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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20240401T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20240401T173000
DTSTAMP:20260716T032311
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:20240422T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20240422T173000
DTSTAMP:20260716T032311
CREATED:20240319T155621Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20240319T155623Z
UID:35871-1713801600-1713807000@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:China Humanities Seminar featuring Franciscus Verellen - The General and His Scribe: The Fall of the Tang in Contemporary Sources
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Franciscus Verellen\, Professor Emeritus\, École française d’Extrême-Orient (EFEO); Vice President\, Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres\, Institut de France \n\n\n\nThe understudied end phase of the Tang dynasty (618–907) is mainly known through official accounts dating to the tenth and eleventh centuries. This lecture examines the process that led to the empire’s breakup from the vantage point of a key protagonist\, the general and military governor Gao Pian 高駢 (821–887)\, whose trajectory provides a step-by-step record of the empire’s military\, fiscal\, and administrative unraveling. \n\n\n\nSoldier\, statesman\, engineer\, and poet\, Gao Pian was one of the most intriguing characters to shape events in ninth-century China. He left a deeply conflicted legacy. Challenging the portrait Song official historians painted of him as an “insubordinate minister” and Daoist zealot\, contemporary sources show the general as a loyal and effective defender of the empire. \n\n\n\nThe talk introduces a neglected trove of court\, military\, and administrative communications that Gao’s Korean secretary Ch’oe Ch’iwŏn 崔致遠 (855–949) redacted on his behalf. After returning to Silla in 885\, Ch’oe compiled these documents into an extensive collection titled Tilling with my Brush at Cassia Grove 桂苑筆耕集\, an archive that throws a compelling light on Gao Pian’s governance and the declining years of the Tang. \n\n\n\n          After doctoral studies at Oxford and Paris\, Franciscus Verellen taught Chinese religions and humanities at the École pratique des Hautes Études and Columbia University. He joined the EFEO in 1991. Alternating between its Headquarters in Paris and affiliate centers in East Asia\, he served as the School’s director from 2004 to 2014 and occupied the chair in History of Daoism from 2002 to 2021. Verellen held visiting appointments at Princeton\, Berkeley\, and Hong Kong. He is a former Edwin C. and Elizabeth A. Whitehead Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study\, Princeton\, Fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin\, and Life Member of Clare Hall\, University of Cambridge. \n\n\n\nFranciscus Verellen’s book manuscript Famed and Defamed: General Gao Pian and the Fall of the Tang is currently under review at Cambridge University Press. Earlier publications include Imperiled Destinies (Harvard University Asia Center\, 2019)\, The Taoist Canon (edited with Kristofer Schipper\, Chicago University Press\, 2004)\, and Du Guangting (Collège de France\, 1989). \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/china-humanities-seminar-featuring-franciscus-verellen-the-general-and-his-scribe-the-fall-of-the-tang-in-contemporary-sources/
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/Verellen.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20240930T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20240930T180000
DTSTAMP:20260716T032311
CREATED:20240823T164433Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20240916T162850Z
UID:37201-1727712000-1727719200@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:China Humanities Seminar featuring Matthew Wild — When was Qing Poetry? Huang Jingren and the Ancient Song
DESCRIPTION:**NOTE UPDATED DATE***Speaker: Matthew Wild\, Preceptor in Literary Sinitic\, Harvard University. \n\n\n\nThis talk examines the poetics of time at the height of Qing empire. It offers a new approach to the work of the Qing poet Huang Jingren (1749–1783) against his subsequent appropriation by early twentieth-century writers who claimed Huang as a proleptic modern Chinese author born to the wrong era. The central focus of discussion will be an overlooked set of ritual songs that Huang Jingren presented to the Qianlong emperor in 1776. Composed in an ancient form called the “Nao song\,” these hymns proclaim the glories of the Second Jinchuan War (1771–1776)\, the longest and most intensive of the famous Qianlong military campaigns. I offer close readings to explore how Huang’s Nao songs exalt the emperor’s Jinchuan conquest by inventing new archaic language\, transcribing a quintessentially eighteenth-century event—involving elite Manchu warriors\, Jesuit military advisors\, advanced ballistics technology\, and Tibetan Buddhist tantric rituals—into