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Luce/ACLS 2024 grantees

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American Council of Learned Societies Announces 2024 Luce/ACLS Program in China Studies Fellows and Grantees  

Fellowships and Grants Totaling $475,000 Support Research, Writing, and Travel for Early-Career Scholars and Graduate Students in the Field of China Studies

The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) is pleased to announce the 2024 Luce/ACLS Early Career Fellows and Travel Grantees in China Studies.

The awards are part of the redesigned Luce/ACLS Program in China Studies, which the Henry Luce Foundation has awarded ACLS $1.25 million to continue through 2025. This generous grant will support the next round of Early Career Fellowships, Travel Grants, and a Collaborative Grant, as well as a mapping project to identify archives and collections related to China studies around the world. Additional long-term fellowships are made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities: Democracy demands wisdom.

In 2024, the program will support 25 fellows and grantees representing a diverse range of institutions and disciplines, including anthropology, film and media studies, gender and sexuality studies, history, literature, and sociology.

  • Fourteen Luce/ACLS Early Career Fellowships in China Studies support emerging scholars whose research focuses on China’s societies, histories, cultures, geopolitics, art, and global impact. This year’s awards include eight long-term fellowships of up to $45,000, which allow recent PhDs to take leave from university responsibilities for research and writing toward a scholarly text, and six flexible fellowships of $15,000, which enable scholars with heavy teaching and service responsibilities to advance their projects.
  • Eleven Luce/ACLS Travel Grants in China Studies provide $5,000 for graduate students in a PhD program to visit research sites in China or China studies-related collections or archives anywhere in the world. The 2024 grantees will visit China, Kazakhstan, Taiwan, and more to research topics, ranging from the nineteenth-century Chilean copper trade and family care in rural Tibet, to displacement and migration at the Kazakh-Chinese border, and the political economies of carbon capture technologies.

Continue reading Luce/ACLS 2024 grantees →

Southwest Conference on Asian Studies 2024–cfp

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CFP: SouthWest Conference on Asian Studies 53rd Annual Conference
November 1 – 2, 2024
Stephen F. Austin State University, Member of the University of Texas System
Nacogdoches, TX

The 53rd Annual meeting of the Southwest Conference on Asian Studies will be held November 1st – 2nd, 2024 on the campus of the Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas. The theme of this year’s conference is: technology, culture, and identity.

The rapid advancement of technology has profoundly shaped the way we perceive and construct our identities and sense of belonging. As technology continues to evolve, it influences not only the ways in which we communicate and interact but also how we conceptualize our individual and collective identities. Debates regarding the emancipatory power of technology or its more controlling, limiting and respective aspects continue to remain an ongoing conversation compelling us to anticipate future challenges to our conception of self and belonging.

The production and consumption of technology is also beginning to realign global networks of exchange, trade and politics. For instance, the silicon-based world impacts global stability and trade while AI tools promise untold revolution in all industries and sectors. Some portent a horrible, dystopian future of robotic enslavement and melted ice-caps flooding islands of e-waste. Others predict a hopeful new era of human flourishing and freedom mediated by technological evolution. While we are faced with a modern profusion of technological innovation, humanity has had a long history of using technology, both in productive and problematic ways. Does technology hurt or harm or do both? Does technology alter our conception of humanity and how does technology mold our visions of the future? Continue reading Southwest Conference on Asian Studies 2024–cfp →

The Films of Chor Yuen–cfp

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Call for Papers: ReFocus: The Films of Chor Yuen
Editors: Jessica Siu-yin Yeung, Tom Cunliffe, and Raymond Tsang

The veteran film cultural worker Law Kar called Chor Yuen 楚原 (b. Cheung Po-kin, 1934–2022) “a stylist without an intrinsic style and an auteur without an eternal obsession”. Another veteran film cultural worker Shu Kei called Chor Yuen “The Last Guardian of Cantonese cinema” in relation to the Cantonese cinema’s decline in the late-1960s to early-1970s. These critical perspectives on Chor Yuen situate him in the producer-driven Hong Kong film industry and its studio system, contextualising his works within the industrial conditions and the seismic changes that took place at various crucial points between the late 1950s and the early 1990s. These commentaries also confirm Chor Yuen’s pivotal role in bridging the Hong Kong Cantonese cinema in the 1950s–1960s and more contemporary Hong Kong cinema.

