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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20240401T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20240401T173000
DTSTAMP:20260513T094025
CREATED:20240304T155315Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20240304T155317Z
UID:35809-1711987200-1711992600@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:China Humanities Seminar featuring John Kieschnick - MSG\, Vegan Soap\, Karma and Tofu: Chinese Vegetarianism in the Early 20th Century
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: John Kieschnick\, Robert H.N. Ho Family Foundation Professor of Buddhist Studies\, Stanford University \n\n\n\nDrawing 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 the twentieth century. \n\n\n\nJohn Kieschnick specializes in Chinese Buddhism\, with particular emphasis on its cultural history. He is the author of the Eminent Monk: Buddhist Ideals in Medieval China\, The Impact of Buddhism on Chinese Material Culture\, and Buddhist Historiography in China. He is currently writing a history of Chinese vegetarianism. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/china-humanities-seminar-featuring-john-kieschnick-msg-vegan-soap-karma-and-tofu-chinese-vegetarianism-in-the-early-20th-century/
LOCATION:Common Room\, 2 Divinity Ave.\, 2 Divinity Ave.\, Cambridge\, Massachusetts\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:China Humanities Seminar
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/msg.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20240226T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20240226T173000
DTSTAMP:20260513T094025
CREATED:20240123T175555Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20240123T175918Z
UID:35163-1708963200-1708968600@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:China Humanities Seminar featuring Michelle Wang - Terrestrial Diagrams in Early China
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Michelle H. Wang\, Associate Professor of Art History and Humanities\, Reed College \n\n\n\nIn 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 to the second century BCE and constitute the entire known corpus of early Chinese maps. Unlike extant studies that draw heavily from the history of cartography\, the book offers an interdisciplinary account of the diversity of forms and functions in early Chinese ditu to argue that these pictures did not simply represent natural topography and built environments but rather made and remade worlds for the living and the dead. In this talk\, Wang will provide an overview of the leading questions and methods that underpin the project\, a case study that exemplifies their application\, and a proposal for future lines of inquiry. \n\n\n\nMichelle H. Wang is Associate Professor of Art History and Humanities at Reed College. She specializes in art and archaeology of tenth century BCE to third century CE China\, with an emphasis on early notational systems. Her research interests include artisanal practice\, history of technology\, excavated texts\, and mortuary culture. Her work has appeared in journals such as Artibus Asiae and Art History. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/china-humanities-seminar-featuring-michelle-wang-terrestrial-diagrams-in-early-china/
LOCATION:CGIS South\, Room S050\, 1730 Cambridge St\, Cambridge\, Massachusetts\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:China Humanities Seminar
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/CHS-feb.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20231204T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20231204T173000
DTSTAMP:20260513T094025
CREATED:20231116T170947Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20231116T170948Z
UID:34522-1701705600-1701711000@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:China Humanities Seminar featuring Xiaoqiao Ling - Rethinking Early Huaben Stories: Miscellanies and Literary Ecologies
DESCRIPTION:Register for hybrid zoom attendance\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSpeaker: Xiaoqiao Ling\, Associate Professor of Chinese\, Arizona State University \n\n\n\nThis paper investigates ways in which the proximity of texts in literary environments complicate our understanding of invention and creation in the late Ming narrative tradition. Early vernacular short stories (huaben) are typically dismissed as haphazard patchworks of disparate textual segments. Pioneering scholars such as Patrick Hanan have mostly used these stories for dating purposes and for tracking textual pedigrees and influences. Feng Menglong (1574–1646)\, in his 1620 compilation of Stories Old and New (the first of the Sanyan collections)\, dismissed two of such stories as “coarse and frivolous\,” failing to meet literati sensibilities. Yet these stories certainly had broad commercial appeals at the time. Anthologized repeatedly in late sixteenth-century miscellanies that fitted texts of different literary forms in upper and lower panels on a leaf\, these stories facilitated serendipitous connections in readers’ minds given the proximity of texts that packaged familiar tropes in novel permutations. Using ecology as a metaphor to examine literature’s engagement with its environments\, this research proposes to rethink these stories in terms of how they were experienced in their immediate textual environments housed by sixteenth-century miscellanies. Such a perspective also allows for new ways of contextualizing the huaben tradition in a distinctive regional community that embraced literary sightseeing as a predominant mode of reading. \n\n\n\nXiaoqiao Ling is Associate Professor of Chinese at Arizona State University. Her main field of interest is late imperial Chinese literature with a focus on performance texts\, vernacular fiction\, and print culture. She has published in both Chinese and English on fiction and drama commentary\, legal imagination in literature\, memory and trauma\, and Sino-Korean reading practices. She is the author of Feeling the Past in Seventeenth-Century China (Harvard University Asia Center\, 2019) and editor of Minor Discourses: Aesthetics of the Everyday (National Taiwan University Press\, forthcoming). \n\n\n\nAlso via Zoom. Register: https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJEqce2hrzsoHdaOgEkIVGI4yJGHKkwYCnzF \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/china-humanities-seminar-featuring-xiaoqiao-ling-rethinking-early-huaben-stories-miscellanies-and-literary-ecologies/
LOCATION:Common Room\, 2 Divinity Ave.\, 2 Divinity Ave.\, Cambridge\, Massachusetts\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:China Humanities Seminar
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/LingXiaoqiao-Image2.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20231113T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20231113T180000
DTSTAMP:20260513T094025
CREATED:20231017T172744Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20231017T172948Z
UID:34072-1699891200-1699898400@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:China Humanities Seminar featuring Soojung Han - Forging a New Sino-Inner Asian Order: The Brotherly Relations Between the Shatuo Turks and Kitans (907–979)
DESCRIPTION:Register for hybrid zoom attendance\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSpeaker: Soojung Han\, Assistant Professor of History\, Southwestern University \n\n\n\nFollowing 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 and Inner Asia in the tenth century. Specifically\, I examine the diplomacy between the Shatuo Turks\, who established three out of the Five Dynasties and one of the Ten Kingdoms\, and Kitan Liao\, the nomadic superpower to the north. Through analyzing and comparing the tributary rhetoric in records documented by both parties\, I argue that a relationship of parity between the Middle Kingdom and the Kitans under tianxia (all-under-heaven) should be considered to have started during the rule of Later Tang (923–937)\, one of the Shatuo Turkic dynasties. The brotherly relationship established between the Shatuo Turkic and Kitan rulers\, which in part can be attributed to their nomadic origins\, paved the way for a relationship between equals under tianxia. More crucially\, this relationship reshaped the Sino-Inner Asian world for centuries in which Inner Asian nomads could lay claim and rule over China. \n\n\n\nSoojung Han is an assistant professor of History at Southwestern University. She is a historian of medieval China and Inner Asia whose main field of research is the relations between China and Inner Asia during the Middle Period\, with particular emphasis on gender\, ethnicity\, and identity. Her current book project proposes that the diplomatic relations and identity formation of the 10th century marked a watershed in Chinese history which reshaped the Sino-Inner Asian world. She received her PhD in East Asian Studies from Princeton University in 2022. This coming year\, her works will be published in Ethnic Terminologies in Eurasian Perspective in the Visions of Community (VISCOM) series. \n\n\n\nAlso via Zoom.Register at: https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJUoc-2urzwiGNwQpkQcMrQiFzwU5UWsJYll \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/china-humanities-seminar-featuring-soojung-han-forging-a-new-sino-inner-asian-order-the-brotherly-relations-between-the-shatuo-turks-and-kitans-907-979/
