China Humanities Seminar
China Humanities Seminar featuring Nicholas Standaert – The Chinese Gazette in European Sources: Joining the Global Public in the Early Qing Dynasty
Common Room, 2 Divinity Ave. 2 Divinity Ave., Cambridge, Massachusetts, United StatesSpeaker: Nicolas Standaert, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium) The Chinese gazette as a publicly available government publication was distributed in a variety of formats since the twelfth century. Little is known, however, about its form and content before 1800. By looking at European sources, this presentation shows how they offer a unique way of expanding the […]
China Humanities Seminar featuring Meimei Zhang – Immortalizing the Ephemeral: Qin Inscriptions from the Song Dynasty (960-1279)
Common Room, 2 Divinity Ave. 2 Divinity Ave., Cambridge, Massachusetts, United StatesSpeaker: Meimei Zhang, Occidental College This paper examines the Song dynasty literati’s ming 銘 inscriptions on the qin 琴, a seven-string plucked instrument that is also known as zither or guqin. The tradition of inscribing musical instruments […]
China Humanities Seminar featuring Charles Hartman – Structures of Governance in Song Dynasty China
Common Room, 2 Divinity Ave. 2 Divinity Ave., Cambridge, Massachusetts, United StatesSpeaker: Charles Hartman, University at Albany, Emeritus This lecture will introduce my recent book, Structures of Governance in Song Dynasty China 960-1279 CE (Cambridge, 2023). Together with its historiographical prelude, The Making of Song Dynasty History: Sources and Narratives (Cambridge, 2021), Structures of Governance seeks to go beyond the static organizational charts of the official […]
China Humanities Seminar featuring Cheng-hua Wang – What Handscroll Landscape Painting Could Convey: Format, Structure, and the Discourse on Huayi in the Late Northern Song Dynasty
Common Room, 2 Divinity Ave. 2 Divinity Ave., Cambridge, Massachusetts, United StatesSpeaker: Cheng-hua Wang, Associate Professor, Princeton University Focusing on landscape paintings in the handscroll format from the tenth to the twelfth century, this talk aims to present two structural innovations that took place in the late eleventh century seen in a few examples—from homogeneous to heterogeneous spaces and from mono to poly-scenic views. Along with […]
China Humanities Seminar featuring Soojung Han – Forging a New Sino-Inner Asian Order: The Brotherly Relations Between the Shatuo Turks and Kitans (907–979)
Common Room, 2 Divinity Ave. 2 Divinity Ave., Cambridge, Massachusetts, United StatesSpeaker: Soojung Han, Assistant Professor of History, Southwestern University Following the collapse of the Tang dynasty and before the rise of the Song dynasty, the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period (907–979) is known to have been one of the most chaotic periods in Chinese history. In this lecture, I explore the relations between China […]
China Humanities Seminar featuring Xiaoqiao Ling – Rethinking Early Huaben Stories: Miscellanies and Literary Ecologies
Common Room, 2 Divinity Ave. 2 Divinity Ave., Cambridge, Massachusetts, United StatesSpeaker: Xiaoqiao Ling, Associate Professor of Chinese, Arizona State University This paper investigates ways in which the proximity of texts in literary environments complicate our understanding of invention and creation […]
China Humanities Seminar featuring Michelle Wang – Terrestrial Diagrams in Early China
CGIS South, Room S050 1730 Cambridge St, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United StatesSpeaker: Michelle H. Wang, Associate Professor of Art History and Humanities, Reed College In The Art of Terrestrial Diagrams in Early China (University of Chicago Press, 2023), Michelle H. Wang explores the diagrammatic tradition of rendering space in early China. The book centers on maps (ditu) excavated from three tombs that date from the fourth […]
China Humanities Seminar featuring John Kieschnick – MSG, Vegan Soap, Karma and Tofu: Chinese Vegetarianism in the Early 20th Century
Common Room, 2 Divinity Ave. 2 Divinity Ave., Cambridge, Massachusetts, United StatesSpeaker: John Kieschnick, Robert H.N. Ho Family Foundation Professor of Buddhist Studies, Stanford University Drawing on newspapers, essays, memoirs, correspondence and Buddhist journals, this talk will outline the major trends in Chinese vegetarianism from 1900-1950, attempting to capture the diverse motivations, arguments and innovations in the anti-meat movement in China in the first half of […]
China Humanities Seminar featuring Franciscus Verellen – The General and His Scribe: The Fall of the Tang in Contemporary Sources
Common Room, 2 Divinity Ave. 2 Divinity Ave., Cambridge, Massachusetts, United StatesSpeaker: Franciscus Verellen, Professor Emeritus, École française d’Extrême-Orient (EFEO); Vice President, Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, Institut de France The understudied end phase of the Tang dynasty (618–907) is mainly […]