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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20220926T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20220926T180000
DTSTAMP:20260603T125941
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
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20220418T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20220418T184500
DTSTAMP:20260603T125941
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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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20220405T130000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20220405T144500
DTSTAMP:20260603T125941
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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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20220322T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20220322T180000
DTSTAMP:20260603T125941
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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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20220307T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20220307T190000
DTSTAMP:20260603T125941
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:20260603T125941
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:20260603T125941
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:20260603T125941
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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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20211004T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20211004T173000
DTSTAMP:20260603T125941
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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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20210413T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20210413T180000
DTSTAMP:20260603T125941
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
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20210309T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20210309T180000
DTSTAMP:20260603T125941
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
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20210223T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20210223T180000
DTSTAMP:20260603T125941
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
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20200224T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20200224T180000
DTSTAMP:20260603T125941
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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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20200127T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20200127T180000
DTSTAMP:20260603T125941
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:20260603T125941
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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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20191104T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20191104T180000
DTSTAMP:20260603T125942
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:20260603T125942
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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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20190930T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20190930T180000
DTSTAMP:20260603T125942
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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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20190916T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20190916T180000
DTSTAMP:20260603T125942
CREATED:20190820T152206Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190820T152206Z
UID:8504-1568649600-1568656800@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Jon Felt -Postimperial Metageographies of Early Medieval China
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Jon Felt\,  Brigham Young University \nFor 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 foundational tenets of this imperial metageography were established in the Han dynasty (202 BCE–220 CE). But after the fragmentation of this political order\, literati examined alternative metageographies for making sense of their place in the world. It was at this time that the genre of geographical writing (diliji 地理記) first appeared. In this new body of texts\, literati articulated postimperial metageographies that challenged the concepts of the unity of China\, the human mastery of nature\, and the centrality of China in the world. These metageographies are interesting for making sense of a period disparaged as “The Age of Chaos” (220–589). But more importantly\, they provide alternative spatial frameworks for looking at all of Chinese history in entirely new ways\, ways that highlight people who are traditionally obfuscated in imperial and nationalist histories\, and ways that deconstruct what it is we are even talking about when we use the term “China.”
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/china-humanities-seminar-4/
CATEGORIES:China Humanities Seminar
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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20190422T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20190422T180000
DTSTAMP:20260603T125942
CREATED:20190319T132856Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190319T132856Z
UID:8010-1555948800-1555956000@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Wei Shang - "The Story of the Stone" and the Visual Culture of the Manchu Court 
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Wei Shang\, Columbia University \nThis 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 unreal is real.” Apparently paradoxical\, this theme seems to invite a philosophical and religious interpretation that transcends the time when the novel was written. Instead\, I will trace it to the stimuli of the visual culture permeating the Manchu court in the early and mid-eighteenth century. I seek to examine Cao Xueqin’s representation of the Grand Prospect Garden\, the main residence for the young protagonists\, in light of what may be called the aesthetics of jia 假 (the unreal or fiction) that manifests through all sorts of visual tricks in the interior decoration of imperial palaces and gardens of the time. \nIn this talk\, I will focus on the novel’s explicit and implicit references to paintings\, including an illusionistic painting and an ambitious project undertaken by Xichun to capture a panorama of the garden in one gigantic painting. More specifically\, I emphasize the novelist’s impulse to incorporate into his narrative the popular motifs of the contemporaneous paintings\, including the paintings executed by the Jesuit painters employed by the imperial court. Reading the novel from this perspective highlights issues of enormous importance for the comprehension of the cultural dynamics of the time that in turn participate in shaping the novel itself: the dialectics of reality and illusion\, the mutual fertilization of media and technology\, and the constant negotiations between the written and graphic media and between the Manchu court and Europe in the realm of material and visual cultures.