LOCATION:Common Room\, 2 Divinity Ave.\, 2 Divinity Ave.\, Cambridge\, Massachusetts\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:China Humanities Seminar
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/sab2.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20231016T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20231016T180000
DTSTAMP:20260513T094025
CREATED:20230918T201740Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230918T201741Z
UID:33753-1697472000-1697479200@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY: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
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Cheng-hua Wang\, Associate Professor\, Princeton University \n\n\n\nFocusing 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 these transformations in the late Northern Song (960–1127)\, the landscape handscroll format became an independent and full-fledged medium that diverged from the landscape hanging scroll in terms of compositional design\, pictorial goal\, and viewing practice. These in turn also opened up new possibilities for emotional expression\, lyrical symbolism\, and political connotations. The examples discussed include Old Trees\, Level Distance (Shuse pingyuan) by Guo Xi and Fishing Village in Light Snow (Yucun xiaoxue) by Wang Shen. \n\n\n\nThe above discussion links the materiality and expressive potentiality of the handscroll landscape with its development as an independent format. This talk will also explore the formats of landscape painting by the tenth century\, a pre-history of handscroll landscape painting\, and the cultural context of the late eleventh century in which the concept of huayi (pictorial intent) featured prominently in the discourse on painting. While huayi\, as a standard term that referred to the meanings or connotations of painting\, probably emerged in the late Tang dynasty (618–906)\, it stands in the late Northern Song at the intersection of different art-historical threads that await further investigation. By using texts such as Guo Xi’s Lofty Ideal of Forests and Streams (Linquan gaozhi)\, it is hoped in this talk that the late Northern Song art world that fostered a high level of visual literacy along with rich and sophisticated signification in art can be recapitulated using the examples of handscroll landscape painting given above. \n\n\n\nCheng-hua Wang\, a specialist in Chinese painting and visual culture\, is Associate Professor at Princeton University. She has published widely in both Chinese and English. Two anthologies of her articles in Chinese have been published respectively in 2011 and 2020. Her English-language publications have appeared in different journals and edited volumes\, and an anthology of some of these articles translated into Chinese will come out next year. In addition\, her book manuscript Up the River of Time: The Qingming Shanghe Painting Tradition in China is currently under review. It tackles issues regarding the construction of a painting tradition and cultural constellation through thematic links and the complicated interrelationship between a primordial artwork and its later reproductions from a long historical perspective. Her next book project will explore the concept of territoriality and the transformation of shanshui painting in eighteenth-century China that involved the court and Suzhou. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/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/
LOCATION:Common Room\, 2 Divinity Ave.\, 2 Divinity Ave.\, Cambridge\, Massachusetts\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:China Humanities Seminar
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/pdh.png
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20230925T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20230925T173000
DTSTAMP:20260513T094025
CREATED:20230828T135526Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230828T135527Z
UID:33564-1695657600-1695663000@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:China Humanities Seminar featuring Charles Hartman - Structures of Governance in Song Dynasty China
DESCRIPTION:Register for hybrid zoom attendance\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSpeaker: Charles Hartman\, University at Albany\, Emeritus \n\n\n\nThis 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 Song History (宋史) of 1345 and offers a new model for thinking about Song governance as a continuum of possible administrative modalities. This continuum\, or spectrum of possibilities\, links (1) a Confucian preference for established institutions and precedents that circumscribed imperial power and (2) the monarchy’s preference for an ad hoc\, pan-sectarian “technocracy.” The result is a more expansive view of political culture as a “technocratic-Confucian continuum.” On the one hand\, this model emphasizes how the Song monarchs transformed the imperial clan\, its affines\, eunuchs\, and female palace bureaucrats into a complex corporation that both enabled and benefited from the rapid expansion of the commercial economy. On the other hand\, it argues that there were few committed and effective Confucian politicians and\, although intellectually and socially influential\, they existed in constant political tension with imperial technocrats. \n\n\n\nProfessor Charles Hartman received his PhD in Chinese literature from Indiana University in 1975. He published Han Yü and the T’ang Search for Unity (Princeton University Press) in 1986\, which received the Levinson Prize from the Association for Asian Studies. Over the past thirty years\, his articles on Song dynasty historiography in the Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies\, T’oung Pao\, and the Journal of Song-Yuan Studies have prepared the way for his current research on how political decision-making influenced Song historical writing. His book\, The Making of Song Dynasty History: Sources and Narratives (Cambridge\, 2021)\, reviews the compilation of the major works that survive from official Song historiography and distills from these an embedded narrative — a “grand allegory of Song history” that reflects tension between a model of governance based on Confucian institutionalism and another based on the Song monarchy’s pan-sectarian\, technocratic preferences. His latest work\, Structures of Governance in Song Dynasty (Cambridge\, 2023) develops this distinction at length and offers a new model for thinking about the deeper structures of Song governance and of pre-modern China more generally. This model\, the “technocratic-Confucian continuum\,” reframes the prevailing notion of Confucian political dominance and expands the definition of Song political culture to embrace all its actors. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/china-humanities-seminar-featuring-charles-hartman-structures-of-governance-in-song-dynasty-china/
LOCATION:Common Room\, 2 Divinity Ave.\, 2 Divinity Ave.\, Cambridge\, Massachusetts\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:China Humanities Seminar
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Hartman_book_cover.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20230424T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20230424T180000
DTSTAMP:20260513T094025
CREATED:20230330T164446Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230618T215652Z
UID:31999-1682352000-1682359200@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:China Humanities Seminar featuring Meimei Zhang - Immortalizing the Ephemeral: Qin Inscriptions from the Song Dynasty (960-1279)
