Listen again to the panels from our 60th Anniversary Symposium: 

Watch again on YouTube (note, some panels are audio only):

Event Description

Join us for a two-day academic symposium celebrating sixty years of the Fairbank Center’s world-leading research on China and East Asia.

By taking a critical look at the prevailing trends in Chinese Studies over the past six decades, this symposium aims to not only reflect on our Center’s history, but also discuss how the field will evolve in the future.

Featuring panels on key issues confronting China and Chinese Studies in 2016, the symposium’s cross-disciplinary approach represents the very core of the Fairbank Center’s founding mission: to advance scholarship in all fields of Chinese studies at Harvard.

Friday, October 7

 

Opening Remarks

8:30am

Michael Szonyi | Director, Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Professor of Chinese History

 

8:45am

Panel 1: Politics 

Chair: William Kirby | T. M. Chang Professor of China Studies; Spangler Family Professor of Business Administration

Joseph Fewsmith | Professor of International Relations and Political Science, Boston University; Fairbank Center Associate

Roderick MacFarquhar | Leroy B. Williams Research Professor of History and Political Science

Yuhua Wang | Assistant Professor of Government

 

10:30am

Panel 2: China’s Society

Chair: Ya-wen Lei | Assistant Professor of Sociology

Xiang Zhou | Assistant Professor of Government

Deborah Davis | Professor of Sociology, Yale University

Yun Zhou | PhD Candidate, Department of Sociology

 

Panel 3: Politics and the Use of History in China Today

Chair: Mark Elliott | Mark Schwartz Professor of Chinese and Inner Asian History; Vice-Provost for International Affairs

Rowan Flad | John E. Hudson Professor of Archaeology

Jing Tsu | Professor of East Asian Languages and Literatures and Comparative Literature, Yale University

Rudolf Wagner | Senior Professor, Heidelberg University; Fairbank Center Associate

 

1:45pm

Panel 4: China’s Tibetan and Uighur Nationalities

Chair: Leonard van der Kuijp | Professor of Tibetan and Himalayan Studies

Weirong Shen | Professor, Renmin University of China

Brenton Sullivan | Assistant Professor of Religion, Colgate University

Ryosuke Kobayashi | Research Fellow, Toyo Bunko; Visiting Scholar, Harvard-Yenching Institute

Rian Thum | Assistant Professor of History, Loyola University

 

Panel 5: Economy

Chair: Dwight Perkins | Harold Hitchings Burbank Research Professor of Political Economy, Emeritus

Richard Cooper | Maurits C. Boas Professor of International Economics

Dale Jorgenson | Samuel W. Morris University Professor, Harvard University

Edward Steinfeld | Howard Swearer Director, Thomas J. Watson Jr. Institute for International & Public Affairs; Professor of Political Science, Brown University

 

3:30pm

Panel 6: U.S.-China Relations

Chair: Alastair Iain Johnston | Governor James Albert Noe and Linda Noe Laine Professor of China in World Affairs

M. Taylor Fravel | Associate Professor of Political Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Steven Goldstein | Sophia Smith Professor Emeritus of Government, Smith College, Emeritus; Fairbank Center Associate

Kelly Sims Gallagher | Professor of Energy and Environmental Policy, The Fletcher School, Tufts University

Ryan Hass | Director for China, Taiwan, and Mongolia Affairs, National Security Council, The White House

 

5:00pm

Reception for the opening of a new exhibition, featuring paintings by Wilma Fairbank and Marian Schlesinger, and photography by Sidney Gamble.

 

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Saturday, October 8

10:00am

Panel 7: Culture 

Chair: Xiaofei Tian | Professor of Chinese Literature

Wai-yee Li | Professor of Chinese Literature

Stephen Owen | James Bryant Conant University Professor

David Wang | Edward C. Henderson Professor of Chinese Literature

Eugene Wang | Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Professor of Asian Art

Ellen Widmer | Mayling Soong Professor of Chinese Studies, Wellesley College; Fairbank Center Associate

 

Panel 8: Global Health, Global Care for the Elderly and Cross-Cultural Comparisons

Chair: Arthur Kleinman | Esther and Sidney Rabb Professor of Anthropology; Professor of Medical Anthropology in Social Medicine; Professor of Psychiatry

Winnie Yip |  Professor of Global Health Policy and Economics, T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Prerna Singh | Mahatma Gandhi Assistant Professor of Political Science and International and Public Affairs, Brown University

 

11:45am

Panel 9: China’s Environmental Issues – Historical and Contemporary Perspectives 

Chair: Arunabh Ghosh | Assistant Professor of History

Ling Zhang | Assistant Professor, History Department, Boston College

Brian Lander | Environmental Fellow, Harvard University Center for the Environment

Elizabeth Lord | Department of Geography and Planning, University of Toronto

Michael McElroy | Gilbert Butler Professor of Environmental Studies

 

2:30pm

Panel 10: Former Directors’ Panel

Chair: Michael Szonyi | Director of the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies; Professor of Chinese History

Mark Elliott | Mark Schwartz Professor of Chinese and Inner Asian History; Vice-Provost for International Affairs

Ezra Vogel | Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences, Emeritus

Wilt Idema | Professor of Chinese Literature, Emeritus

Roderick MacFarquhar | Leroy B. Williams Research Professor of History and Political Science