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/wei-shang-the-story-of-the-stone-and-the-visual-culture-of-the-manchu-court/
CATEGORIES:China Humanities Seminar
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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20190401T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20190401T180000
DTSTAMP:20260603T125942
CREATED:20190312T134308Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190312T134308Z
UID:7996-1554134400-1554141600@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Matthew Wells - The Vision to Restore the Empire: Manufacturing Monarchy and Empire in the Early 4th Century
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Matthew Wells\, University of Kentucky \nThis presentation will discuss part of an ongoing project that attempts to explain how the early leaders of the Eastern Jin understood and executed what Dennis Grafflin has called the “interesting task of reality construction” that was required for establishing their new empire in Yangzhou 揚州 in the early 4th century. We will trace the efforts of Wang Dao 王導 (276-339) to establish the rule of Sima Rui司馬睿 (276-323)\, who reigned as Emperor Yuan\, by focusing on Wang’s efforts to reach out to southern gentry and former Wu officials for support and guidance. In particular\, I am interested in the way in which three specific individuals were recruited for the task of building the Eastern Jin regime: Gu Rong 顧榮 (d. 312)\, He Xun 賀循 (260-319)\, and Ji Zhan 紀瞻 (253-324). According to the Jin shu editors and sources from the period\, this particular group of southern elites was central to the establishment of the first Jiankang empire. Answering the question of what these three men brought to the table and why their recruitment was so important for Wang Dao is fundamental to understanding Wang’s notions of empire and monarchy\, and the way in which the construction of these institutions relied on the public imagination for their success.
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/matthew-wells-the-vision-to-restore-the-empire-manufacturing-monarchy-and-empire-in-the-early-4th-century/
LOCATION:CGIS South Room S354\, 1730 Cambridge St\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:China Humanities Seminar
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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20181126T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20181126T180000
DTSTAMP:20260603T125942
CREATED:20180904T160828Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20180904T160828Z
UID:7545-1543248000-1543255200@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Meow Hui Goh - Fake News\, Genuine Words: The Power Dynamic of Literature in Early Medieval China
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Meow Hui Goh\, Ohio State University \nAs we grapple with the consequences of fake news\, disseminated across the globe in high-speed internet to impact countries and communities on issues as grave as presidential election\, gender discrimination\, and ethnic cleansing\, it might feel as if our world is treading on unchartered territory. But viral misinformation is not unique to social media such as Facebook or Twitter. Before these\, there were email\, mail\, and telephone hoaxes\, which\, in fact\, are still common. While the urgent issue at hand may be that of the speed and reach of fake news on social media\, recognizing that the phenomenon of fake news is universal\, having a long history and found everywhere\, is crucial to uncovering its nature. Focusing on specific cases of “fake news” in second and third century China\, my talk calls attention to some similarities—however tenuous—between these cases and the examples from our own time. As reporting in investigative journalistic outlets such as The New York Times suggests\, the spread of fake news seems to reflect a heightened sense of anxiety and tension. Perhaps not dissimilar\, the cases in my study took place against a general atmosphere of chaos and instability\, brought on by the collapse of the Han central court and exacerbated by the armed conflicts that followed. Also comparable is the increasing influence of new “media”—though surely incomparable in speed and scale to modern social media\, the communication networks enabled by the availability and use of paper\, a relatively new material invention in this period\, became influential during the late Han and the Three States. Against these developments\, enemy regimes vying to fill the power vacuum left by the Han court created and disseminated “fake news” in the form of fake or altered letters\, aiming to gain propagandistic and strategic advantages for themselves. A closer examination of these fake or altered letters reveals that they were often based on “believable\,” if not correct\, information\, just like the fake news circulating in the social media of our time. As such\, the issue that they pinpoint is not the problem of forgery or fakery\, but the nature of “believability” and of packaging. In the context of early medieval China\, this was the issue of wen\, or literary writing\, which reflects an approach to “misinformation” that might not sit comfortably with our modern notion of “fact.”