the sublime symbolic register of remotest time. By taking seriously Huang’s investment in antiquity as a mode for historicizing his present\, this talk aims to open a new horizon for the study of Qing literature. \n\n\n\nMatthew Wild is Preceptor in Literary Sinitic at Harvard University. His research focuses on classical poetry in Chinese and Literary Sinitic cultures\, with special interests in performance\, print culture\, traditional literary criticism\, and the history of textual scholarship. He is preparing a book manuscript titled Singing in Time: Philology and the Lyric Imagination in Eighteenth-Century China\, which explores the role of ancient-style poetry within the mid-Qing archaeological and philological movement known as kaozheng\, or “evidential scholarship.” He received his BA in Chinese from Reed College and his PhD in East Asian Languages and Cultures from the University of California\, Berkeley. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/china-humanities-seminar-featuring-matthew-wild-when-was-qing-poetry-huang-jingren-and-the-ancient-song/
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/2024/08/wild.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20241021T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20241021T180000
DTSTAMP:20260716T032311
CREATED:20240819T142435Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20241007T155848Z
UID:37168-1729526400-1729533600@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:China Humanities Seminar featuring Shoufu Yin — The China that Could Have Been: Counterfactual Imagination and Political Thought\, 1313-1621
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Shoufu Yin\, Assistant Professor of History\, University of British Columbia \n\n\n\nWhat could China—or the entire world—have been? Starting in the fourteenth century\, hundreds of thousands of individuals in present-day China\, Korea\, and Vietnam were ruminating on this question in their own ways. They began by placing themselves in a moment in Chinese history\, composing documents from the perspectives of the historical figures in question. In this process\, they argued that these figures could have acted differently and that China could have been a different place—even though actual history unfolded otherwise. This talk traces how this form of counterfactualism gained popularity in East Asia through a shared curriculum and explores how such mediated political imaginations transformed the broader intellectual landscape. Specifically\, using sources in Mongolian\, Persian\, and other languages\, I contend that the Inner Asian tradition played a critical role in shaping the educational curriculum of the Sinitic sphere. Combining data visualization and close reading\, I turn to long-forgotten individuals in Seoul\, Suzhou\, and other places. Through their counterfactual ventures\, as we shall see\, these historical thinkers theorized what could and should have been possible for each individual and opened up new possibilities for being in a political society. \n\n\n\nShoufu Yin is an assistant professor of history at the University of British Columbia. His expertise lies in the intellectual and political cultures of China and Inner Asia from the eleventh to the seventeenth centuries. Delving into sources in Chinese\, Manchu\, Mongolian\, Persian\, and various European languages\, he endeavors to show how previously unknown and marginalized thinkers had contributed to important themes in theory and philosophy. His first book manuscript\, The China That Could Have Been: Rhetoric and Political Thought\, 1100–1600 (currently under review)\, contends that the everyday political imagination of countless individuals lays the foundation of modern political thought. His next book\, titled 1156: China’s Referendum\, will trace how emic concepts and indigenous experiences from China can help us reframe and rewrite the global history of democratization. He has also been conducting research for another major project that rethinks global intellectual transformations through the lens of Manchu- and Mongolian-language historiographies of the seventeenth century. His recent articles have appeared in the American Political Science Review\, Journal of the History of Ideas\, History of Political Thought\, Journal of Asian Studies\, T’oung Pao\, Journal of Chinese History\, Korean Studies\, and other platforms. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/china-humanities-seminar-featuring-yin-shoufu/
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/2024/08/Shoufu-Yin.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20241118T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20241118T180000
DTSTAMP:20260716T032311
CREATED:20240909T180141Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20240909T180142Z
UID:37293-1731945600-1731952800@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:China Humanities Seminar featuring Ya Zuo — Fighting Feelings with Feelings: The Quanzhen Daoist Ordering of Emotional Life
