has been featured in Venice Biennales. Continue reading Liu Jiakun wins Pritzker Prize →

Lu Xun and World Literature

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New Publication
Ma, Xiaolu and Carlos Rojas, eds. Lu Xun and World Literature. HK: Hong Kong University Press, 2025.

Abstract: In Lu Xun and World Literature, Xiaolu Ma, Carlos Rojas, and other contributors examine various aspects of Lu Xun, who is known as the father of modern Chinese literature. Essays in this book focus on Lu Xun’s works in relation to the notions of world literature and processes of literary worlding. The contributors offer detailed analyses of Lu Xun’s own literary oeuvre and of foreign works that engage with his writings. This volume also focuses on many facets of the publication and dissemination of Lu Xun’s works, from printing and binding to the discussions and debates that followed their release in China and abroad. This book not only makes an important contribution to the field of Lu Xun studies, but also proposes a reexamination of the category of world literature.

Table of Contents:

Introduction: Lu Xun, China, and the World, by Xiaolu Ma

Lu Xun, World Poetry, and Poetic Worlding: From Mara Poetry to Revolutionary Literature, by Pu Wang

The Young Lu Xun and Weltliteratur: The Making of Anthology of Short Stories from beyond the Border, by Wendong Cui Continue reading Lu Xun and World Literature →

Paper Republic newsletter no. 20

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Image description

Happy Chinese New Year!

As we usher in the Year of the Snake, this vibrant and meaningful occasion is the perfect time to celebrate the richness of Chinese culture—and what better way than through the lens of its literature?

This issue brings you a feast of publications and media showcasing the brilliance of Chinese writing in translation. From fresh releases to interviews with translators and other news, we’re thrilled to spotlight stories and voices that resonate with the spirit of this festive season. Whether you’re an avid reader or simply curious about Chinese literature, there’s plenty to explore. So, grab a cup of tea, settle in, and let’s dive into the world of Chinese storytelling together!

Read online for free

  • Yan An’s poems “Territory” and “Empty Train” (translated by Chen Du and Xisheng Chen) were published online in Flyway: Journal of Writing & Environment (Iowa State University).

Events

  • Our 9th book club on modern Chinese literature with the Open University Book Club was on 17th January. Helen Wang joined us to discuss her translation of the short story “Ying Yang Alley” (鹰扬巷) by Fan Xiaoqing (范小青). If you missed it, you can check out the recording and transcript of the event here. And keep an eye on the website as we will be doing another book club in the next few months.
  • Don’t miss this masterclass and workshop by Nicky Harman and Yan Ge on 8 March 2025 at the Leeds Centre for New Chinese Writing. Writing Lives: from China in the 1930s to Britain in the 2020s. Part 1: Presentation with Nicky Harman on Ling Shuhua and Life-Writing; Part 2: Creative Writing Workshop on Characterisation, with Yan Ge. Registration link now available here.

Continue reading Paper Republic newsletter no. 20 →

The Anaconda in the Chandelier review

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MCLC Resource Center is pleased to announce publication of Jeffrey Kinkley’s review of The Anaconda in the Chandelier: Writings on China, by Perry Link. The review appears below and at its online home: https://u.osu.edu/mclc/book-reviews/kinkley2/. My thanks to Nicholas Kaldis, our literary studies book review editor, for ushering the review to publication.

Kirk Denton, MCLC

The Anaconda in the Chandelier:
Writings on China

By Perry Link

Reviewed by Jeffrey C. Kinkley

MCLC Resource Center Publication (Copyright January, 2025)

Perry Link, The Anaconda in the Chandelier: Writings on China Perry Link. Philadelphia: Paul Dry Books, 2025. viii + 287 pp. ISBN 9781589881983 (paper)