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/china-humanities-seminar-2-2018-11-26/
CATEGORIES:China Humanities Seminar
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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20181112T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20181112T180000
DTSTAMP:20260603T125942
CREATED:20180904T160828Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20180904T160828Z
UID:7544-1542038400-1542045600@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Andrew Chittick - The Resistant South: Sketching a History of the Wu People in the First Millennium CE
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Andrew Chittick\, Eckerd College \nThe history of East Asia in the first millennium CE is ordinarily framed as the successive “fragmentation” of China under the Han dynasty\, and its “reunification” under the Sui and Tang dynasties. This talk develops an alternative perspective\, in which mainland East Asia is characterized by many distinct cultural regions\, which developed a thriving multi-state order following the breakup of the multi-cultural Han Empire. Over the next four centuries East Asian peoples began to articulate their separate political\, cultural\, even ethnic identities\, which invites us to write meaningful histories of them as distinctive peoples. My recent work focuses on the political identity of the Wuren or “Wu people” of the Yangzi delta region\, who in the 3rd-6th centuries CE formed the nucleus of the sprawling\, multi-cultural Jiankang Empire\, repeatedly resisting the imperialist pressure of regimes based in the Central Plains of the Yellow River. In this talk I will highlight their use of distinctive local cultural elements in legitimating their rule\, their similarities to contemporary Southeast Asian regimes\, and their eventual adoption of South and Southeast Asian political models. \nAndrew Chittick is the E. Leslie Peter Professor of East Asian Humanities and History at Eckerd College\, St. Petersburg\, FL. A native of California\, he received his PhD in 1997 from the University of Michigan. He is the author of Patronage and Community in Medieval China: The Xiangyang Garrison\, 400-600 CE (SUNY Press\, 2010). He was a visiting fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton in 2016-17\, and last year held a research fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities. His next book\, The Jiankang Empire in Chinese and World History: Ethnic Identity and Political Culture\, is scheduled to be released by Oxford University Press next year. \n 
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/china-humanities-seminar-2-2018-11-12/
CATEGORIES:China Humanities Seminar
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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20181029T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20181029T180000
DTSTAMP:20260603T125942
CREATED:20181016T181318Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20181016T181318Z
UID:7683-1540828800-1540836000@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:郝春文 Hao Chunwen - 敦煌寫本齋文的分類、定名及其文本結構 Rethinking the Structure and Typology of Liturgical Texts From Dunhuang
DESCRIPTION:This talk will be given in Mandarin \nSpeaker: Hao Chunwen 郝春文\, Senior Professor\, Capital Normal University \nThis talk gives an overview of recent scholarly thinking on the typology and structure of the liturgical texts found among the Dunhuang manuscripts. We can divide the thousands of liturgical texts found at Dunhuang into two main categories: liturgical protocols (zhaiyi斋仪) and liturgies (zhaiwen 斋文). Liturgical protocols (identical to what are occasionally called ‘written protocols\,’ shuyi 書儀) were used as references for drafting liturgies. Liturgies\, written up on the basis of these liturgical protocols\, were functional documents that were read aloud at all kinds of ritual gatherings. \nWe can divide the structure of a liturgy into five parts: the ‘opener’ (haotou 号头)\, ‘exaltation of virtues’ (tande 歎德)\, ‘liturgical purpose’ (zhaiyi 齋意)\, ‘ritual area’ (daochang 道場)\, and ‘adornment’ (zhuangyan 莊嚴). This structure is roughly applicable to liturgical protocols and liturgies with all manner of content\, including hymns of praise\, apotropaic rituals\, healing rites\, and mourning rites\, though there are of course many variations in the specific arrangement and sequence of the parts. \nThis talk will also touch on the commonly used term ‘prayer texts’ (yuanwen 願文); we will suggest that this is a specific kind of liturgical text; the term cannot be used as a blanket reference to the category ‘liturgical text.’
