China Humanities Seminar
Wei Shang – “The Story of the Stone” and the Visual Culture of the Manchu Court
Speaker: Wei Shang, Columbia University This talk addresses The Story of the Stone (otherwise known as Dream of the Red Chamber, Honglou meng 紅樓夢), authored by Cao Xueqin (ca. 1715--ca. 1763), with special focus on its recurrent theme as captured in Chapter 1: “Truth becomes fiction when fiction is true; real becomes not-real where the […]
Jon Felt -Postimperial Metageographies of Early Medieval China
Speaker: Jon Felt, Brigham Young University For a long time the imperial metageography has been the dominance spatial framework though which people have studied the history of China. This metageography exaggerates the unity and centrality of the imperial court in China and of China in the world—hence the popular idea of “the Middle Kingdom.” The […]
Anthony DeBlasi – The Anomaly of Tang Zhongzong 唐中宗 (r. 684 and 705-710) and the Dynamics of Tang History
Speaker: Anthony DeBlasi, University at Albany, State University of New York Most 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 […]
Christian de Pee – Losing the Way in the City: Cities and Intellectual Crisis in Eleventh-Century China
Speaker: Christian de Pee, University of Michigan During 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 […]
April Hughes — Apocalyptic Saviors, Terrestrial Utopias, and Imperial Authority: The Reign of Empress Wu Zetian (690-705CE)
Speaker: April Hughes, Boston University This 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 […]
Zeb Raft – ‘Echoes’ in the Shishuo Xinyu: Repetition and its Significance in Early Medieval China
Speaker: Zeb Raft, Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy, Academia Sinica The 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 […]
Paize Keulemans – Acoustic Immersion and Iconic Extraction in Three Kingdoms History, Fiction, and Videogames
Speaker: Paize Keulemans, Princeton University What 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 […]
Zvi Ben-Dor Benite – “The 18th Brumaire of Yuan Shikai,” By Mao Zedong: History, Classical Commentary, and Politics.
Speaker: Zvi Ben-Dor Benite, New York University Taking 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 […]
China Humanities Seminar Featuring Tina Lu – The Politics of Li Yu’s Xianqing ouji (Casual Expressions)
Speaker: Tina Lu, Colonel John Trumbull Professor of East Asian Languages and Literatures, Yale University When 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 […]
China Humanities Seminar featuring Paula Varsano – Troubled Hearts and Worried Minds: Knowing the Subjects of the “Airs of the States”
Speaker: Paula Varsano, University of California, Berkeley In a moment when digital humanities, distant reading, manuscript studies, and a variety of historical and political lenses invite us to look at […]
China Humanities Seminar featuring Wu Hung – Unearthing Wu Daozi (c. 686 – c. 760)
Speaker: Wu Hung, University of Chicago Worshipped by later folk artists as the God of Painting, Wu Daozi (c. 686 – c. 760) was also praised by Tang art historian […]
China Humanities Seminar Featuring Stephanie Balkwill – Another Cakravartin Ruler?: Feminist History and the History of Buddhism in Early Medieval China
Speaker: Stephanie Balkwill, Assistant Professor, Buddhist Studies, UCLA Northern 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 […]