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GCRC Spring Seminar Series

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On behalf of the Global China Research Centre (GCRC) at the University of Exeter, I am pleased to invite you to participate in our Spring Seminar Series. This term, we have an exciting lineup of seminars that will explore how China perceives “the West” (xifang) through diverse lenses, including translation studies, food culture, international politics and theatre.

The seminar series will feature both in-person and online events. Please refer to the attached Spring Term Card for a detailed schedule of events. You can attend the online seminars by joining via Zoom using the following details:

Meeting ID: 983 4051 9926 | Password: gcrc

We would be delighted if you could join us for any or all of the events. To stay updated on seminar details, please follow us on Twitter [@ExeterGCRC] or email the LCVS admin team at [lcvs@exeter.ac.uk] to join our mailing list. Should you need further information or have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at exgcrc-seminar@outlook.com.

We look forward to welcoming you to our seminars!

Posted by: Xi Min <xm264@exeter.ac.uk>

Education About Asia–cfp

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Call for Proposals: Education About Asia

Following a brief hiatus after the untimely passing of founding editor Lucien Ellington, Education About Asia (EAA) is being relaunched as a biannual, open-access online journal.

Education About Asia is an invaluable resource for teachers, students, and anyone with an interest in Asia. Articles and reviews cover a wide range of topics and time periods—from ancient to modern history, language, literature, geography, religion, youth and popular culture. Articles in EAA are intended to provide educators and academics in the humanities and social sciences with basic understanding of Asia-related content. Qualified referees evaluate all manuscripts submitted for consideration.

EAA is widely read by undergraduate and secondary school instructors, many of whom utilize articles from the journal as student readings. Over the past year, the online archives have received close to 900,000 pageviews, representing close to sixty percent of all traffic to the AAS website.

Manuscripts selected for publication should be written in prose that is accessible for high school and/or undergraduate instructors and students. Please consult the Author Guidelines before submitting a proposal, paying particular attention to Feature Article (3,000 to 4,000 words) and Teaching Resources Essay (2,000 to 3,000 words) word-count ranges. Authors who are unfamiliar with EAA should also read sample articles and essays that are archived at the same site. There are close to 2,000 articles—feature articles, lesson plans, interviews, classroom resources, and book and film reviews—to view and download for free.

Posted by: Elise Huerta EAAeditor@asianstudies.org

English jueju

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Every other year, the University of Oklahoma celebrates the winner of the Newman Prize for Chinese Literature (this year Ling Yü, 零⾬) as well as the winners of the Newman Prize for English Jueju (紐曼英語絕句獎).  If you or your students would like to try your hand at regulated verse in English, there is a new interactive learning platform https://www.juejupath.com/ which takes learners through five levels of regulated verse rules organized into five levels of the Keju, Chinese Imperial Examination. By logging in with their unique username and password, students/learners will receive badges for each level completed on their way to mastering semantic, grammatical, ping-ze parallelism, qing/jing balance (qi-cheng-zhuan-he), as well as poetic rhythm, imagery, and eventually recitation techniques.  Teachers can also create a login for whole classes and track student progress on a teacher’s dashboard.  The deadline for submissions is March 7, 2025.

To begin, please visit www.juejupath.com

Learn more about the Newman Prizes.

To watch last year’s winners: see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tV5PT1f0eE&t=40s

Onward,

Jonathan Stalling

ACLS Collaborative Grant

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American Council of Learned Societies Opens Second Luce/ACLS Collaborative Grant in China Studies Competition 

Grant of Up to $150,000 Will Allow Collaborative Group to Design and Pilot Strategies to Address Challenges and Advance Positive Change in Field of China Studies

With the generous support of the Henry Luce Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) is pleased to offer the second Luce/ACLS Collaborative Grant in China Studies for groups of scholars and experts working to advance change in the field of China studies.

Part of the Luce/ACLS Program in China Studies, this grant competition aims to develop effective strategies for long-term change in China studies through collaborative working groups that research and pilot solutions to challenges and opportunities in the field. The program is based on three years of consultation with more than 100 scholars, administrators, journalists, librarians, curators, artists, and readers of research and writing on China.