Perry Link’s eminence as scholar and as public intellectual is well known to most MCLC readers. His pioneering scholarship on twentieth-century Chinese popular narratives and on the linguistic inventiveness of Chinese oral and written expression more generally is embodied in full-length monographs,[1] supplemented by studies of the circulation of Mao-era printed novels and unapproved hand-copied manuscripts, as well as essays on comedians’ dialogues (xiangsheng 相声) of the Mao and post-Mao years. Link’s 2007 essay on xiangsheng in the early People’s Republic of China (PRC) serves as a bang-up penultimate chapter for The Anaconda in the Chandelier.[2] The book prints in total thirty-one of Link’s 1998-2023 short and medium-length essays, book reviews, and prefaces, including a number of Link’s longer and more academic articles, together with their footnotes. Most are reprints—with revisions, says the preface, but changes are scarcely visible. Many of these contributions take on the dark task of explaining the finely tuned mechanics, psychology, and social psychology of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) control of Chinese communication through censorship, pre-censorship, and, above all, the creation of an unconscious, second-nature self-censorship among writers and the general public. Link calls the condition “fossilized fear.” That was the subject of a landmark monograph from Princeton University Press he published in 2000—on the “uses” of literature in China.[3] He updated the story in newsy and learned essays published in The New York Review of Books and various op-ed and human rights forums. (NYRB-related contributions make up about half of the essays anthologized in The Anaconda in the Chandelier.) The author’s expertise, Chinese friends and informants, and ever-critical yet always humanely empathetic social probings enabled what is probably now his best-known research: historical and biographical accounts of Chinese dissidence and protest. That focus, too, dates back to the 1980s, when he began to translate, edit, and publish short fiction and essays by freethinking PRC writers who surfaced, or, like Liu Binyan 刘宾雁, resurfaced, after the demise of Mao.[4] Consideration of the 1989 June Fourth massacre accelerated Link’s major collaborative academic projects and human rights activism, which includes documenting and explaining the before-and-after of China’s nationwide 1989 calamity, the Charter 08 movement, and the life story of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Liu Xiaobo 刘晓波.[5] Through it all, Link has pursued yet another vocation: teaching in and administering Chinese language programs, while coproducing textbooks for them.[6] Continue reading The Anaconda in the Chandelier review →

Ling Yü wins 2025 Newman Prize

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NORMAN, OKLA. – An international jury has selected Taiwanese poet Ling Yü 零⾬ (Wang Meiqin 王美琴) as the winner of the 2025 Newman Prize for Chinese Literature. Sponsored by the University of Oklahoma Institute for US-China Issues in the David L. Boren College of International Studies, the Newman Prize is awarded biennially to recognize outstanding achievement in prose or poetry that best captures the human condition, based solely on literary merit. Any living author writing in Chinese is eligible.

Ling Yü will receive $10,000 and an engraved bronze medallion. She will be celebrated at an award symposium and banquet to be held on the OU Norman campus during the last week of March 2025 along with the winners of the International Newman Prizes for English Jueju.

Ling Yü was nominated for the prize by Professor Cosima Bruno (School of Oriental and African Studies, London), who praised her poetry for its “untrammeled, ingenious lyricism” and its ability to weave contemporary themes and personal experiences with the controlled elegance of classical Chinese poetry.

Bruno remarked in her nomination statement:

Ling Yü’s language is economical and concise, yet surprising and reverberating with complex meaning. Her poetry engages thoughtfully with classical and modern, Eastern and Western literary, philosophical, artistic, and esoteric sources, generating outstanding works that require attention but are also intuitively grasped. Through her works, readers encounter a prism of rich, elegantly employed references that span themes of meditation, travel, feminism, capitalism, the environment, mythology and more.

Ling Yü’s extensive body of work includes nine collections of poetry, such as Series on a City (《城的連作》1990), Names Disappearing on the Map (《消失在地圖上的名字》1992), Mudong Hymns (《⽊冬詠歌集》1999), I’m Heading for You (《我正前往你》2010), and her recent collections Skin-Coloured Time (《膚⾊的時光》2018) and Daughters (《女兒》2022). Her poetry spans topics such as cultural heritage, mythological figures, ecological concern, and autobiographical reflection. Her work has been widely recognized, translated into multiple languages, and presented at major international poetry festivals, including the Poetry International Festival in Rotterdam and the Hong Kong International Poetry Nights. Continue reading Ling Yü wins 2025 Newman Prize →

Lingnan Forum on Chinese Digital Humanities

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Happy New Year! The Advanced Institute for Global Chinese Studies (AIGCS) and the Department of Chinese at Lingnan University are proud to announce the establishment of the Lingnan Forum on Chinese Digital Humanities. For details, go to the following link:

https://uofi.app.box.com/s/1j2p8obwye90n7pxcvkg0s99cj0541ty

Mission

The forum aims to promote the application of digital tools and concepts in literary and historical research, addressing the limitations of traditional methodologies. By conducting quantitative analyses of significant topics in literary studies, intellectual history, and related disciplines, it seeks to generate qualitative insights grounded in humanistic data. Additionally, the forum identifies research questions that challenge dominant theoretical frameworks in Chinese humanities, broadening the scope of academic inquiry.

Core Activities

Academic Symposia: Two international symposia will be held in the year of 2025.

Lecture Series: Delivered in a hybrid format, combining online and in-person sessions.

Research Focus

The forum focuses on major issues in literary studies and intellectual history, employing computational techniques to analyze Chinese literary corpora, including the usage and relationships of key terms. It also addresses topics beyond textual analysis, such as authors’ biographies literary networks, creative contexts, cultural environments, and the dissemination of ideas and artworks.