DESCRIPTION:Register for hybrid zoom attendance\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSpeaker: Meimei Zhang\, Occidental College \n\n\n\nThis 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 can be traced back to bronze bells and chime stones in the Shang and Zhou dynasties\, which bore pithy messages primarily functioning as historiographical and musicological records. From the Tang dynasty onward\, with the qin featuring prominently in the private sphere of literati\, inscriptions on the qin became a form of literary marginalia—an innovation that they used to test literary skills\, engage with the material contingency of the instrument\, and inquire into the essence of music and sound. By mapping out the thematic and stylistic typology of these writings\, this paper argues that qin inscriptionsconstituted a site in which theorizations and interpretations of the core discourses on music and its connoisseurship\, zhiyin (one who knows the tone) and ganying (correlative resonance)\, were made available from the variegated perspectives of inter-human\, human-object\, object-cosmos\, or human-cosmos relationships. By employing and playing with a repertoire of literary rhetoric and philosophical discussions\, Song authors celebrated qin’s distinctive musicality and materiality in inscriptions not only as public implements\, but also as biographical objects\, music relics from the high antiquity\, and philosophical emblems that specified ways of thinking with the qin and its sound. \n\n\n\nMeimei Zhang is Assistant Professor of Chinese Studies at Occidental College. Her research interests include literary representations of music and sound\, social and cultural history of musical instruments\, poetics of money\, and the intersections of literature and Buddhism. She is currently preparing a monograph\, tentatively entitled The Qin and the Changing Literati Soundscape of Song Dynasty China\, which employs an interdisciplinary range of object\, sound\, and literary theories to investigate the Song literati’s literary representation of the qin (the seven-string Chinese zither)\, and how thinkers during this period shifted their world engagement with questions of perception\, embodiment\, and sociality away from the dominant paradigm of vision towards a thinking of circulation and shared atmospheres of sound. Her writings will be featured in the forthcoming Journal of Song-Yuan Studies and the Journal of American Oriental Studies. Her work has been supported by the CUHK-CCK Foundation Asia-Pacific Centre for Chinese Studies\, etc. \n\n\n\nAlso via Zoom. Register at: https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJctceqgqz0qE9wWndTTTCWX-cSb1WQkEXT8 \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/china-humanities-seminar-featuring-meimei-zhang-immortalizing-the-ephemeral-qin-inscriptions-from-the-song-dynasty-960-1279/
LOCATION:Common Room\, 2 Divinity Ave.\, 2 Divinity Ave.\, Cambridge\, Massachusetts\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:China Humanities Seminar
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/guqin-7a9d15.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20230410T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20230410T180000
DTSTAMP:20260513T094025
CREATED:20230321T165616Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230618T213128Z
UID:31926-1681142400-1681149600@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:China Humanities Seminar featuring Nicholas Standaert - The Chinese Gazette in European Sources: Joining the Global Public in the Early Qing Dynasty
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Nicolas Standaert\, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium) \n\n\n\nThe 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 knowledge about the gazette of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Its interconnected history illustrates how the Chinese gazette\, as translated by European missionaries\, became a major source for reflections on state and society by Enlightenment thinkers. It thus joined a global public much earlier than so far assumed. \n\n\n\nNicolas Standaert is Professor of Sinology at KU Leuven (Belgium) (1993-) and Member of the Royal Academy of Sciences and Arts of Belgium (2003-). His major research interest is the cultural contacts between China and Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In this field he has led multiple research projects on rituality\, visual culture\, historiography\, and print culture. He is the author of The Chinese Gazette in European Sources: Joining the Global Public in the Early and Mid-Qing Dynasty (Brill\, 2022); The Intercultural Weaving of Historical Texts: Chinese and European Stories about Emperor Ku and His Concubines (Brill\, 2016); Chinese Voices in the Rites Controversy: Travelling Books\, Community Networks\, Intercultural Arguments (Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu\, 2012)\, among many others. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/china-humanities-seminar-featuring-nicholas-standaert-the-chinese-gazette-in-european-sources-joining-the-global-public-in-the-early-qing-dynasty/
LOCATION:Common Room\, 2 Divinity Ave.\, 2 Divinity Ave.\, Cambridge\, Massachusetts\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:China Humanities Seminar
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/gio-almonte-d1VHhofdTbk-unsplash-scaled.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20230213T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20230213T180000
DTSTAMP:20260513T094025
CREATED:20230119T142025Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230618T224255Z
UID:31381-1676304000-1676311200@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:China Humanities Seminar featuring Xin Wen - Curating a Museum of Stones: The “Forest of Stelae” (Beilin) and the Politics of the Past in Middle Period China
DESCRIPTION:register for hybrid zoom session\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nRead our blog post on the event: What a Museum of Tang Stones Says About How China Views its Past \n\n\n\nSpeaker: Xin Wen\, Assistant Professor of East Asian Studies and History\, Princeton University \n\n\n\nChang’an\, the capital of the Tang dynasty (618–907)\, was the largest city in the medieval world. The walled area of the city measured 84 square kilometers and the population likely reached one million. Unlike other pre-modern cities such as Rome and Tenochtitlan that contained many monumental stone buildings\, Chang’an’s walls\, palaces and houses were made of rammed earth and supported by wooden structures. As a result\, little remains of this mammoth city are still visible above ground now in modern Xi’an. The only monuments that survived the centuries of erosion after Chang’an’s abandonment in 904 were stone commemorative stelae that once accompanied almost every significant urban construction\, from palaces and monasteries to private residences and tombs. In this lecture\, I explore the diverse lives of these stone monuments in Chang’an during the Song\, the Jin and the Yuan dynasties. Some stones were destroyed or buried\, but others were re-carved and reused. A select few\, including the ninth century Stone Classics (shijing) and stelae bearing the handwriting of masters like Yan Zhenqing and Liu Gongquan\, were assembled at the Provincial School and the Confucius Temple. This collection of stone monuments began to take shape in the eleventh century and continued to expand and change in the subsequent centuries. By exploring the curatorial agenda\, maintenance personnel\, and visitor profiles of this collection\, I argue that its social and cultural roles in the urban landscape of post-Tang Chang’an resembled those of a modern museum. What this medieval museum exhibits is a uniquely literary reading of the history of the Tang dynasty\, and of China. \n\n\n\nXin Wen is an assistant professor of East Asian Studies and History at Princeton University. He is a historian of medieval China\, Central Asia\, and Eurasia. His first book is The King’s Road: Diplomacy and the Remaking of the Silk Road (Princeton University Press\, January 2022). He is now working on a second book\, an urban history of Chang’an after the fall of the Tang dynasty. \n\n\n\nThis talk is co-sponsored by the IAAS program. \n\n\n\nAlso available via Zoom. Register at: https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJUuce-srD8sGNKZ3Cw757j-lgX0TcXHW1ZZ \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/china-humanities-seminar-featuring-xin-wen-curating-a-museum-of-stones-the-forest-of-stelae-beilin-and-the-politics-of-the-past-in-middle-period-china/
LOCATION:Common Room\, 2 Divinity Ave.\, 2 Divinity Ave.\, Cambridge\, Massachusetts\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:China Humanities Seminar
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Nestorian_stele_1.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20230130T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20230130T173000
DTSTAMP:20260513T094025
CREATED:20221215T135139Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230119T190550Z
UID:31062-1675094400-1675099800@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:China Humanities Seminar featuring Anne Feng - Water Transformation: Buddhist Meditation and Pure Land Art in Tang China