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Ya Zuo\, Associate Professor of History\, University of California\, Santa Barbara \n\n\n\nQuanzhen Daoism wielded a profound influence across eastern Eurasia\, shaping the intellectual landscape of the Jurchen Jin dynasty (1115–1234) and leaving a lasting impact on the Mongol Yuan empire (1279–1368). In this talk\, I delve into the focus on emotions in Quanzhen philosophy. The religion emphasized the qing (emotions/feelings) as a central concept and assigned its clergy with an active role in emotional stewardship. Highly critical of conventional feelings and desires\, Quanzhen Daoists sought to convert followers to a new affective regime known as the “feelings of the dao.” \n\n\n\nYa Zuo is an associate professor of History at University of California\, Santa Barbara. She is a cultural historian of middle and late imperial China\, and the author of Shen Gua’s Empiricism (Harvard Asia Center\, 2018)\, with the Chinese translation published by Zhonghua Book Company in 2024. Driven by interdisciplinary interests\, she has written a range of articles on topics such as theory of knowledge\, sensory history\, medical history\, book history\, and the history of emotions. She is currently working on a book on crying and tears in middle-period China.  \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/china-humanities-seminar-featuring-ya-zuo-fighting-feelings-with-feelings-the-quanzhen-daoist-ordering-of-emotional-life/
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/2024/09/ya-zuo.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20250303T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20250303T180000
DTSTAMP:20260716T032311
CREATED:20250220T173630Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250220T173631Z
UID:39506-1741017600-1741024800@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:China Humanities Seminar featuring Robert Ashmore — Song and its Powers: Revisiting the Question of the “Musicality” of the Song-poems of Li He 李賀 (790–816)
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Robert Ashmore\, Associate Professor and Chair\, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures\, University of California Berkeley \n\n\n\nLi He’s own writings\, as well as comments from his contemporaries and later critics\, persistently note the centrality of song and musical traditions to his distinctiveness as a poet—from early on\, his works themselves were often referred to not simply as shi 詩 or “poems\,” but rather as geshi 歌詩—i.e.\, “song-poems.” Traditions linking Li He and his works to contemporary Tang musical repertoires\, and particularly to imperial musical institutions\, emerged early on in his reception history\, and to a significant degree shaped his image in readers’ minds. These early accounts\, however\, prove on closer scrutiny either inconclusive or positively refutable. This essay will attempt an alternative (though perhaps in the end complementary) approach to the question of Li He’s “musicality.” Rather than straining to substantiate concrete connections between Li He and contemporary musical performance\, this discussion will follow up on cues within Li He’s works to explore the imaginative spaces of song and musicality as these would have appeared to a young aspirant to imperial service at the turn of the ninth century. In this specifically medieval world of acoustics\, musicality\, and song\, it is precisely those features that most diverge from our own tacit assumptions that may offer the most tangible critical payoff for our reading and appreciation of this seemingly anomalous and enigmatic writer. \n\n\n\nRobert Ashmore is Associate Professor and Chair in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures\, UC Berkeley. His research focuses on the literary and scholarly traditions of medieval China from the third to tenth centuries\, with particular emphasis on traditions of interpretation and hermeneutics. He is author of The Transport of Reading: Text and Understanding in the World of Tao Qian (353–427) and The Poetry of Li He. He is currently completing work on a book titled Bodies of Interpretation: Performance and Hermeneutics in Chinese Classicist Traditions. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/china-humanities-seminar-featuring-robert-ashmore-song-and-its-powers-revisiting-the-question-of-the-musicality-of-the-song-poems-of-li-he-%e6%9d%8e%e8%b3%80-790/
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/2025/02/CHS33.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20250414T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20250414T180000
DTSTAMP:20260716T032311
CREATED:20250220T174124Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250220T174126Z
UID:39509-1744646400-1744653600@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:China Humanities Seminar featuring Tamara Chin — How to Do Things with Loanwords: Premodern Sino-Xenic Language Contact in Modern Philology\, Linguistics\, and Politics\, 1870-1970