In 2025, ACLS will award one group of scholars and experts in China studies a grant of up to $150,000 to design and pilot activities to solve specific, pressing challenges in the field over a period of 12 to 18 months. The collaborative group will test and refine promising solutions, produce recommendations for activities to be adopted at scale in universities and colleges, and identify strategies for long-term sustainability. Outcomes may include a pilot program, a new cross-institutional network, a plan for scaling and/or sustainability, or a white paper.

All project teams applying for the Collaborative Grant must submit a letter of intent by April 1, 2025. Following review of LOIs by the committee, a select number of project teams will be invited to submit a full proposal. Full proposals must be submitted by June 11, 2025.

Groups are encouraged to submit proposals in response to the below prompts.

  • Enabling Productive Engagement with China – Building capacity among China scholars and institutions of higher learning to respond to political pressure around China-related issues in higher education and civic discourse, including academic freedom, shrinking opportunities for international collaboration and exchange due to security concerns, and the community impacts of anti-Asian bias. Strategies may include community engagement, policy advocacy, or engagement with university administrators and civic organizations to protect researchers and students.
  • Teaching and Curricular Resources – Developing and/or making accessible course syllabi and teaching resources (e.g., texts, media, primary sources in translation) aimed at diversifying undergraduate and/or graduate curricula; supporting early career and teaching faculty; establishing best practices for teaching about China; safeguarding academic freedom and encouraging international Chinese student participation; and/or enhancing programs that will support the next generation of China scholars.
  • Open Access Resources – Expanding open access digital resources for teaching and research through digitization, preservation, and platform development, including increased accessibility to existing digital databases and strengthening print collections.
  • Language Training – Expanding access to language training, especially for less commonly taught languages (e.g., Tibetan, Uyghur), for graduate students and faculty at under-resourced institutions while drawing on technologies and best practices for language pedagogy and remote instruction developed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
  • Digital Research Methods – Training China scholars in digital skills and research methods to foster new methodological approaches and cross-disciplinary collaborations.

Project teams may comprise up to six scholars or experts in the field of China Studies. The project’s principal investigator must have a PhD in the humanities or interpretive social sciences or equivalent and be based in the US or Canada. Application materials must be submitted through the online application form. The deadline for submitting the mandatory Letter of Intent is 9:00 PM EST on April 1, 2025.

Learn More About Application and Eligibility Requirements

Awards are financially supported by the Henry Luce Foundation.

Questions? Contact us at chinastudies@acls.org.

Formed a century ago, the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) is a nonprofit federation of 81 scholarly organizations. As the leading representative of American scholarship in the humanities and interpretive social sciences, ACLS upholds the core principle that knowledge is a public good. In supporting its member organizations, ACLS expands the forms, content, and flow of scholarly knowledge, reflecting our commitment to diversity of identity and experience. ACLS collaborates with institutions, associations, and individuals to strengthen the evolving infrastructure for scholarship.

The Henry Luce Foundation seeks to deepen knowledge and understanding in pursuit of a more democratic and just world. Established in 1936 by Henry R. Luce, the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Time, Inc., the Luce Foundation advances its mission by nurturing knowledge communities and institutions, fostering dialogue across divides, enriching public discourse, amplifying diverse voices, and investing in leadership development.

The Afterlives of Protest–cfp

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CFP MLA 2026 Guaranteed Panel: The Afterlives of Protest: Representations of Protest in the Sinophone World

MLA Modern and Contemporary Chinese Literature Executive Committee seeks submissions for a guaranteed panel for MLA 2026 in Toronto.

In the 2010s, Hong Kong and Taiwan emerged into the international spotlight as a result of large scale protests, from the Umbrella Movement, to the Sunflower Movement, to the 2019 anti-security law protests in Hong Kong, largely youth led demonstrations have pushed back against legislative overreach and unpopular legislation. In the ensuing years have enabled directors, writers, and artists to record, reflect upon, and contextualize these events.

This panel aims to spotlight scholarship that examines the emerging body of novels, documentaries, and scholarship on these protests.

Desired topics include but are not limited to: documentaries that record the protests, novels or memoirs depicting the protests, protest songs and art and other artifacts of protest culture.