Chor Yuen is one of the few filmmakers to have successfully transitioned from making films in the 1950s all the way up to his last in 1990, excelling in directing, writing, and producing films in most popular genres. His career encompasses and, in some cases, has instigated many of the most important trends and shifts over these decades. His agility in moving to and succeeding at different studios with different house styles and different genres is unmatched. In the “100 Must-See Hong Kong Movies” list compiled by the Hong Kong Film Archive Selection Panel, Chor Yuen’s works took up five places. Despite his illustrious status and copious works, there is little academic research on Chor Yuen. As such, this anthology will rectify this wrong, and assess Chor Yuen through the studios he worked for and the many genres he was involved in to demonstrate the central position he has in Hong Kong film history and the wider world of Chinese cinemas. It will also provide a much more comprehensive overview of his entire career to redress his image outside of Hong Kong as being known primarily as a director of aesthetically lush wuxia films. Continue reading The Films of Chor Yuen–cfp →

Malaysian Crossings review

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MCLC Resource Center is pleased to announce publication of Carlos Rojas’s review of Malaysian Crossings: Place and Language in the Worlding of Modern Chinese Literature, by Cheow Thia Chan. The review appears below and at its online home: https://u.osu.edu/mclc/book-reviews/rojas2/. My thanks to Nicholas Kaldis, our literary studies book review editor, for ushering the review to publication.

Kirk Denton, MCLC

Malaysian Crossings: Place and Language
in the Worlding of Modern Chinese Literature

By Cheow Thia Chan

Reviewed by Carlos Rojas

MCLC Resource Center Publication (Copyright April, 2024)

Cheow Thia Chan, Malaysian Crossings: Place and Language in the Worlding of Modern Chinese Literature New York: Columbia University Press, 2023. xviii + 298. ISBN: 9780231203395 (Paperback); ISBN: 9780231203388 (Hardcover); ISBN: 9780231555029 (E-book).

In 1831, Charles Darwin left England for a trip to South America that included a five-week stay in the Galápagos Islands off the coast of Ecuador. Darwin was struck by how these islands were home to numerous endemic species, many of which appeared to have adapted in response to the specific environmental pressures found in the Galápagos. It was these observations that provided the basis for Darwin’s theory of evolution, which seeks to explain processes of species differentiation not only in the Galápagos but throughout the world.

Meanwhile, in 1826, at nearly the same moment but half a world away, the British East India Company established a group of colonies in Penang, Malacca, and Singapore known as the Straits Settlements. These settlements were redesignated as the Crown Colonies in 1858, and they subsequently became British Malaya, the Federation of Malaysia, and ultimately the Republic of Malaysia. Just as the evolution of the flora and fauna of the Galápagos was shaped by the unique evolutionary pressures that characterized their isolated archipelago, the distinctive sociopolitical environment of former British Malaya—including British, Japanese, and Chinese imperial legacies, multiple waves of migration, a large indigenous population, and so forth—has similarly helped shape the distinctive configurations of what has come to be known as modern Malaysian Chinese (“Mahua” 馬華) literature. Continue reading Malaysian Crossings review →

Taiwanese drag queen victory sparks quiet joy

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Source: China Digital Times (4/24/24)
Taiwanese Drag Queen’s Victory Sparks Quiet Joy Among Fans in China
Byy 

Nymphia Wind, a Taiwanese drag queen, has won the 16th season of the American reality TV competition show RuPaul’s Drag Race. Her victory has been cause for quiet celebration in China, where drag is in the ascendant despite increased state repression of the LGBTQ+ community. Nymphia Wind is the drag persona of Leo Tsao, a 28-year-old Taiwanese American fashion designer. Wind’s outspoken pride in both her Asian and Taiwanese heritage has made her a complex figure in China. At The Washington Post, Vic Chiang interviewed Nymphia Wind and wrote that Chinese netizens are keeping quiet on her victory:

“Yellow represents the color of my skin,” she said in an interview ahead of the finale of “RuPaul’s Drag Race” on Friday, preferring to let her outfits rather than her words remind viewers that she’s the only Asian contestant in the season. “By wearing yellow, I hope to raise more Asian awareness and appreciation.”