Posted by: Junzhe Wang <aigcs@ln.edu.hk>

Mu Cao wins Prince Claus Impact Award (2)

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The Prince Claus Fund web page on Mu Cao includes a beautiful short video on Mu Cao, made by the Fund in September 2024 and first shown during the award ceremony for this year’s Prince Claus Impact Awards: https://edu.nl/wj6y4. (The video is right below the photo at the top; the play button is not clearly visible, but it sits in the middle of the burgundy rectangle.) In the video, Mu Cao explains what writing means to him. Below the video, there’s a brief profile of the poet in English.

Crossing, a book produced by the Prince Claus Fund on the occasion of the 2024 Impact Awards, includes laudations for each of the six laureates. After Mu Cao was nominated (in 2023), the Fund approached me for information on his life and work, to support the jury as it made its way from close to two hundred nominees to six awardees. In this capacity I had the privilege of writing the laudation for Mu Cao, for which I drew on an essay I co-authored with Hongwei Bao that is forthcoming in 2025. The text of the laudation is below.

Maghiel van Crevel

MU CAO: AN INIMITABLE VOICE
In Crossing (Amsterdam: Prince Claus Fund, 2024): 96-98.

Mu Cao is a poet and fiction writer whose life and work defy social convention in every respect. He is the author of a literary oeuvre that has emerged against the odds, carried by an inimitable voice that blends indignation and imagination to address a fiercely personal experience as well as overarching issues of social justice.

Born and raised in a village in rural China, Mu Cao was expelled from school at age fifteen and has since sustained himself with precarious labor, mostly in Zhengzhou and Beijing. One of three hundred million labor migrants who have flocked from the Chinese countryside to the cities since the 1980s, he has held dozens of jobs, from assembly line worker to web salesperson and from noodle-maker to barbershop attendant. Living on a shoestring, he works in order to save money so he can quit and write. When the money runs out, he looks for work again. Continue reading Mu Cao wins Prince Claus Impact Award (2) →

Qiong Yao dies in apparent suicide

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Source: BBC News (12/4/24)
Top Chinese language novelist dies in apparent suicide
By Fan Wang, BBC News

Getty Images Chiung Yao attends a press conference on July 10, 2007 in Taipei.

Getty Images

Chiung Yao [瓊瑤], arguably the world’s most popular Chinese language romance novelist, has died in an apparent suicide.

The 86-year-old’s body was found in her home in New Taipei City on Wednesday, local media report. Emergency services said she took her own life, according to Taiwan’s Central News Agency.

Chiung Yao started writing at 18 and published more than 60 novels, many of which were adapted into movies and TV series and remained popular for decades.

She was also a successful screenwriter and producer. One of her most famous works was the TV drama My Fair Princess, which launched the careers of big name stars.

She was born Chen Che in Sichuan, China in 1938. Chiung Yao is her pen name.

A post on her Facebook account on Wednesday read: “Goodbye, my loved ones. I feel lucky that I have met and known you in this life”. It was not immediately clear if the post was published before or after her body was found. Continue reading Qiong Yao dies in apparent suicide →

Mu Cao wins Prince Claus Impact Award

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Chinese poet and fiction writer Mu Cao 墓草 (1974) has received one of the 2024 Prince Claus Impact Awards, as one of six biennial laureates in art and cultural practice worldwide (https://edu.nl/x8bjf). The Prince Claus Fund is an independent foundation dedicated to culture and development. The Impact Awards honor groundbreaking artists and cultural practitioners whose work inspires positive social change. The 2024 laureates received their awards on 3 December in the Royal Palace in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Mu Cao is known as China’s first openly gay poet. He is also one of China’s earliest migrant worker poets (aka battler poets 打工诗人) and writes with uncompromising candor on life on the underside, in his poetry and his fiction alike. Both queerness and socioeconomic inequality count as sensitive topics in China and Mu Cao has only published through unofficial channels there. An official, two-volume survey anthology of his poetry and short fiction came out in Taiwan in 2023 (https://edu.nl/fdg79). Five books of his poetry and two multiple-author anthologies produced under his editorship can be freely accessed at the Leiden University Library digital collection of unofficial poetry from China (https://edu.nl/k4d4d).

For scholarship, media, and translations on/of Mu Cao’s work, see the MCLC Resource Center bibliographies on literary studies: Author studies > M (https://u.osu.edu/mclc/h-q/#M) and Translations (author) > M (https://edu.nl/q6qc6).

Posted by: Maghiel van Crevel