DESCRIPTION:Register for hybrid attendance\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSpeaker: Anne N. Feng\, Assistant Professor of Chinese Art\, Boston University \n\n\n\nThis paper investigates the relationship between Buddhist meditation and images in medieval China by reconsidering the development of Pure Land transformation tableaux in Dunhuang caves. Working against previous studies that treat the Sixteen Meditations as a linear step-by-step sequence in which the meditator focuses on a static visual object in each meditation\, I argue that painters looked to phenomena described in the Meditation Sutra to explore new possibilities for the representation of material metamorphosis. Although the goal of the Sixteen Meditations is to achieve a vision of Amitābha Buddha and the Pure Land that emanates from his power\, I show how medieval painters foregrounded the natural and supernatural transformations of water as the pivotal moment in the Sixteen Meditations. The Pure Land was understood as a realm that was aqueous\, liquid\, and mutable. By linking the depiction of the “Water Meditation” to a hitherto neglected aquatic imaginary in Buddhist cave complexes\, I demonstrate how painters looked to the properties of water to choreograph mediational experience and expand conceptions of pictorial space. \n\n\n\nAnne N. Feng is Assistant Professor of Chinese Art at Boston University. Her research interests include visual and material cultures of the Silk Road\, theories of vision and meditation\, and representations of the Western Pure Land. She is currently preparing a monograph Aqueous Visions: Water and Buddhist Art in Medieval China\, which explores the impact of an aquatic imaginary on immersive architectural schemes of the Buddhist cave complex Dunhuang\, in northwest China. Her writings are featured in Archives of Asian Art\, Artibus Asiae\, and the Journal of Silk Road Studies. Her work has been supported by the Luce/ACLS Early Career Fellowships in China Studies\, the Fulbright-IIE Fellowship\, the Franke Institute for the Humanities\, etc.Also available via Zoom. Register at: https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMudumrrzsqHdU6PbC3_KudgoXK1ccoBeUG \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/china-humanities-seminar-featuring-anne-feng-water-transformation-buddhist-meditation-and-pure-land-art-in-tang-china/
LOCATION:Common Room\, 2 Divinity Ave.\, 2 Divinity Ave.\, Cambridge\, Massachusetts\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:China Humanities Seminar
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/thumbnail_Feng_Image-copy.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20221205T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20221205T180000
DTSTAMP:20260513T094025
CREATED:20221116T145055Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230629T195249Z
UID:30788-1670256000-1670263200@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:China Humanities Seminar featuring Lu Kuo - The Temporary Recluse: The Discourse of Not Working in Early Medieval Chinese Poetry
DESCRIPTION:Register now\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSpeaker: Lu Kou\, Assistant Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures\, Columbia University \n\n\n\nFor imperial officials\, “work” – fulfilling duties in the office\, traveling for business\, or managing lawsuits\, taxation\, or infrastructure – was a common subject matter for poetic treatment. Yet meanwhile\, they also wrote prolifically about “not working\,” which encompassed both permanent withdrawal from the officialdom and temporary release of duties. In their poetry on “not working\,” poet-officials often portrayed themselves as recluses\, men who claimed to evade social interactions and civil services in order to retain a sense of independence and personal integrity. Ironically\, while they tapped the discourse of reclusion to describe sabbaticals\, vacations\, or demotions – what I call “temporary recluse\,” this discourse also heightened the poet-officials’ awareness of themselves being working persons. It opened up a poetic space where they can negotiate with bureaucratic systems\, articulate their worth vis-à-vis the work\, investigate the meaning of leisure\, and fashion communities of like-minded working colleagues. \n\n\n\nWhile the culture of reclusion in early medieval China is well studied\, this talk focuses on the reclusive discourse as a discourse of not working that emerged\, developed\, and dispersed within a culture of work. By examining two cases\, one on Liu Xiaochuo’s (481–539) leave of absence (xiumu 休沐)\, and the other on Xie Tiao’s (464–499) poetics of local governance\, this talk studies how poet-officials manipulated the reclusive discourse as a rhetorical strategy to navigate imperial bureaucracy and reinscribe their worth and value. I show that the reclusive imaginary was embedded in a culture of service and that the reclusive discourse bridged “work” and “not work\,” rendering their boundaries porous and malleable. \n\n\n\nBiography \n\n\n\nLu Kou is Assistant Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University. As a medievalist and a scholar of premodern Chinese literature\, Lu Kou’s research interests include medieval Chinese literature and culture\, poetry and poetics\, historiography\, and comparative studies of China’s Middle Period and medieval Europe. He is currently at work on two book projects: War of Words: Courtly Exchange\, Rhetoric\, and Political Cultures in Early Medieval China\, which examines the “discursive battles” fought among rival states in China’s early medieval period and investigates how rhetoric constructed and contested political legitimacy in this age of multipolarity; and (tentatively titled) Locked Seal\, Heart of Poetry: Bureaucracy and the Representation of Work in Medieval Chinese Poetry\, 400-900 CE\, which studies the dialectic between poetry and bureaucratic systems\, between lyricism and quotidian renderings of “work” in medieval poetry. Before joining the faculty at Columbia\, he was Assistant Professor of Chinese at Bard College (2019-2022) and Visiting Assistant Professor at Williams College (2018-2019). \n\n\n\nZoom Registration: https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJIsduCuqjooGNA1PQdAWwm0oDarNDg4eNYc \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/china-humanities-seminar-featuring-lu-kuo-the-temporary-recluse-the-discourse-of-not-working-in-early-medieval-chinese-poetry/
LOCATION:Presented via Zoom
CATEGORIES:China Humanities Seminar
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20221107T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20221107T180000
DTSTAMP:20260513T094025
CREATED:20221004T143205Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230610T020227Z
UID:29914-1667836800-1667844000@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:China Humanities Seminar Featuring Jeffrey Riegel - Further Reflections on an ‘Unmoved Heart’: Mengzi 2A2 Revisited
DESCRIPTION:Register for hybrid zoom attendance\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSpeaker: Jeffrey Riegel\, University of California Berkeley\, Emeritus \n\n\n\nMengzi 2A2 consists of Master Meng’s answers to questions put to him by a follower named Gongsun Chou. The first few of these replies relate to bu dong xin\, “unmoved heart\,”—i.e.\, mental quietude and equanimity in the face of humiliation or disappointment as well as excitement or promise—and to yang yong\, “nurturing fortitude\,” the first of several methods Mengzi identifies for achieving an “unmoved heart.” Mengzi attributes to his old rival\, Gaozi\, a sixteen-word “maxim” and adds to it a filigree of glosses and highly abbreviated explanations meant to justify why he labels the second part of Gaozi’s maxim an acceptable means for achieving an unmoved heart. In responding to subsequent questions\, Mengzi introduces and explains yang haoran zhi qi\, “nurturing the flood-like ethers\,” and zhi yan\, “recognizing (the defects in) words\,” two pillars of his own self-cultivation method. Mengzi’s elaborations on how to cultivate the ethers show that he believed they would “fill the space between Heaven and Earth” because his passions dwelled together with propriety in a state of conjugal harmony. \n\n\n\nI first presented a paper on Mengzi 2A2 at Harvard in the summer of 1976 and subsequently published it in 1980. The present paper is not simply a revision of that effort but rather a thorough reconsideration of its arguments and conclusions. The length of the passage\, but even more so its obscure subject\, technical vocabulary\, rhetorical complexities\, elliptical syntax\, and resonances for those within the Ruist tradition account for Mengzi 2A2 having generated more discussion in the traditional exegeses and commentaries than other Mengzi passages. The earliest surviving commentary was composed by Zhao Qi (d. 201 CE). The most important of the lengthy treatments is the commentary of Zhu Xi (1130-1200)\, the Mengzi jizhu\, first published in 1190\, read together with the lessons on Mengzi 2A2 Zhu Xi provided his disciples and followers toward the end of his life that are preserved in the Zhuzi yulei. \n\n\n\nThe interpretations and other aspects of the approach to and reception of Mengzi 2A2 by Zhao Qi and Zhu Xi are major subjects of analysis treated in the present study. They are supplemented