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/hao-chunwen-rethinking-the-structure-and-typology-of-liturgical-texts-from-dunhuang/
CATEGORIES:China Humanities Seminar
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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20181015T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20181015T180000
DTSTAMP:20260603T125942
CREATED:20180320T171733Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20180320T171733Z
UID:6819-1539619200-1539626400@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Alex des Forges - The Examined Subject and the Natural Self in the Eight-Legged Essay
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Alex des Forges\, University of Massachusetts – Boston \nThis paper inquires into the rhetoric and practice of the individual voice in Ming dynasty examination essays\, commonly referred to as shiwen (modern prose) or bagu wen (eight-legged essays). Beginning in the early 1500s\, essay criticism and the essays themselves feature a rhetoric of the natural self who writes and acts without undue constraint; at the same time\, writers made extensive use of a range of techniques to complicate narratorial perspective and tone of voice that anticipate the free indirect discourse that would become a defining characteristic of the modern Western novel. I would like to suggest that shiwen and their associated critical discourse serve not only as precedent\, but also as inspiration for the distinctive literary voices and aesthetic sensibilities for which the late Ming moment is known. \nAlexander Des Forges is Associate Professor of Chinese at University of Massachusetts – Boston. His publications include Mediasphere Shanghai: The Aesthetics of Cultural Production (University of Hawai’i\, 2007)\, “Burning with Reverence: The Economics and Aesthetics of Words in Qing China” (PMLA\, 2006)\, and “Sleights of Capital: Fantasies of Commensurability\, Transparency\, and a ‘Cultural Bourgeoisie’” (differences\, 2014). He is currently finishing a book manuscript on literary work and the aesthetics of voice and representation in early modern China\, with particular attention to the challenges the examination regime poses to a market-based concept of cultural capital.
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/alex-des-forges-19th-century-prose-and-its-socio-cultural-context/
CATEGORIES:China Humanities Seminar
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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20181001T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20181001T180000
DTSTAMP:20260603T125942
CREATED:20180904T160828Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20180904T160828Z
UID:7542-1538409600-1538416800@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Wen-Yi Huang - Families Divided: Migration and Those Left Behind in Fifth- and Sixth-Century China
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Wen-Yi Huang\, An Wang Post-Doctoral Fellow\, Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies\, Harvard University \nIn this talk I explore the impact of migration on family members left behind\, particularly those whose parents\, children\, siblings\, and spouses were forcibly moved to the Northern Wei (386-534 CE) from four successive southern states of Eastern Jin (317-420 CE)\, Liu-Song (420-479 CE)\, Southern Qi (479-502 CE)\, and Liang (502-557 CE). I will do so by asking three questions: how did the families recover the migrants in a time of conflict? How did they repatriate the remains of the migrants across political divides and spatial distance? How did they cope with the consequences of their husbands or fathers’ dual marriages on both sides of the border? The talk highlights the agency of the left-behind families in the migration process\, their changing relationships with the migrants\, and the shifting meaning of home. Examining the roles of the state in the split-families issue\, it also seeks to illuminate the state’s influence on migration at the private\, familial scale. \n 
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/china-humanities-seminar-2/
CATEGORIES:China Humanities Seminar,Environment
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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20180507T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20180507T180000
DTSTAMP:20260603T125942
CREATED:20170831T132116Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20170831T132116Z
UID:5813-1525708800-1525716000@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Amelia Ying Qin - Seeking Patterns: Close and Distant Readings of Two Collections of Tang 唐 (618-907) Dynasty Anecdotes