Please submit a 150 word presentation proposal, CV, and indicate whether you are currently a member of the MLA (you must be an MLA member by April 7, 2025) to Clara Iwasaki ciwasaki@ualberta.ca by March 15, 2025.

Posted by: Nathaniel Isaacson <nkisaacs@ncsu.edu>

DeepSeeking Truth

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Source: China Media Project (2/10/25)
DeepSeeking Truth
When it comes to assessing the risks of DeepSeek, are we asking the wrong questions? Governments, journalists, and coders need to know that it’s a much more sophisticated propaganda tool than we all thought.
By Alex Colville

Can you tell me about the Tiananmen Massacre? When did China invade Tibet? Is Taiwan an independent country? When pointing out DeepSeek’s propaganda problems, journalists and China watchers have tended to prompt the LLM with questions like these about the “Three T’s” (Tiananmen, Taiwan, and Tibet) — obvious political red lines that are bound to meet a stony wall of hedging and silence. “Let’s talk about something else,” DeepSeek tends to respond. Alternatively, questions of safety regarding DeepSeek tend to focus on whether data will be sent to China.

Experts say this is all easily fixable. Kevin Xu has pointed out that the earlier V3 version, released in December, will discuss topics such as Tiananmen and Xi Jinping when it is hosted on local computers — beyond the grasp of DeepSeek’s cloud software and servers. The Indian government has announced it will import DeepSeek’s model into India, running it locally on national cloud servers while ensuring it complies with local laws and regulations. Coders on Hugging Face, an open-source collaboration platform for AI, have released modified versions of DeepSeek’s products that claim to have “uncensored” the software. In short, the consensus, as one Silicon Valley CEO told the Wall Street Journal, is that DeepSeek is harmless beyond some “half-baked PRC censorship.” 

But do coders and Silicon Valley denizens know what they should be looking for? As we have written at CMP, Chinese state propaganda is not about censorship per se, but about what the Party terms “guiding public opinion” (舆论导向). “Guidance,” which emerged in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Massacre in 1989, is a more comprehensive approach to narrative control that goes beyond simple censorship. While outright removal of unwanted information is one tactic, “guidance” involves a wide spectrum of methods to shape public discourse in the Party’s favor. These can include restricting journalists’ access to events, ordering media to emphasize certain facts and interpretations, deploying directed narrative campaigns, and drowning out unfavorable information with preferred content.

Those testing DeepSeek for propaganda shouldn’t simply be prompting the LLM to cross simple red lines or say things regarded as “sensitive.” They should be mindful of the full range of possible tactics to achieve “guidance.” Continue reading DeepSeeking Truth →

Three Images of Civilization in Contemporary China

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Please find below the announcement for our third Stanford Global Studies Research Workshop on New Civilizationisms. The workshop series is part of a larger project on Civilizationisms at Stanford. You can learn more about the project here: https://thecivilizationismproject.sites.stanford.edu

Stanford Global Studies, the Stanford Program in International Relations, & the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures present

Three Images of “Civilization” in Contemporary China: Global Civilization Initiative, Ecological Civilization, and Science Fiction Struggles
Prof. William A. Callahan, Professor of Political Science (Singapore Management University)

When: February 27th, 2025 at 4pm PST
Where: International Relations Lounge, Encina Hall Central, Stanford University. The event is hybrid and will take place both in-person and on zoom.
Zoom link: https://stanford.zoom.us/j/99096635018?pwd=G1S9XPARKWGTC6HO6G9L9uFTtg5XpK.1
Please see complete details in the posters below. In case of any queries or difficulties, please contact me at shubhi@stanford.edu. Hope to see you there!

Regards,

Shubhangni Gupta (Workshop Coordinator)

Faculty Sponsors:

Haiyan Lee (Stanford EALC)
Thomas Blom Hansen (Stanford Anthropology)
Serkan Yolaçan (Stanford Anthropology)

Urgent action for artist Gao Zhen

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Dear colleagues,

The Heroes and Martyrs’ Protection Law in China is a so-called punitive memory law: a vaguely worded law prohibiting and punishing views of the past that question the official historical narrative.