by consideration of the writings of late Ming and early Qing dynasty authorities\, many of whom refute or criticize various points in Zhu Xi’s interpretations. Also important are the detailed lexical notes and other research materials compiled by Jiao Xun (1763-1820) in his Mengzi zhengyi\, in a sense a capstone of the Qing dynasty philological approach to the text. Interwoven with the explanations of these earlier commentators are my own attempts to engage with Mengzi’s thought and the often-unique difficulties of understanding the terminology he used in formulating his answers to Gongsun Chou’s questions. While this involves applying the philological tools necessary to any reading of early Chinese literature\, my purpose here is not so much to provide a close reading of Mengzi 2A2 but rather to create an interpretation of the text that will encourage readers to explore more deeply its difficulties and complexities. The last word on the text will never be written. \n\n\n\nJeffrey Riegel is retired from professorial positions at the University of California\, Berkeley (1979-2007)\, and The University of Sydney (2007-2017). Jeff has published widely on early Chinese thought\, literature\, and archaeology\, has been a visiting professor at Fudan University\, Renmin University\, and the Chinese University of Hong Kong\, and still occasionally gives talks in China\, Hong Kong\, Singapore\, Japan\, Australia\, and North America. Jeff’s publications include The Annals of Lü Buwei (Stanford\, 2000) and Mozi: A Study and Translation of the Ethical and Political Writings (Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies\, 2013). His articles appear in major sinological journals. A selection of them has been translated into Chinese and collected into a volume forthcoming in 2022 from Shanghai’s Guji Press. His recently-completed book-length study of eighteenth-century Chinese historiography on the rise of the Qin empire will be published by Berkeley’s IEAS in early 2023. Jeff spends most of his time at his homes in Siem Reap\, Suzhou\, and Palm Springs.Also presented via Zoom. Register at: https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJAvdeisqzosE9I38t-pSbOjiucNf41cqdob \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/china-humanities-seminar-featuring-jeffrey-riegel-further-reflections-on-an-unmoved-heart-mengzi-2a2-revisited/
LOCATION:Common Room\, 2 Divinity Ave.\, 2 Divinity Ave.\, Cambridge\, Massachusetts\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:China Humanities Seminar
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/yosuke-ota-lGLbdWcUG5U-unsplash-scaled-e1686362491145.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20220926T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20220926T180000
DTSTAMP:20260513T094025
CREATED:20220829T134012Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230622T201853Z
UID:29370-1664208000-1664215200@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:China Humanities Seminar - Writing and Reading “Local Court Drama” in Late Imperial China: Texts\, Genres\, and Identities 
DESCRIPTION:Register now\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSpeaker: Tian Yuan Tan 陳靝沅: Shaw Professor of Chinese\, University of Oxford \n\n\n\nRecent reprint projects have given researchers much improved access to the vast corpus of Chinese court dramatic texts kept in palace archives and private collections\, which in turn presents a challenge: how do we unpack the complex textual web and varied forms contained therein? I am interested in ways of reading court drama in connection with the wider textual and cultural worlds. This talk will focus on a body of texts that I call “local court drama” – playtexts that were presented to the emperor from across various regions\, produced on occasions ranging from the celebration of imperial birthdays to welcoming the sovereign on tours. We will look at the textual problems and the generic labels applied\, literary models invoked\, and identities represented in the process.  \n\n\n\nTian Yuan Tan 陳靝沅 is the Shaw Professor of Chinese at the University of Oxford and a Professorial Fellow of University College. His main areas of research include Chinese literary history and historiography\, text and performance\, and cross-cultural literary interactions. He is currently working on “Linking the Textual Worlds of Chinese Court Theater\, ca. 1600-1800” (TEXTCOURT)\, a research project funded by the European Research Council.   \n\n\n\nThis event takes place in person and via Zoom. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/china-humanities-seminar-writing-and-reading-local-court-drama-in-late-imperial-china-texts-genres-and-identities/
LOCATION:Common Room\, 2 Divinity Ave.\, 2 Divinity Ave.\, Cambridge\, Massachusetts\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:China Humanities Seminar
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/rafik-wahba-Dw7k47LynmI-unsplash-scaled.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20220418T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20220418T184500
DTSTAMP:20260513T094025
CREATED:20220131T150352Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20220707T204153Z
UID:11347-1650301200-1650307500@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:China Humanities Seminar featuring Ronald Egan - Su Shi Beyond Poetry: The Invention of a New Kind of Informal Prose
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Ronald Egan\, Stanford University \nSu Shi 蘇軾 (1037-1101) is remembered first as a poet in various forms (shi 詩\, ci 詞\, and fu 賦) and only then as a prose stylist. Even among his prose writings Su Shi is remembered primarily\, to judge from modern selections of his works\, for his output in the traditional literary prose genres (ji 記“record\,” xu 序 “preface\,” lun 論 “essay\,” etc.). Almost completely overlooked in this hierarchy of forms is his achievement in the less prestigious prose genres\, such as the informal letter (chidu 尺牘)\, colophon (tiba 題跋)\, accounts of outings (youxing 游行)\, and miscellaneous records (zaji 雜記). This talk looks at his writing in these forms\, calling attention to its striking quantity\, the porousness of genre distinctions within it\, and Su’s innovative use of this writing for kinds of expression that would not go easily into poetry. Also broached is the chronology of Su’s turn to these “lesser” forms and its connection to his periods of exile.
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/china-humanities-seminar-featuring-ronald-egan-su-shi-beyond-poetry-the-invention-of-a-new-kind-of-informal-prose/
CATEGORIES:China Humanities Seminar
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END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20220405T130000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20220405T144500
DTSTAMP:20260513T094025
CREATED:20220131T150202Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20220707T204155Z
UID:11346-1649163600-1649169900@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:China Humanities Seminar featuring Yuri Pines - The Great Unity (da yitong 大一統) Ideal: The Key to China's Imperial Longevity?
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Yuri Pines\, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem \nOne of the most notable features of imperial China is the exceptional durability of the imperial political system. Having been formed in the aftermath of Qin 秦 unification (221 BCE)\, this system lasted intact for 2132 years\, until the abdication of the child emperor Puyi 溥儀 on February 12\, 1912. For sure\, the empire was not indestructible —to the contrary\, it underwent manifold crises\, including longer or shorter periods of political disintegration. Yet\, remarkably\, the unified empire was repeatedly resurrected at the very least in “China proper” (roughly comparable to the territory under the control of the founding Qin dynasty). Such repeated resurrections of a huge territorial entity spanning more than twenty centuries are not attested to elsewhere in world history.In my talk I want to argue that the key to understanding the reasons for the imperial resurrections lies within the realm of ideology and the dominant political culture. The idea that peace and stability in “All-under-Heaven” is attainable only in a unitary state ruled by a single omnipotent monarch was formed in the centuries preceding the Qin unification\, at the apex of political fragmentation of the Warring States period (Zhanguo 戰國\, 453-221 BCE). Having become the common desideratum of the competing “Hundred Schools of Thought\,” the ideal of “Great Unity” remained fundamental to Chinese political culture for millennia to come. By denying legitimacy to any but unifying regimes\, this ideal facilitated common quest for reunification during the periods of fragmentation. The notion that “Stability is in Unity” became China’s foremost self-fulfilling prophecy.
