Events

Tang Xiaobing – The Road to the Chinese Communist Revolution: How Petty Intellectuals Gathered and Accepted Leftist Ideologies in 1920s and 1930s Shanghai

Speaker: Tang Xiaobing (Associate Professor, History Department, East China Normal University; Visiting Scholar, Harvard-Yenching Institute) Chair/discussant: Elizabeth Perry (Henry Rosovsky Professor of Government, Harvard University; Director, Harvard-Yenching Institute) Harvard-Yenching Institute […]

Dan Arnold – Personalism and the Mādhyamika Recuperation of Conventional Truth: Some Heretical Thoughts

Speaker: Dan Arnold, University of Chicago Over the years, I have advanced an interpretation of Madhyamaka that frames Nāgārjuna’s arguments in terms suggested by some contemporary debates in philosophy of mind. Nāgārjuna can thus be understood to reject the reductionist elaboration of anātmavāda that was epitomized for him by Ābhidharmika philosophy, and as doing so […]

Ya-Wen Lei: The Contentious Public Sphere: Law, Media, and Authoritarian Rule in China

William James Hall, Room 1550 33 kirkland st, cambridge, MA, United States

Deparment of Sociology Colloquium Series Speaker: Ya-Wen Lei, Harvard University. In this talk, I will situate my book, The Contentious Public Sphere: Law, Media, and Authoritarian Rule in China, in relation to one of the department’s traditions and discuss issues related to disciplinary boundaries. I will then discuss how the book speaks to the relationship between globalization, institutions, […]

David Dollar – Challenges to China’s Economy: At Home and Abroad

CGIS South S020, Belfer Case Study Room 1730 Cambridge St., Cambridge, MA, United States

Read event summary here Speaker: David Dollar, Brookings Institution David Dollar is a senior fellow in the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution. From 2009 to 2013, Dollar was the U.S. Treasury’s economic and financial emissary to China, based in Beijing, facilitating the macroeconomic and financial policy dialogue between the United States […]

Stalemate Across the Taiwan Strait: A Trip Report

Speakers:  Michael Szonyi, Director, Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies Steven Goldstein, Sophia Smith Professor of Government, Emeritus, Smith College Robert Ross, Professor of Political Science, Boston College

Eric Greene – Repentance in the Formation of Chinese Buddhism

Speaker: Eric Greene, Yale University The 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 […]

Wang Liping – More than Affirmative Action: China’s Preferential Policy in Historical and Comparative Perspective

Speaker: Wang Liping,  Peking University; Visiting Scholar, Harvard-Yenching Institute Chair/discussant: Lei Ya-Wen,  Harvard University With the ethical appeal of equality and justice as well as a more cohesive society, affirmative action has been in place for many years around the world. Such measures, going by various names depending on the context and perceived acceptability, have attained […]

Bilahari Kausikan: US-China Competition for Influence in Southeast Asia

CGIS South S020, Belfer Case Study Room 1730 Cambridge St., Cambridge, MA, United States

Read event summary here Speaker: Bilahari Kausikan, Ambassador-at-Large at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Singapore This event is co-sponsored by the Harvard University Asia Center.

Stephen Owen: Translation in its Kinds

Speaker: Stephen Owen, EALC, Harvard University The Poetry of Du Fu: The Complete Poetry of Du Fu presents a complete scholarly translation of Chinese literature alongside the original text in […]