[…] “Even politicians who work hard abroad may not gain this kind of exposure for Taiwan,” said Lawrence Jheng, 32, part of a cheerful crowd gathered at a Taipei club for the airing of the episode in which Nymphia Wind declared she was “very proud to call myself Taiwanese.”

[…] In fact, Chinese fans of “RuPaul’s Drag Race” seem to be going out of their way to avoid talking about Nymphia Wind’s success, apparently afraid of being caught up in the escalating tensions across the Taiwan Strait. “Drag Race” fan accounts on the Chinese microblogging site Weibo said they would minimize discussions about Nymphia to “protect their nascent drag scene.” [Source] Continue reading Taiwanese drag queen victory sparks quiet joy →

Taiwan will tear down remaining Chiang statues

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Source: SCMP (4/22/24)
Taiwan will tear down all remaining statues of Chiang Kai-shek in public spaces
DPP government says more than 760 statues of Chiang, who ruled the island for nearly three decades, will be swiftly removed. The move is seen as a bid to erase his legacy and ‘will be seen as an unfriendly gesture towards mainland China’, analyst says
By Lawrence Chung in Taipei

There are hundreds of statues of late president Chiang Kai-shek in public spaces across Taiwan. Photo: Shutterstock Images

Taiwan’s government will remove all remaining statues of late president Chiang Kai-shek from public spaces in what is seen as a bid to erase his legacy and the historical link with mainland China.

Chiang ruled the island for nearly three decades until his death in 1975. He had led his Nationalist or Kuomintang troops to Taiwan in 1949 and set up an interim government on the island, declaring martial law, after being defeated in a civil war by the Communists on the mainland.

Taiwan’s independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party government set up a transitional justice commission in 2018 to investigate Chiang’s rule, finding perceived political dissidents had been persecuted and he had misused government funds to benefit the KMT.

One of the commission’s proposals was to remove thousands of Chiang statues across Taiwan. Critics have branded Chiang as a dictator who sent troops to kill hundreds of civilians during unrest in 1947 and say he does not deserve to be remembered.

On Monday, a cabinet official told the legislature that the interior ministry would swiftly remove the more than 760 statues of Chiang that are still standing across the island. Continue reading Taiwan will tear down remaining Chiang statues →

A Cosmos of Vital Feeling conference

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A Cosmos of Vital Feeling: Qing (Affect) and Qi (Breath, Atmosphere) as Critical Traditions in the Chinese Humanities, An International Conference
情氣天下：重估抒情傳統與氣化論 國際研討會

Time: April 26-27, 2024
Location: Barker Center 133, Plimpton Room, Harvard University

Speakers:
David Der-wei Wang 王德威 (Harvard University)
Peter K. Bol 包弼德 (Harvard University)
Wai-yee Li 李惠儀 (Harvard University)
Thomas P. Kelly 陶明 (Harvard University)
Joo-hyeon Oh 吳周炫 (University of Minnesota, Twin Cities)
Yang Rur-bin 楊儒賓 (National Tsing Hua University)
Cheng Yu-yu 鄭毓瑜 (National Taiwan University, Academia Sinica)
Chan Kwok -Kou 陳國球 (National Tsing Hua University)
Lai Shi-San 賴錫三 (National Sun Yat-sen University)
Mark McConaghy 莫加南 (National Sun Yat-sen University)
Lin Ming-chao 林明照 (National Taiwan University)
Lin Su-chuan 林素娟 (National Cheng Kung University)
Lee Yu-lin 李育霖 (Academia Sinica)
Fabian Heubel 何乏筆 (Academia Sinica)
Peng Hsiao-yen 彭小妍 (Academia Sinica)
Paul J. D’Ambrosio 德安博 (East China Normal University)
Tsai Yueh-chang 蔡岳璋 (National Tsing Hua University)
Wang Wenfei 王文菲 (Harvard University)