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/china-humanities-seminar-featuring-yuri-pines/
CATEGORIES:China Humanities Seminar
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END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20220322T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20220322T180000
DTSTAMP:20260513T094025
CREATED:20220131T150014Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20220420T005707Z
UID:24538-1647964800-1647972000@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:China Humanities Seminar featuring Yiqun Zhou - A Book for Hard Times: Wu Mi and Dream of the Red Chamber
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Yiqun Zhou\, Stanford University \nThis talk examines the role that Dream of the Red Chamber played in the life and work of Wu Mi 吳宓 (1894-1978)\, a pioneer in the study of Comparative Literature in China and a cultural conservative known for his staunch resistance to the prevailing New Culture Movement. Long condemned to infamy and oblivion because his ideological positions were at odds with the mainstream\, Wu has seen a comeback in the past two or three decades.\nIn opposition to the interpretations in vogue in the 1910s-1920s\, which treated Dream either as the author’s autobiography or as a roman à clef about Qing politics\, Wu advocated an approach that was literary and comparative. From 1942 to 1949\, during the Sino-Japanese War and the subsequent civil war\, Wu’s public lectures on Dream drew large crowds and became local sensations. In the remaining years of Wu’s life\, especially during the Cultural Revolution\, he constantly turned to Dream for emotional support and spiritual consolation. By looking at how reading\, studying\, and lecturing on Dream were bound up with the quests\, trials\, and tribulations in Wu’s Quixotic career\, this talk tackles questions about the relationship between literature and politics\, the relevance of classics in modern times and to the general public\, and the use of comparison in the study of traditional Chinese literature.\n \nPresented via Zoom\nRegister at: https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJEuduyprj8rGdNrb_9TYuSjN09QXjAQ-laK
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/china-humanities-seminar-featuring-yiqun-zhou-a-book-for-hard-times-wu-mi-and-dream-of-the-red-chamber/
CATEGORIES:China Humanities Seminar
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END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20220307T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20220307T190000
DTSTAMP:20260513T094025
CREATED:20220131T144401Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20220302T173102Z
UID:11344-1646672400-1646679600@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:China Humanities Seminar featuring David Mozina - Ritual and Relationship in Daoist Practice
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: David Mozina\, Author\, Knotting the Banner \n\n \nMore information coming soon!
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/china-humanities-seminar-featuring-david-mozina-ritual-and-relationship-in-daoist-practice/
CATEGORIES:China Humanities Seminar
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20220228T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20220228T190000
DTSTAMP:20260513T094025
CREATED:20220131T144142Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20220131T144142Z
UID:11343-1646067600-1646074800@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:China Humanities Seminar featuring Yuhang Li - Engineering Religious Bliss at the Qing Court: Jile shijie in the Beihai Park
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Yuhang Li\, University of Wisconsin-Madison\n \nIn 1770\, with the purpose of presenting an unusual surprising gift to his mother Empress Dowager Chongqing (1692-1777) for her eightieth birthday\, Emperor Qianlong (1711-1799) ordered the imperial architectural department to construct a Buddhist compound named jile shijie or blissful land on the northern shore of imperial Beihai Park next to the Forbidden City. Inside of the main hall\, instead of conventional Buddhist icons staged on the lotus pedestals\, an innovative three-dimensional clay mountain site scenery adorned with various deities from the Pure Land occupies the interior space. Jile shijie\, a synonym for the Western Paradise and Pure Land\, has been consistently visualized and contemplated since early medieval China. But the jile shijie built for Empress Dowager Chongqing is a standalone case which creates the experience of religious joy through a site scenery. The Pure Land is usually experienced as a future connected to death\, which one literally cannot experience as present.  However\, Qianlong’s filial gift allows his mother to feel the required affect in this world\, by juxtaposing transcendence and immanence.  The absolute future of the Pure Land\, a future that one experiences only after one has no more future on earth\, becomes present at least in part\, in a man-made small-scale western paradise. In this paper\, I will discuss the surviving architecture\, sculptural mountain preserved in old photographs\, imperial documents on the design process\, and Qianlong’s own writings on the given subject. Through unpacking the layers of this site\, I will demonstrate how a liminal temporality of religious joy is materialized.\n\nPresented via Zoom\nRegister at: https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJItceysrD4pHNV5JMpAvPFyIiRrTG8AWRxb
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/china-humanities-seminar-featuring-yuhang-li-engineering-religious-bliss-at-the-qing-court-jile-shijie-in-the-beihai-park/
CATEGORIES:China Humanities Seminar
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20211115T200000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20211115T213000
DTSTAMP:20260513T094025
CREATED:20210907T191052Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20210907T191052Z
UID:11004-1637006400-1637011800@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:China Humanities Seminar Featuring Suyoung Son - Publisher at Work: Yu Xiangdou’s Images and Visualizing Intellectual Labor
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Suyoung Son\, Associate Professor\, Cornell University \nHow could intangible\, tacit intellectual labor be legible\, acknowledged\, and compensated? The relationship between authorship and authorial property was hotly debated in late imperial China when a flurry of fakes\, forgeries\, and counterfeits abounded in the commercial book market. My talk will use examples from Yu Xiangdou (ca. 1560-1637)\, one of the most successful commercial publishers in Jianyang\, to discuss how he claimed the hitherto invisible and therefore uncredited intellectual endeavor of making the books. Away from the prevailing conception that the images inserted in his printed books are portraits of Yu Xiangdou himself\, I will approach his images in terms of the highly conventionalized image-signs and argue that his images serve as a liminal link between incorporeal authorship and material proprietorship. \nPresented via Zoom\nRegister at: https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJYpcOyuqTItH9XHfGGHtpzj0f6bGEsaGjG0
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/china-humanities-seminar-featuring-suyoung-son-materializing-authorship-in-early-modern-literary-marketplace/
CATEGORIES:China Humanities Seminar
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20211025T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20211025T173000
DTSTAMP:20260513T094025
CREATED:20210907T190859Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20210907T190859Z
UID:11003-1635177600-1635183000@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:China Humanities Seminar Featuring Scott Pearce - Looking Behind the Text: The Case of Northern Wei’s ‘Yuan Pi’
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Scott Pearce\, Western Washington University \nAll textual traditions are based on their own particular sets of assumptions and preoccupations. This was the case of the Chinese classical tradition as well\, which having taken full shape under the Han empire\, continued to be used as the only available language of written record by the very different regimes that controlled the Yellow River plains after Han collapse. One of these was Northern Wei (386-534)\, a new kind of empire in East Asia\, of Inner Asian origin\, whose leadership for generations continued to speak an Inner Asian language and conceptualized the world in terms apparently quite different from those embedded in the Literary Chinese that gives the only descriptions we have of these people and their actions. Here we use the case of a royal kinsman called in the text “Yuan Pi 元丕” (422-503) to examine various ways in which we might attempt to look behind (or through\, or under) received text to get a glimpse at least of the actual man. \nPresented via Zoom\nRegister at: https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJIoduGupzMuG9zxpckd860pztJ_rzIMCxse
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/china-humanities-seminar-featuring-scott-pearce-looking-behind-the-text-the-case-of-northern-weis-yuan-pi/
CATEGORIES:China Humanities Seminar
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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20211004T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20211004T173000
DTSTAMP:20260513T094025
CREATED:20210907T190704Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20210907T190704Z
UID:11001-1633363200-1633368600@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:China Humanities Seminar Featuring Stephanie Balkwill - Another Cakravartin Ruler?: Feminist History and the History of Buddhism in Early Medieval China