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Amelia Ying Qin\,  An Wang Post Doctoral Fellow\, Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies \nThis study takes two different approaches—close and distant readings—to the hidden patterns in two anecdote collections. The Songchuang zalu 松牕雜錄 (Miscellaneous Notes under the Pine Window) is a small Tang 唐 (618-907) collection of sixteen anecdotes that claims its accounts are both “particularly unusual” 特異 and “definitely true” 必實. Close reading reveals it to be a text containing hidden structures with an emphasis on “the unusual” as a concept bearing discursive weight for the purpose of subtle political criticism. The intertwined ideas of unusualness and truthfulness define each other and form a discourse of “the unusual” that provides an interpretive framework for the collection’s core anecdotes. These accounts\, when read closely within this framework\, point to signs that foreshadow the Tang’s decline while voicing concerns over its end and directing muted criticism at the irresponsible Tang rulers. The Tang yulin 唐語林 (Forest of Conversations on the Tang)\, on the other hand\, is a collection of over eleven hundred anecdotes about Tang historical figures\, events\, and customs compiled during the Northern Song 北宋 (960-1127). Its contents were selectively recycled from fifty or so earlier miscellanies of various sizes\, and both the content and structure of the collection suffered from a hectic textual history of loss and restoration. To examine a text of this nature and size\, this study experiments with the approach of distant reading to explore potential patterns in its content\, structure\, and selective use of source material. In juxtaposing these two texts examined with different methods\, the speaker hopes to reflect upon the mercurial and ephemeral nature of anecdotal memories of the past\, as well as the possible ways of reading and understanding such memories. \nAmelia Ying Qin graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison\, with a Ph.D. in Chinese literature (2013) from the Department of East Asian Languages and Literature and an M.A. (2010) from the School of Library and Information Studies. Prior to her study in Madison\, she also completed degrees at the University of Rhode Island and Fudan University in Shanghai\, China. Her current research interest is in the relationship and dynamics between cultural memory and historiography in Chinese anecdotal and historical narratives during the time period of 600-1300. She is also the translator of two chapters of The Grand Scribe’s Records. Her teaching interests include Chinese language of all levels\, survey of Chinese literature\, special topics in modern and classical Chinese literature\, as well as comparative topics in East Asian literature and cultures.
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/china-humanities-seminar-2018-05-07/
LOCATION:CGIS Knafel K262\, 1737 Cambridge Street\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:China Humanities Seminar,Events of Interest
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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20180326T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20180326T180000
DTSTAMP:20260603T125942
CREATED:20180129T193546Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20180129T193546Z
UID:6521-1522080000-1522087200@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Jing Tsu - Thinking Small in the Literary Cosmos
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Jing Tsu\, Yale University \nMore than ten years after Sinophone studies\, is it breaking up?  This talk begins with a recent skirmish over the fraught term and its export.  In the attempt to bring faraway and neglected kins into its fold\, Sinophone studies is facing open resistance where writers are choosing not to belong or subscribe.  Yet\, this talk suggests\, it is a good thing when literary relations come to an end\, because it signals a readiness to be disenchanted with a fixed topic.  The plethora of contemporary Chinese literature has far exceeded any of our explanatory frameworks\, and its direction is no longer sustained by the diasporic obsession with saying yes or no to Chineseness from any locale\, or turning to Sinophone studies.  What literary scale\, then\, are we entering into as the ceiling is being lifted from the China narrative?  Is it a technological world beyond worlds\, or still an ideological world in a teacup?  I discuss the works and engagement of one of the most unexpected literary meterorites of recent times\, Liu Cixin\, the first Chinese and Asian to win the Victor Hugo Prize for Science Fiction.
