Speaker: Lili Xia, Assistant Professor, Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Cultures, Barnard College.

The geocultural significance of the “North” was crucial to the competing claims to China between the Jurchen Jin (1115–1234) and Southern Song (1127–1279) dynasties. This talk examines the contemporary conception of “northernness,” arguing that Jurchen-ruled North China was at once a geopolitical reality and a poetic and intellectual imaginary. First, after the loss of the Central Plain, Southern Song literati enshrined their former territory of North China into “sites of memory” (lieux de mémoire). At the same time, the Jurchen Jin proclaimed legitimacy by invoking its own “northernness” conceived in both literary texts and geocultural contexts. Extending beyond the Central Plain into what I term the Far North—territory inherited from the former Kitan Liao dynasty (907–1125)—this region received substantial cultural investment under Jurchen rule. Using GIS visualization to map historical agents from extant Jin corpora, I show that these far northern literati were integral to Jin civil society. Finally, I turn to zhongzhou 中州 as a discursive hallmark in Jin textual production, a conceptual anchor for “northernness” that served as both cultural self-distinction and, after the Mongol conquest, a locus of collective nostalgia. Occupying the “North” with not only geographical but also conceptual significance, the Jin positioned itself not as an alien regime but as an alternative, heteroglossic vision of “China.”

Lili Xia is a scholar of premodern Chinese literature, with a broader interest in Sino-steppe interactions and their role in challenging, changing, and pluralizing the mainstream literary history. She is currently working on her book project titled “North against South in Middle Period China: Classical Poetry and Literati Culture under Jurchen Jin Rule (1115–1234).” The book examines how the Sino-Jurchen North articulated a rival vision of China against the cultural orthodoxy of the Han Chinese-ruled South, and highlights the vibrant and self-defining literati culture under Jurchen rule, with a particular focus on Jin classical poetry. The book also adopts an interdisciplinary approach that integrates material culture, digital tools, and literary sources to better represent Jin literary ecology. It aims to portray Middle Period China as an intersubjective, transcultural, and border-crossing space.

Xia received her B.A. and M.A. in Classical Chinese Literature at Fudan University, and her Ph.D. in East Asian Studies at Princeton University. She was the 2023–24 Louis Frieberg Postdoctoral Fellow at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Since 2024, she is an assistant professor in the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Cultures at Barnard College.