Organizers:
The Transcultural Sino-Island: The Global Sinology Forum, NSYSU
Center for the Humanities, NSYSU
Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University

Sponsors:
Harvard-Yenching Institute
Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies
Transcultural Sinology and Global Co-Becoming Research Group, NSYSU
Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation

Ming as Life-Conditioning Force–cfp

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Call for Papers – International Conference: “Ming 命 as life-conditioning force and as malleable fate: Perspectives from old(er) age”

This interdisciplinary conference explores the nuanced dimensions of ming 命 (fate, command, allotment, life), a pivotal concept in Chinese thought, viewed through the lens of aging. The conference will delve into literary, philosophical, religious, anthropological, psychological and medical perspectives on ming and aging, life experience and maturity, highlighting how mingboth as life-conditioning force and malleable fate interplays with the aging process. We seek to examine ming‘s impact on (experiences of) the process of aging through various forms of expression and practice, and in terms of ethical, spiritual and bodily self-cultivation associated with aging. We encourage submissions that among others explore themes such as literary reflections containing ming on later life, socio-psychological insights into older people’s relationship with ming, philosophical treatises on ming and aging, and medical perspectives on aging and life-preservation.  See also the full Call for Papers here.

Submission Guidelines: Please submit an abstract of no more than 300 words detailing your proposed presentation. Include the following information:

  • Name
  • Affiliation
  • Email
  • Professional address
  • Title of your talk

Submission Email: mieke.matthyssen@ugent.be
Submission Deadline: 20 June 2024
Notification of Acceptance: 15 July 2024

Solitude and Community workshop

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Workshop on Solitude and Community in Contemporary Chinese Culture
May 15th 2024, 10am-5.30pm
University of Oxford China Centre Lecture Theatre

The relationship between solitude and community resonates across the making of culture: creativity is often seeded in the tranquillity of solitude; but it also blooms in spaces of community. In the aftermath of China’s strict Zero-COVID, policy, when millions of people were confined to their homes for months in states of isolation, questions about this intersection between being alone and being together are more pertinent than ever. This workshop focusses in particular on the insights their relationship offers into the ways in which seemingly disparate makers of culture navigate uncertainty in China and Hong Kong today. Placing the loneliness of the prison cell alongside solitary spectatorship of censored documentaries; linking online communities of transnational authors to the network of world-cities in which they live; and exploring the overlapping tensions between being singular and plural in contemporary poetry, this workshop shows how community and solitude, as multi-media and multi-scalar concepts, illuminate the bonds of sociality in uncertain times.

Workshop Programme

10am-10.15am: Welcome and Introduction Continue reading Solitude and Community workshop →

NYU Shanghai postdocs

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Job description
The Center for Global Asia at NYU Shanghai is pleased to announce the availability of two research positions for the study of intra-Asian interactions, starting fall 2024. One position is for a postdoctoral fellow working on colonial or pre-colonial (c. 1400–1800) port cities of the Indian Ocean world, including the South China Sea. This position offers an opportunity to spend two-three months at the European University Institute in Florence working with members of the “Factories of the Indian Ocean” research cluster led by Professor Giorgio Riello. The second position is for a postdoctoral fellow working on the Belt and Road Initiative, especially on issues concerning South and/or Southeast Asia.

Terms of employment at NYU Shanghai are comparable to NYU New York and other U.S. institutions.

Qualifications
Applicants should hold a PhD, preferably completed in the past five years (2019 and after), by fall 2024. Positions may be held for a period of up to two years. In addition to working on individual research and publication, the fellows are expected to assist in the activities of the Center. There is no teaching requirement.

Application Instructions
To be considered, applicants should submit a cover letter, their curriculum vitae, a 3-5-page research proposal, a writing sample, and two letters of reference.