Amnesty International is organizing an Urgent Action for U.S.-based artist Gao Zhen, who was detained for “slandering China’s heroes and martyrs” because he employed satirical humor to shed light on the atrocities of the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) and criticized former Chinese leader Mao Zedong (1893–1976).

Please urgently write to the Chinese authorities in your own words or using the model letter below. Please remember to do so in your professional capacity.

With best wishes,
Antoon De Baets and Ruben Zeeman
(Network of Concerned Historians)

Source: Amnesty International (12/5/24)
https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/asa17/8821/2024/en/

CHINA — PROMINENT ARTIST ARRESTED FOR HIS WORK: GAO ZHEN
First Urgent Action (UA) — 106/24 Index: ASA 17/8821/2024 — China — Date: 5 December 2024

Prominent Artist Arrested For His Work
On 26 August 2024, Gao Zhen, a prominent Chinese artist, was detained by authorities while traveling in China with his wife and son. Gao is charged with “slandering China’s heroes and martyrs,” a crime punishable by up to three years in prison. His formal arrest has been approved, and his wife and child have been prevented from leaving China. Chinese authorities must release Gao Zhen immediately and unconditionally, and cease using this and other laws to stifle creative expression. Continue reading Urgent action for artist Gao Zhen →

Animism and Non-human Narration–cfp

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Call for Papers: Animism and Non-human Narration
Modern Language Association Annual Convention in Toronto
January 9-12, 2026

Nearly a decade after Brian Richardson called for a theory of unnatural narrative, has cognitivism gained a firm foothold in the study of narratives that break mimetic conventions or present physically or logically impossible scenarios? This panel takes stock of the latest efforts at using cognitive science tools to account for the appeal of stories told in the voice of animals, robots, AI, rocks, and other “things.” What happens to embodiment or embodied cognition when there are no (human) bodies to speak of? How do authors navigate the imperatives of capturing an alien ontology/umwelt and retaining allegorical recognition/human interest? Is the distinction between real and fictional minds still relevant to a cognitive theory of unnatural narrative?

This non-guaranteed panel is sponsored by TC Cognitive and Affect Studies. Please send 250-word abstract and bio to Haiyan Lee (haiyan@stanford.edu) by March 8, 2025. Submissions by scholars (any stage/rank) working in the East Asian contexts are most welcome.

China’s Counter-Histories

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Source: NY Review of Books (2/27/25)
China’s Counter-Histories
By Perry Link

In Sparks, Ian Johnson writes of Chinese people who risk their careers and even their lives to uncover suppressed truths about their country’s modern history.

Hu Jie: Let there be light #16, 2015; from a series of woodblock prints about China’s Great Famine of 1958–1962

Sparks: China’s Underground Historians and Their Battle for the Future, by Ian Johnson. Oxford University Press, 381 pp., $27.95; $19.99 (paper)

The word “China,” as used by Western journalists and government officials, almost always refers to the thoughts, values, positions, and plans of high-ranking members of the Chinese Communist Party. This is the case when one reads of “China’s” position on Ukraine, “China’s” effort to stimulate domestic consumption, and so on.

In Ian Johnson’s bracing book Sparks, “China” means something else. Johnson writes of Chinese people who uncover momentous truths about their country’s modern history and risk their careers, indeed their lives, to do it. Their values and actions are continuous with ancient moral traditions as well as with the daily life that lies beyond official reach today. They, too, are China.

The CCP presses them terribly and largely succeeds. The journalists, professors, rights lawyers, and primitively equipped filmmakers who make up Johnson’s “underground historians” (alternatively, “counter-historians”) appear to be only a tiny minority. But he shows how they draw on values that have not only survived dynasties but also helped to bring some dynasties down. Today’s rulers seem aware of that. Our best evidence of this is the highly expensive 24/7 “stability maintenance” measures that the regime uses to monitor, dissuade, and, if necessary, stifle them. The tools of dissuasion are basically two: threats designed to induce fear and offers of comfort to reward capitulation. Beyond that, punishment. Continue reading China’s Counter-Histories →