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Tamara Chin\, Associate Professor of Comparative Literature\, Brown University \n\n\n\nThe study of ancient language contact traditionally lacked prestige in both Confucian classical studies and European philology.  This changed somewhat in the early twentieth century.  The discovery of multilingual manuscript archives in and around Dunhuang coincided with the internationalization of Western-style linguistics\, prompting both scientific and political interest in the linguistic dimension of cross-cultural contact.  This talk explores where\, when\, and why during the 1870-1970 period spanning the late Qing through the Cold War\, Sino-xenic language contact became both a dedicated object of academic inquiry and a political symbol of internationalist ideals.  I ask what did the new units of analysis—such loanwords taken from foreign languages and transcriptions of sounds across writing systems—do to the mainstream study of national traditions?  To better understand how we study ancient language contact now\, I return to the role of loanwords within earlier debates about the disciplinary aims and methods of Dongfang xue\, Oriental Philology\, historical phonology\, and Area Studies. \n\n\n\nTamara Chin works on Han dynasty literature\, cross-cultural history and aesthetics\, and the modern reception of antiquity.  She is an associate professor of comparative literature at Brown University and the author of Savage Exchange: Han Imperialism\, Chinese Literary Style\, and the Economic Imagination (Harvard 2014).  The talk draws on her second book\, The Silk Road Idea: Ancient Contact in the Modern Human Sciences\, 1870-1970 (currently under review). \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/china-humanities-seminar-featuring-tamara-chin-how-to-do-things-with-loanwords-premodern-sino-xenic-language-contact-in-modern-philology-linguistics-and-politics-1870-1970/
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/2025/02/Tamara-Chin.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20250505T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20250505T180000
DTSTAMP:20260716T032311
CREATED:20250220T174552Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250418T142355Z
UID:39512-1746460800-1746468000@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:China Humanities Seminar featuring Robert Campany — Traditions of Exemplary Transcendents (Liexian zhuan 列仙傳): A Reading
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Robert Campany\, Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair in Humanities; Professor of Asian Studies\, Vanderbilt University \n\n\n\nLiexian zhuan\, plausibly attributed to the late Western Han scholiast and court official Liu Xiang 劉向 (79-8 BCE)\, is the earliest extant collection of anecdotes about individuals deemed to have transcended the limits of the human condition to become beings known as xian 仙. In this talk I will explore what it can tell us about the origins and early history of the quest for transcendence. What range of methods does it portray adepts as using to gain extraordinary longevity and other transhuman capabilities? How do its entries depict practitioners’ relations with other people\, with local communities\, and with the landscape? What does the text reveal about the sometimes strange workings of the hagiographic process? (For example\, why do the “wandering women” 游女 mentioned in the Shijing 詩經 poem “The Han is Broad” [“Han guang 漢廣\,” Mao #9] number among its transcendents?) To what extent does the text hold surprises when read against Ge Hong’s 葛洪 similar but much larger compilation made three centuries later? \n\n\n\nRob Campany is Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair in Humanities and Professor of Asian Studies at Vanderbilt University. He researches the history of religion in China from the late Warring States to the Tang. His most recent books include The Chinese Dreamscape\, 300 BCE – 800 CE (Harvard University Asia Center Publications\, 2020)\, winner of the Joseph Levenson Prize and the Médaille Stanislas Julien\, and Dreaming and Self-Cultivation in China\, 300 BCE – 800 CE (Harvard University Asia Center Publications\, 2023). \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/china-humanities-seminar-featuring-robert-campany-traditions-of-exemplary-transcendents-liexian-zhuan-%e5%88%97%e4%bb%99%e5%82%b3-a-reading/
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/2025/02/RObert-campany.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20250929T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20250929T180000
DTSTAMP:20260716T032311
CREATED:20250903T144616Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250903T144617Z
UID:41519-1759161600-1759168800@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:China Humanities Seminar featuring Zhuming Yao —The Early Chinese Lyric “I”: Between Poetics and Hermeneutics