The deadline for applications is May 15, 2024 and applications will be reviewed until the position is filled. If you have any questions on the application process, please email the NYU Shanghai NY Office of Faculty Recruitment shanghai.faculty.recruitment@nyu.edu. For further questions on the position details, please contact Professor Tansen Sen at postdoc.cga@nyu.edu.

For more information and application: https://apply.interfolio.com/143845

Posted by: Lena Scheen <lena.scheen@nyu.edu>

Transnational Repression event

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Note the double China connection in the below upcoming event on Transnational Repression, with Rushan Abbas, the Uyghur activist (who will present her film In Search of My Sister, at Cornell cinema the evening before), and Prof. Sean Roberts, longtime writer on Uyghur issues, including on transnational repression and on how the Chinese regime has been copying, adopting, and expanding US war-on-terror rhetoric and practices. This is an in-person event but will likely be recorded and made available afterwards./ Magnus Fiskesjö, nf42@cornell.edu

Panel on Transnational Repression
Biotechnology Building, G10, Central Campus, Cornell university
Thursday, April 25, 2024 at 4:30pm to 6:00pm
https://events.cornell.edu/event/panel-on-transnational-repression

Governments engage in transnational repression when they reach across borders to silence dissidents living abroad. Tactics for transnational repression include assassinations, abductions, threats, and direct action against dissidents’ families and friends living within the repressive government’s territory. This panel will focus on this global phenomenon and its local consequences for students and faculty members at Cornell, U.S. campuses more broadly, and other communities around the world. It will include the voices of dissidents affected by transnational repression as well as scholars and experts working in the field.

This is a panel discussion following the April 24 documentary In Search of My Sister screening. The film chronicles Rushan Abbas’s relentless pursuit of truth and justice. Continue reading Transnational Repression event →

Xi thinks China can slow climate change

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Source: NYT (4/19/24)
Opinion: Xi Thinks China Can Slow Climate Change. What if He’s Right?
By Jacob Dreyer

A close-up of the face of Xi Jinping.

Credit…Minh Hoang/EPA, via Shutterstock

At first glance, Xi Jinping seems to have lost the plot.

China’s president appears to be smothering the entrepreneurial dynamism that allowed his country to crawl out of poverty and become the factory of the world. He has brushed aside Deng Xiaoping’s maxim “To get rich is glorious” in favor of centralized planning and Communist-sounding slogans like “ecological civilization” and “new, quality productive forces,” which have prompted predictions of the end of China’s economic miracle.

But Mr. Xi is, in fact, making a decades-long bet that China can dominate the global transition to green energy, with his one-party state acting as the driving force in a way that free markets cannot or will not. His ultimate goal is not just to address one of humanity’s most urgent problems — climate change — but also to position China as the global savior in the process.

It has already begun. In recent years, the transition away from fossil fuels has become Mr. Xi’s mantra and the common thread in China’s industrial policies. It’s yielding results: China is now the world’s leading manufacturer of climate-friendly technologies, such as solar panels, batteries and electric vehicles. Last year the energy transition was China’s single biggest driver of overall investment and economic growth, making it the first large economy to achieve that. Continue reading Xi thinks China can slow climate change →

The Oscars of archaeology

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Source: SCMP (4/17/24)
The Oscars of Archaeology: China unveils its top 10 discoveries of 2023
One discovery unearthed some of the oldest people to ever live in China. While another used extremely modern technology to create a breakthrough
By Kevin McSpadden

The Oscars of Archaeology: China unveils its top 10 discoveries of 2023. Photo: SCMP composite/National Cultural Heritage Administration

Every industry has that one annual event that stands apart as the premier award ceremony. For Chinese archaeologists, the best discoveries of the year awarded by China’s National Cultural Heritage Administration is the industry’s Oscars.

The agency says it looks for revelations that “inspire important discussions, offer new perspectives, and take archaeology in a novel direction.”

“The projects selected as the ‘top 10 new archaeological discoveries’ in 2023 are outstanding representatives of field archaeological work from the past year. These new archaeological discoveries vividly demonstrate China’s long history and vast civilisation and are the foundation of self-confidence and a source of strength,” the agency said in its announcement.