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/china-humanities-seminar-jing-tsu/
LOCATION:CGIS Knafel K262\, 1737 Cambridge Street\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:China Humanities Seminar
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UID:5812-1521475200-1521482400@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Evelyn (Chiung-yun) Liu - When Fantastic Narrative Encounters Empirical Knowledge: Imagining the World in "The Eunuch Sanbao's Voyage to the Western Ocean"
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Evelyn (Chiung-yun) Liu\,  Academia Sinica\, HYI Visiting Scholar \nThe Eunuch Sanbao’s Voyage to the Western Ocean\, a late-sixteenth century novel loosely based on the historical expeditions commanded by Zheng He (1371-1433)\, is a peculiar mixture of factual accounts of foreign lands and fantastic narrative. In this work\, popular Buddhist and Daoist figures living in a mythological landscape encounter a new worldview based on firsthand geographical accounts of maritime voyages recorded as early as the fourteenth century. While the novel is often regarded as a literary failure\, a hodgepodge in which the author imitates and copies earlier texts and jumbles them together\, this talk proposes to understand such “failure” as a multi-faceted response to the rapidly expanding cognitive sphere of that time. Taking the novel as a cultural product of the late Ming book market\, we will examine the author’s choices of source materials in connection to his target reader\, the strategies he employs to maneuver between the exotic and the familiar\, and the epistemological disjunctions he faces in the attempt to create a narrative that encompasses “the end of the Western Ocean.”  We will also look at the possible changes in the conception of “the world” revealed through the ways in which the author negotiates between empirical geography and Buddhist/Daoist cosmologies. \nChiung-yun Evelyn Liu is an Associate Research Fellow at the Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy\, Academia Sinica\, Taiwan. She earned her B.A. from National Taiwan University\, M.A. from Columbia University and Ph.D. from Harvard University. Her research interests include literature of the fantastic\, mediations on historical memory\, and the intersection of knowledge production\, cultural imagination and psychological responses to the foreign in late imperial China. She is completing a book manuscript\, which investigates how moral value\, memory politics\, literary sensibility and commercial media worked together in shaping and transforming historical memories. Her next project explores the function of sentiment in the process of knowledge reception and reformulation; particularly how Chinese literati coped with turbulent dynastic transitions and unsettling cross-cultural encounters through encyclopedic writing as means of reordering and comprehending the changing world.
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/china-humanities-seminar-2018-02-26/
LOCATION:CGIS Knafel K262\, 1737 Cambridge Street\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02138\, United States
CATEGORIES:China Humanities Seminar,Events of Interest
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UID:5938-1520265600-1520272800@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Eric Greene - Repentance in the Formation of Chinese Buddhism
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Eric Greene\, Yale University \nThe ritual activity that in China was known as chanhui 懺悔 – often understood to mean “confession” or “repentance” – was without doubt one the central forms of Buddhist practice in medieval China. Despite this\, scholars have often disagreed concerning\, firstly\, what “repentance” even means in the Chinese or Buddhist contexts\, as well as the best way of understanding the relationship between Chinese Buddhist chanhui and its Indian Buddhist antecedents on the one hand\, and pre-Buddhist Chinese religious ideologies on the other. In this talk I will attempt to offer some new ways of thinking about some of these questions that will help us understand how “repentance” came to serve within early medieval Chinese Buddhism (roughly 200-600 AD) not so much as one mode of Buddhist activity among many\, but as a unifying frame for understanding the ultimate point of all forms of Buddhist practice whatsoever. \nEric Greene is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies. He received his B.A. in Mathematics from Berkeley in 1998\, followed by his M.A. (Asian Studies) and Ph.D. (Buddhist Studies) in 2012. He specializes in the history of medieval Chinese Buddhism\, particularly the emergence of Chinese forms of Buddhism from the interaction between Indian Buddhism and indigenous Chinese culture. Much of his recent research has focused on Buddhist meditation practices\, including the history of the transmission on Indian meditation practices to China\, the development of distinctly Chinese forms of Buddhist meditation\, and Buddhist rituals of confession and atonement. He is currently writing a book on the uses of meditative visionary experience as evidence of sanctity within early Chinese Buddhism. In addition to these topics\, he has published articles on the early history of Chan (Zen) Buddhism\, Buddhist paintings from the Silk Roads\, and the influence of modern psychological terminology on the Western interpretation of Buddhism. He is also presently working on a new project concerning the practice of translation – from Indian languages to Chinese – in early Chinese Buddhism. He teaches undergraduate classes on Buddhism in East Asia\, Zen Buddhism\, ritual in East Asian Buddhism\, and mysticism and meditation in Buddhism and East Asia\, and graduate seminars on Chinese Buddhist studies and Chinese Buddhist texts. \nAfter completing his Ph.D. in 2012\, Eric took a position at the University of Bristol (UK)\, where he taught East Asian Religions until coming to Yale in 2015.
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/buddhist-studies-forum-2018-03-05/
CATEGORIES:Buddhist Studies Forum,China Humanities Seminar
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