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Zhuming Yao\, Assistant Professor of Chinese & Comparative Literature at Boston University \n\n\n\nMany poems in the Shijing 詩經 feature a lyric “I\,” a first-person voice speaking about intense emotions. Yet\, who those “Is” are has never been clear. After two millennia of commentarial writings\, we are no more certain than the first critics of the Shi about any of the “Is.” On the contrary\, a modern reader is confronted with a range of different readings\, each plausible on its own but none more reasoned than the others. This hermeneutical impasse\, I show in this talk\, results from an interpretive practice that inscribes meaning to\, rather than recovers the referent of\, the lyric “I.” And the inscription is made not through any serious historical or philological investigation but through free\, sometimes idiosyncratic\, imagination of the poetics of the Shi—how the poems are composed\, in what mode of speech\, and with what rhetorical devices. Such poetic claims disguised as hermeneutical solutions have roots in the “I” as a deictic subject position. It helps to generate a group of “type voices” that are inhabitable (and were indeed inhabited) by readers and writers alike. In the broader history of early lyric poetry\, these “type voices” were what became “lyric poets.” But no lyric poet in this early phase\, I also show\, managed to escape completely being a common type. \n\n\n\nZhuming Yao is Assistant Professor of Chinese & Comparative Literature at Boston University. He works on classical Chinese literature of the early and early imperial eras\, with a particular interest in poetics\, philology\, and manuscript culture. Zhuming’s current book project examines the literary significance of the oral word in early Chinese writings\, offering an account of how writing valorizes the oral form and\, in turn\, appropriates its discursive appeal. Before joining BU\, Zhuming taught at Swarthmore College (2023-24). \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/china-humanities-seminar-featuring-zhuming-yao-the-early-chinese-lyric-i-between-poetics-and-hermeneutics/
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/2025/09/chs929.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20251020T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20251020T180000
DTSTAMP:20260716T032311
CREATED:20250903T150808Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250903T150810Z
UID:41525-1760976000-1760983200@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:China Humanities Seminar featuring Lili Xia — Geocultural “Northernness” of Jurchen-Ruled China
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Lili Xia\,  Assistant Professor\, Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Cultures\, Barnard College. \n\n\n\nThe 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.” \n\n\n\nLili 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. \n\n\n\nXia 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. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/china-humanities-seminar-featuring-lili-xia-geocultural-northernness-of-jurchen-ruled-china/
LOCATION:Common Room\, 2 Divinity Ave.\, 2 Divinity Ave.\, Cambridge\, Massachusetts\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:China Humanities Seminar
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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20251103T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20251103T180000
DTSTAMP:20260716T032311
CREATED:20251020T183037Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20251020T183039Z
UID:42796-1762185600-1762192800@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:China Humanities Seminar featuring Matthias Richter — Early Chinese Texts Between Oral Instruction and Written Literature
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Matthias L. Richter\, Associate Professor of Chinese\, University of Colorado at Boulder \n\n\n\nAudiences in early China were probably more aware of technicalities in texts than we are today\, since they had first-hand experience of a predominantly oral textual culture and the management of cognitive load it required. Conventions of structuring texts rooted in this mode of communication must have carried over into the production of texts that were designed for reading. Later readers may not always have recognized such textual forms as intentional. This should give us reason to reconsider whether some features of texts that are commonly considered as accidents of transmission may have been intentional. \n\n\n\nMatthias L. Richter\, Associate Professor of Chinese\, University of Colorado at Boulder\, obtained a PhD in sinology from the University of Hamburg in 2000\, taught at several German universities and the University of Chicago before joining the faculty of CU Boulder in 2007. His research focuses on Warring States and Early Imperial politico-philosophical literature\, particularly questions of rhetoric and redactional strategies\, textual criticism\, the formational history of texts\, and the methodology of studying early Chinese manuscripts. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/china-humanities-seminar-featuring-matthias-richter-early-chinese-texts-between-oral-instruction-and-written-literature/