The projects range from uncovering prehistoric hunter-gatherer societies to surveying beautiful porcelain cerematics work, and even include a great achievement in China’s burgeoning industry of underwater archaeology. This year’s crop also happens to be a particularly old set of sites, with only two coming from after the BC-AD timeline shift.

It is important to note that many of the recipients were rewarded for the artefacts discovered over the course of years-long excavation projects, and most of the sites were first discovered prior to 2023.

So here they are, the “Oscars of Archaeology” – the National Cultural Heritage Administration’s top 10 most important excavations of 2023. Continue reading The Oscars of archaeology →

Rethinking Cold War Culture and History in Taiwan

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Rethinking Cold War Culture and History in Taiwan
2024 UCLA-NTNU Taiwan Studies Initiative Conference
Friday, April 19, 2024 – Saturday, April 20, 2024

Rethinking Cold War Culture and History in Taiwan

Image Credit: 作者 (Photographer)：余如季 (Yu Ru-ji)。《蚵女》拍攝現場採訪照 (Interview Photo from the filming of “Oyster Girl”)。典藏者：余立。數位物件典藏者：中央研究院數位文化中心、國家電影及視聽文化中心。創用CC 姓名標示-非商業性-相同方式分享 3.0台灣（CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 TW）。發佈於《開放博物館》[https://openmuseum.tw/muse/digi_object/6262314d95bf7f0b4f4528ae98bd1ec4#211035]（2024/02/06瀏覽）

Image for RSVP Button

Organized by Shu-mei Shih (Irving and Jean Stone Chair in the Humanities and Professor of Comparative Literature, Asian Languages and Cultures, and Asian American Studies, UCLA) and Faye Qiyu Lu (Department of Asian Languages and Cultures, UCLA), the Rethinking Cold War Culture and History in Taiwan conference is presented as part of the UCLA-NTNU Taiwan Studies Initiative, a partnership of UCLA and National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU) that aims to create research synergies to promote cutting-edge research in Taiwan studies.

Over the past decades between the “old” and the “new” Cold Wars, the (in)significance of Taiwan in world culture and history has often been determined by ideological assumptions that are overly simplistic. Yet not only have approaches to Taiwan studies in Taiwan experienced drastic changes (from area studies to postcolonial to settler colonial critiques), the positionality of Taiwan has also demonstrated unique potential for relational comparisons with the world. This conference examines ways of rethinking Cold War culture and history in Taiwan as well as the implications of the global Cold War culture and history for Taiwan studies from interdisciplinary and transhistorical perspectives. How do philosophical thought, literary and cultural productions, and geopolitical relations intersect when we situate Taiwan in the global Cold War? What does “being human” mean in Cold War Taiwan, taking into consideration Sinophone and transpacific entanglements? How is Cold War cultural politics negotiated in the developments of literary, cinematic, and media genres? What does the practice of rethinking Cold War culture and history in Taiwan do to better our understanding of Taiwan, China, and the world at the current moment with the formation of what may be called the Second Cold War? Continue reading Rethinking Cold War Culture and History in Taiwan →

Chinese queer poetry collections

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Dear MCLC members,

It is my great pleasure to announce the publication of my poetry pamphlet Dream of the Orchid Pavilion (Big White Shed Press, 2024) and poetry collection The Passion of the Rabbit God (Valley Press, 2024). The two books draw on classical Chinese texts such as the Rabbit God story and the Orchid Pavilion Gathering to develop a creative narrative of queer Chinese identity and migrant experience. They also rewrite classical Chinese texts about Chang’e, Qu Yuan and Liangzhu as well as modern English texts about Fu Man-chu from a contemporary feminist, queer and anti-racism lens.

The two books will be launched in Five Leaves Bookshop (Nottingham) in May and The Carousel (Nottingham) in June 2024. They can be purchased in-store from Five Leaves bookshop and online from the Big White Shed Press and Valley Press websites.

Thank you and all the best,

Hongwei Bao <renebao@gmail.com>