Wiring China conference

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Wiring China: Information, Affect, and Media Technologies
連綫中國：信息、情動與媒介技術
Sponsored by Department of Chinese History and Culture and The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Dates and Times:
February 14, 2025 | 9:30 AM – 5:30 PM
February 15, 2025 | 9:30 AM – 12:00 PM

Venue:
AG 710, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Hong Kong

Conference Program 

Day 1 (February 14, 2024)

9 am – 9:30 am: Registration and Welcome Coffee

9:30 am-9: 40 Welcome Address and Opening Remarks

Xing Hang 杭行 (Associate Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Associate Professor, Department of Chinese History and Culture, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University)

Yu Zhang 張宇 (Convener and Associate Professor, Department of Chinese History and Culture, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University)

9: 40 am – 11: 00 am Keynote Lecture

Margaret Hillenbrand 何依霖 (Oxford University)
Emotion Frozen in Time: Xu Bing’s Dragonfly Eyes Continue reading Wiring China conference →

Future of East Asian Comp Lit–cfp

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Call for Proposals: The Future of East Asian Comparative Literature
Modern Language Association in Toronto
January 9-12, 2026

Both area studies and comparative literary studies have changed much in the past 20 years. We are inviting submissions for a guaranteed double session in MLA 2026 that explores the future of East Asian comparative literature. Our aim is to explore the ways in which East Asianists think transnationally and across languages to produce new scholarship on the region and inter-regionally from fresh perspectives. This includes textual dynamics involving under-represented languages around major East Asian languages such as Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, as well as trans-Asian or other transregional relationships. The ultimate composition of these two sessions will be determined by the number and kind of proposals we receive; however, we are open to having two conventional paper-drive sessions, two roundtable sessions, or one of each. To that end, we seek proposals that address this issue broadly and with the future direction and development of comparative East Asian cultural studies in mind. Possible topics include but are not restricted to the following: what does the future look like for those of us who compare two or more linguistic heritages? Have we moved beyond the East-West paradigm or is there still room for further theorization of it? How do we foster a sustainable model for the multilingual training of East Asian Comparatists? How do we rethink CJK-centric comparisons? How could methods and ideas of comparison change according to different kinds of languages, periods, and textual genres involved? We envision this roundtable will include between 6 and 10 scholars of mixed backgrounds, both senior and early-career scholars, depending on the responses we receive. We are committed to inclusivity, which means in terms of ethnic, racial, gender, and gender-orientation diversity. It also means inclusivity in terms of rank and experience: graduate students, early-career, mid-career, and senior scholars. We also welcome proposals from MLA members regardless of where they live or work.

Title, abstract, and bio of up to 250 words each to Christopher Lupke <lupke@ualberta.ca> and Satoru Hashimoto <shashimoto@jhu.edu> by March 7, 2025.

Thailand obeys China on refugees and kidnapping

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On the burning issue of Thailand’s pending forced repatriation to China of forty-some Uyghur refugees, to certain torture and probably death there, because of international protests (even from UN-appointed experts), and global media attention, top Thai political leaders and the national police chief have now come out, to tie themselves in knots while trying to defend their country’s actions and shore up an image of decency.

Thailand’s police chief has the audacity to say that the refugees, WHO HAVE BEEN DETAINED FOR TEN YEARS NOW, are “doing OK”.

This article also mentions the brave Thai senator Angkhana Neelapaijit, chairwoman of a Senate committee that has now asked to at last be allowed to see the detained men, and who also “expressed concerns shared by human rights organisations that the Uyghur group could face danger if they are sent back to China.”

She also reminded us all about how the coup government of general Prayut Chan-o-cha in 2013 already forcibly returned 109 Uyghur men to China at Beijing’s request, and to this day, their fate remains unknown. (Of course, we can assume they have all long since put to death).

In another report, a deputy PM and defence minister says Thailand will handle this decently (again, that’s after holding these refugees for 10 years!!), and “promises to adhere to human rights.” This minister’s pronouoncement has been seized upon as a hopeful sign, by Uyghurs in exile.

But I for one wonder, about Thailand and human rights. The country has refused to sign the international refugee convention on refugee treatment, and that same coup general once mocked the very same Uyghur refugees he sent to their probable death, as lowly animals. Continue reading Thailand obeys China on refugees and kidnapping →