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Stephanie Balkwill\, Assistant Professor\, Buddhist Studies\, UCLA \nNorthern Wei 北魏 (386–534 CE) Empress Dowager Ling 靈 (d. 529) is commonly regarded as the last independent ruler of her dynasty\, which descended into terminal internecine war during her regency. As a ruler\, she inherited a deeply divided state. The move of the capital from Pingcheng to Luoyang in 494 created severe economic alienation for the northern peoples who had traditionally supported the rise of the dynasty\, just as it made them cultural outsiders to elite politics in the new capital. Although the Empress Dowager exacerbated such geographic and ethnic tensions in her time\, what is less known about her is that she also shaped Buddhist modalities of statecraft to legitimate her reign and\, seemingly\, attempt to manage her difficult empire. In this talk\, I will analyze the Empress Dowager’s program of state Buddhism and argue that like her famous contemporary in the South\, Emperor Wu 武 (r. 502–549) of the Liang 梁 (502–557)\, she\, too\, positioned herself as a universal Buddhist monarch in medieval China. In so doing\, I engage the question of how our understanding of Buddhist history changes when we put women into it and I propose a series of new questions\, which\, based in the study of women\, serve to elevate our understanding of the ways in which Buddhism became a dominant social force in early medieval China. \nPresented via Zoom\nRegistration Required\nRegister at: https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJYuc-6vqjkjE9yzodSy0HtBA_edh2R_Xdx3
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/china-humanities-seminar-featuring-stephanie-balkwill-another-cakravartin-ruler-feminist-history-and-the-history-of-buddhism-in-early-medieval-china/
CATEGORIES:China Humanities Seminar
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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20210413T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20210413T180000
DTSTAMP:20260513T094025
CREATED:20210126T161004Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20210126T161004Z
UID:10314-1618329600-1618336800@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:China Humanities Seminar featuring Wu Hung - Unearthing Wu Daozi (c. 686 – c. 760)
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Wu Hung\, University of Chicago \nWorshipped by later folk artists as the God of Painting\, Wu Daozi (c. 686 – c. 760) was also praised by Tang art historian Zhang Yanyuan as someone who “did not look back and will have no successors.” But alas this Sage of Painting (Hua Sheng) left no work to us (imagine if we could only read about Leonardo da Vinci or Michelangelo\, or know Du Fu and Li Bo only by reputation). Can archaeology remedy this unfortunate situation as it has done for so many other fields from classical philosophy to ancient science? This talk suggests that a set of newly discovered imperial tomb murals (so new that they are still being conserved in a museum lab) may allow us to approach Wu’s style more closely than ever before\, and also leads us to problematize the concept of authorship in Tang painting. \nRegister at: https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJYrf–opjsqEtMtPaFa8anuUbAYGJ7Vm_vv
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/china-humanities-seminar-featuring-wu-hung-unearthing-wu-daozi-landscape-murals-in-empress-zhenshuns-tomb-738-ce/
CATEGORIES:China Humanities Seminar,Events of Interest
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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20210309T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20210309T180000
DTSTAMP:20260513T094025
CREATED:20210126T160745Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20210126T160745Z
UID:10313-1615305600-1615312800@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:China Humanities Seminar featuring Paula Varsano - Troubled Hearts and Worried Minds: Knowing the Subjects of the "Airs of the States”
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Paula Varsano\, University of California\, Berkeley \nIn a moment when digital humanities\, distant reading\, manuscript studies\, and a variety of historical and political lenses invite us to look at literature as a manifestation of larger and\, sometimes\, impersonal cultural forces\, this talk takes up a different constellation of questions:  how does one recognize and define the presumed poetic subject in early Chinese poetry\, and how does it function as an object of understanding\, as an entity whose voice we continue to seem to hear\, whose words we endlessly examine? This talk will home in on the nascent lyric subject already evident in the “Airs of the States” of the Book of Odes\, or Shijing. Specifically\, it will explore how particular figural devices create meaning primarily through indeterminacy\, enriching the seemingly easy legibility of the archetypal lovelorn maiden\, the wandering soldier\, or the misunderstood friend with the hidden depths of a three-dimensional subject. \nPaula Varsano\, Professor of Chinese Literature at the University of California\, Berkeley\, specializes in classical poetry and poetics from the third through the eleventh centuries\, with particular interest in literature and subjectivity\, the evolution of spatial representation in poetry\, and the history and poetics of traditional literary criticism. Among her publications are: Tracking the Banished Immortal: The Poetry of Li Bo and its Critical Reception (Hawaii\, 2003) and The Rhetoric of Hiddenness in Traditional Chinese Culture (SUNY\, 2016). She is currently completing Knowing and Being Known: The Lyric Subject in Traditional Chinese Poetry and Poetics. \nPresented via Zoom\nRegistration Required\nRegister at: https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJUof-iqrDkrEtH9z_-tgweek_mGAX1bWlYw
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/china-humanities-seminar-featuring-paula-varsano-troubled-hearts-and-worried-minds-knowing-the-subjects-of-the-airs-of-the-states/
CATEGORIES:China Humanities Seminar,Events of Interest
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20210223T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20210223T180000
DTSTAMP:20260513T094025
CREATED:20210126T160440Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20210126T160440Z
UID:10312-1614096000-1614103200@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:China Humanities Seminar Featuring Tina Lu - The Politics of Li Yu’s Xianqing ouji (Casual Expressions)
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Tina Lu\, Colonel John Trumbull Professor of East Asian Languages and Literatures\, Yale University \nWhen it comes to an understanding of the politics of literature and literary production\, our field is still largely dominated by Craig Clunas’ framework (itself largely adapted from Bourdieu). I am interested in considering the politics of Li Yu’s Xianqing ouji 閒情偶寄 (1671) not simply as a means for its author to climb up a social hierarchy but as a much more expansive political imagining. Many of the collection’s essays treat what are obviously political topics (for example\, behavior appropriate to people of different social standing)\, but I will argue that their form and language also demand consideration as political acts. \nPlease note that Professor Lu’s talk will be recorded and archived on the MHC and EALC websites. If you do not feel comfortable being recorded\, please disable your video. The Q&A session will not be recorded. \nThis event is generously sponsored by the Mahindra Humanities Center and the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations\, Harvard University. \nPresented via Zoom\nRegistration Required\nRegister at: https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMtc-iopzwoG9KcANoTFgoQondjKok6oHAY
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/china-humanities-seminar-featuring-tina-lu-the-politics-of-li-yus-xianqing-ouji-casual-expressions/
CATEGORIES:China Humanities Seminar,Events of Interest
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20200224T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20200224T180000
DTSTAMP:20260513T094025
CREATED:20200128T155606Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200128T155606Z
UID:9071-1582560000-1582567200@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Zvi Ben-Dor Benite - "The 18th Brumaire of Yuan Shikai\," By Mao Zedong: History\, Classical Commentary\, and Politics.
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Zvi Ben-Dor Benite\, New York University \nTaking a small comment by the young Mao Zedong in his “Classroom Notes” as its point of departure\, this talk revisits the very early days after the fall of the last dynasty. It ties them to events in post-revolutionary France and the late Han period. It ends and begins with a comment on the relationship between Mao Zedong Thought\, Mao Studies\, and Chinese History. \nZvi Ben-Dor Benite teaches in the Department of History and the Department of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University. He studied pre-modern and modern Chinese History in Jerusalem\, in China\, and later at UCLA. His research centers on the interaction between religions in world history and cultural and intellectual exchanges across vast space and deep time. He is the author of The Dao of Muhammad: A Cultural History of Muslims in Late Imperial China (Harvard\, 2005); The Ten Lost Tribes: A World History (Oxford\, 2009); and co-editor and translator of Modern Middle Eastern Jewish Thought: Writings on Identity\, Culture\, and Politics (Brandeis\, 2013); and an edited volume on Sovereignty (Columbia University Press 2017).