LOCATION:Common Room\, 2 Divinity Ave.\, 2 Divinity Ave.\, Cambridge\, Massachusetts\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:China Humanities Seminar
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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20260202T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20260202T180000
DTSTAMP:20260716T032311
CREATED:20260126T201700Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260126T201702Z
UID:44144-1770048000-1770055200@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:China Humanities Seminar featuring Nathan Vedal — The Art of (Tested) Translation: Manchu Exams in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Nathan Vedal\, Assistant Professor\, Department of East Asian Studies\, University of Toronto; Former Fairbank Center Graduate Student Associate \n\n\n\nThis talk\, introducing a forthcoming monograph (Translation\, Emulation\, and Manchu Literary Culture)\, will consider the institution of a civil service translation examination during the Qing dynasty\, as well as the Manchu translation program in the elite Hanlin Academy. The civil service translation exams\, administered for members of the Eight Banners\, required rigorous literary\, classical\, and linguistic training\, as well as composition of original essays in the Manchu language\, highlighting the critical role of Chinese models in the generation of Manchu literature. Some contemporaneous literati at the Hanlin Academy\, a training ground for officials and court scholars who passed the Chinese civil service exam at the highest level\, underwent a three-year program of Manchu study culminating in a final translation exam. Knowledge of Manchu gained at the Hanlin Academy is evident in the deployment of multilingual literary effects in Chinese compositions. Within Qing literary-intellectual culture\, the juxtaposition of Chinese and Manchu\, through acts of translation and direct imitation\, yielded a productive venue for literary creation and self-fashioning. \n\n\n\nNathan Vedal is an assistant professor in the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Toronto\, specializing in Chinese intellectual and cultural history. He received his undergraduate degree from the Curtis Institute of Music and his PhD in Chinese history from Harvard University. His first book\, The Culture of Language in Ming China: Sound\, Script\, and the Redefinition of Boundaries of Knowledge (Columbia University Press\, 2022)\, won the Morris D. Forkosch Prize from the Journal of the History of Ideas. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/china-humanities-seminar-featuring-nathan-vedal-the-art-of-tested-translation-manchu-exams-in-the-eighteenth-and-nineteenth-centuries/
LOCATION:Common Room\, 2 Divinity Ave.\, 2 Divinity Ave.\, Cambridge\, Massachusetts\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:China Humanities Seminar
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20260323T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20260323T180000
DTSTAMP:20260716T032311
CREATED:20260312T175411Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260312T175414Z
UID:44579-1774281600-1774288800@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:China Humanities Seminar featuring Rebecca Doran — Dress Regulation\, Dynastic Image-Building\, and Geopolitical Competition in Early Medieval China
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Rebecca Doran\, University of Miami \n\n\n\nThe various regimes that emerged during third through sixth centuries grappled from different perspectives with the establishment of dynastic dress regulations\, meant to promote hierarchical order at home and project legitimacy and strength abroad. This form of conveying authority was complicated by geopolitical developments\, including regime changes and tensions between competing regimes. Discussions and decisions regarding dress regulations were informed not only by scholarly understandings of ritual sartorial precedent\, but also by these contemporary sources of friction and identity-building. The talk examines several case studies demonstrating the interconnections during this period between dress regulation\, dynastic image-building\, and inter-dynastic rivalries. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVenue
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/china-humanities-seminar-featuring-rebecca-doran-dress-regulation-dynastic-image-building-and-geopolitical-competition-in-early-medieval-china/
LOCATION:Common Room\, 2 Divinity Ave.\, 2 Divinity Ave.\, Cambridge\, Massachusetts\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:China Humanities Seminar
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