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/zvi-ben-dor-benite-the-18th-brumaire-of-yuan-shikai-by-mao-zedong-history-classical-commentary-and-politics/
CATEGORIES:China Humanities Seminar
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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20200127T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20200127T180000
DTSTAMP:20260513T094025
CREATED:20200103T151333Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200103T151333Z
UID:9009-1580140800-1580148000@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Paize Keulemans - Acoustic Immersion and Iconic Extraction in Three Kingdoms History\, Fiction\, and Videogames
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Paize Keulemans\, Princeton University \nWhat are the ludic attractions of a fifteenth-century novel?  What role is played by historical narrative in a twenty-first-century game?  How is a character developed in text and in pixels\, in words\, painting\, or on a (computer) screen?  And how is the noise and confusion of a third-century battle digitally reproduced in the songs programmed for Sony’s Playstation? This talk investigates a classical tale of ancient China\, The Three Kingdoms\, tracing its transformation through time\, across nations\, and\, most notably\, across different media platforms\, from history to poetry and from novel to video-game. The aim decidedly is NOT to simply to fix a classic\, textual “origin” to contemporary media\, but rather to bring 21st-century game and 16th-century text\, ancient history and contemporary play together in a creative tension.  To do so\, we will focus on two complementary aspects of literary and ludic interaction applicable both to premodern text and contemporary game: acoustic immersion and iconic extraction.
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/paize-keulemans-acoustic-immersion-and-iconic-extraction-in-three-kingdoms-history-fiction-and-videogames/
CATEGORIES:China Humanities Seminar
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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20191118T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20191118T180000
DTSTAMP:20260513T094025
CREATED:20191024T175942Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20191024T175942Z
UID:8822-1574092800-1574100000@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Zeb Raft - ‘Echoes’ in the Shishuo Xinyu: Repetition and its Significance in Early Medieval China
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Zeb Raft\, Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy\, Academia Sinica \nThe Shishuo xinyu\, the fifth-century collection of anecdotes\, is full of echoes.  Stories can be repeated\, in somewhat different form.  Individual entries may juxtapose two accounts that are different\, yet similar in certain respects.  Common motifs figure prominently.  How should we interpret this “echo effect”?  This paper identifies some of the factors involved in the formation of echoes and considers different ways of explaining the phenomenon.  Approaches include the historical (seeking the source of an echo)\, the cultural (defining what an echo expresses)\, and the aesthetic (following the artful construction of an echo sequence).  But there should also be ways of addressing the echo more directly\, taking it not as the effect of something else but as a motive in its own right\, shaping both the culture of early medieval China and our perspective on that culture. \nZeb Raft is an Assistant Research Fellow at the Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy\, Academia Sinica.  His research area is China from the Eastern Han through the Tang dynasties (i.e.\, roughly\, the first millennium of the Common Era)\, with a focus on poetry and historiography in this period.  His main thematic interests include communication\, rhetoric\, textual criticism\, and translation.
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/zeb-raft-echoes-in-the-shishuo-xinyu-repetition-and-its-significance-in-early-medieval-china/
CATEGORIES:China Humanities Seminar
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20191104T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20191104T180000
DTSTAMP:20260513T094025
CREATED:20191016T131106Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20191016T131106Z
UID:8709-1572883200-1572890400@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:April Hughes — Apocalyptic Saviors\, Terrestrial Utopias\, and Imperial Authority: The Reign of Empress Wu Zetian (690-705CE)
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: April Hughes\, Boston University \nThis talk examines the association between Wu Zhao of Great Zhou (Empress Wu Zetian) and Maitreya Buddha in a commentary on the Scripture of the Great Cloud (Dayun jing 大雲經\, T. no. 387) presented to the throne in 690 just prior to her being declared emperor. The Commentary quotes from Attesting Illumination (Zhengmingjing證明經\, T. no. 2879)\, a non-canonical apocalyptic scripture in which Maitreya appears during the chaos of the apocalypse in order to fight demons and save the wholesome. This apocalyptic worldly savior Maitreya rules over his terrestrial utopia without a Wheel-Turning King—thus he is simultaneously a political ruler and religious teacher. I argue that by associating Wu Zhao with this particular depiction of Maitreya\, she can also be seen as embodying both roles.
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/april-hughes-apocalyptic-saviors-terrestrial-utopias-and-imperial-authority-the-reign-of-empress-wu-zetian-690-705ce/
CATEGORIES:China Humanities Seminar
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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20191007T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20191007T180000
DTSTAMP:20260513T094025
CREATED:20190903T153105Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190903T153105Z
UID:8585-1570464000-1570471200@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Christian de Pee - Losing the Way in the City: Cities and Intellectual Crisis in Eleventh-Century China
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Christian de Pee\, University of Michigan \nDuring the eleventh century\, literati endeavored for the first time to write the commercial streetscape. Literati of previous centuries had written the city in the past tense\, in tales of dissolute youth and in memoirs about capitals destroyed\, but had otherwise hidden urban streets behind a generic blur of dust and traffic. Literati in the eleventh century\, in contrast\, deemed the living streetscape a topic suitable for literary composition\, and they changed the topography of literary genres in order to make a place for the city in writing. As a new literary subject\, the urban streetscape afforded scope for original effects\, but literati also wrote the city for ideological reasons. On the written page\, they could set themselves apart—as individuals in the anonymous crowd\, as connoisseurs among spendthrift nobles—as they could not in the streets and markets of the dense metropolis. On the written page\, moreover\, they could conform the confusing movement of people\, goods\, and money to a moral economy of perfect circulation and equitable distribution. By the end of the eleventh century\, however\, both these ideological projects had failed. Literati found themselves encompassed by the relative values that they had tried to contain\, and debates about economic reform exposed the lack of objective criteria for the application of classical learning to practical policy. \nChristian de Pee is Associate Professor of History at the University of Michigan. He is the author of The Writing of Weddings in Middle-Period China: Text and Ritual Practice in the Eighth through Fourteenth Centuries (2007) and co-editor of Senses of the City: Perceptions of Hangzhou and the Southern Song\, 1127-1279 (2017). He is currently a fellow at the International Institute for Asian Studies\, where he is completing an intellectual history of the city from 800 to 1100 CE and preparing to write a general history of eleventh-century China.
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/christian-de-pee-losing-the-way-in-the-city-cities-and-intellectual-crisis-in-eleventh-century-china/
CATEGORIES:China Humanities Seminar
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20190930T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20190930T180000
DTSTAMP:20260513T094025
CREATED:20190820T152027Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190820T152027Z
UID:8503-1569859200-1569866400@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Anthony DeBlasi - The Anomaly of Tang Zhongzong 唐中宗 (r. 684 and 705-710) and the Dynamics of Tang History
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Anthony DeBlasi\, University at Albany\, State University of New York \nMost accounts of the life and reigns of the Tang emperor Zhongzong have portrayed him as an addendum to the careers of his more illustrious relatives\, his mother the Empress Wu Zetian 武則天 and his nephew Tang Xuanzong 唐玄宗\, seeing him as merely an emblem of a toxic court culture that characterized the turn of the eighth century. On closer examination\, however\, his career and his legacy tell us much about the long-term dynamics underlying Tang history and the way government bureaucrats made sense of that history. This talk analyzes court initiatives during Zhongzong’s time on the throne as well as posthumous debates about his historical significance to highlight these dynamics.
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/china-humanities-seminar-3/
CATEGORIES:China Humanities Seminar
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