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  • China Humanities Seminar – Writing and Reading “Local Court Drama” in Late Imperial China: Texts, Genres, and Identities 

    Common Room, 2 Divinity Ave. 2 Divinity Ave., Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States

    Speaker: Tian Yuan Tan 陳靝沅: Shaw Professor of Chinese, University of Oxford; Professorial Fellow, University College

    Recent 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. 
     
    Tian 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-cultura

  • Urban China Series featuring Yang Zhan – “Keep Moving, Little Bees!”: Real Estate Promotion and the Financial Roots of Urban Precariousness in China

    Presented via Zoom

    Speaker: Yang Zhan, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology, The Hong Kong Polytechnic UniversityDevelopers in China’s real estate industry organize temporary workers, or “little bees,” to promote sales. Most developers rely on high-interest loans, and must repay their creditors as quick as possible to keep the chain of funding intact, reduce risk, and secure profits. Thus,

  • Modern China Lecture Series featuring Yajun Mo – Touring China: A History of Travel Culture, 1912–1949

    CGIS South Room S354 1730 Cambridge St, Cambridge, MA, United States

    Speaker: Yajun Mo, Boston CollegeWhen and under what circumstances did modern tourism infrastructure emerge and expand in China? How did the development of tourism shape print media and travel culture? This talk, based on Yajun Mo’s recently published book, Touring China: A History of Travel Culture, 1912-1949, explores these questions by tracing the roots of

  • Film Screenings – The Face of Time: Recent Films by Tsai Ming-Liang

    Harvard Film Archive, Carpenter Center 24 Quincy St, Cambridge, MA, United States

    Rare and valuable is the filmmaker who expands one’s conception of the cinematic art; rarer still is the filmmaker who enlarges one’s notion of the term “director.” Malaysian-born, Taiwan-based auteur Tsai Ming-liang (b. 1957) accomplished the former with his rigorous, uncompromising and reputation-defining features of the nineties and early 2000s, and ever since his self-declared

    $10 – $15

  • Jae-Jung Suh – Diatribes and Dialogues over the Past: “History Problems” and Regional Orders in Northeast Asia

    Common Room, 2 Divinity Ave. 2 Divinity Ave., Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States

    Speaker: Jae-Jung Suh, Professor, Department of Politics and International Studies, International Christian University; HYI Visiting Scholar, 2022-23 Chair/Discussant: Paul Y. Chang, Associate Professor of Sociology, Harvard University In this talk, I propose to re-analyze the history of the historical contentions in Northeast Asia as that of the regional actors’ attempts to manage their differences over

  • East Asian Legal Studies Open House

    WCC Milstein East C, Harvard Law School

    Take advantage of this opportunity to meet EALS Faculty, Staff, Research Fellows, and the 2022-2023 Visiting Scholars.Remarks begin at 12:45pm.Food will be provided. Venue

  • Critical Issues Confronting China Series featuring Yanzhong Huang – Is Zero Covid Crippling Xi Jinping’s Domestic Agenda?

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

    Read our blog post on the event: Is ‘Zero-COVID’ Crippling Xi Jinping’s Domestic Agenda? Five Unintended Consequences Speaker: Yanzhong Huang, Professor and Director, Center for Global Health Studies, Seton Hall University China’s zero-Covid policy, while shielding the country from Covid-19 and facilitating state control over society, also has compounded, even undermined its ability to cope

  • Ya-wen Lei – The Gilded Cage: Techno-State Capitalism in China 

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

    Speaker: Ya-wen Lei, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, Harvard University Using Daniel Bell’s work as a springboard, I analyze the emergent post-industrial society in China, focusing on China’s techno-development from the mid-2000s to the present day. Noting the extraordinary transformation of China’s economy and society during this time, some scholars have compared China’s post-reform period

  • Film Screening and Discussion – Afternoon (Na ri xia wu)

    Harvard Film Archive, Carpenter Center 24 Quincy St, Cambridge, MA, United States

    Directed by Tsai Ming-liang.Taiwan, 2015, DCP, color, 137 min.Mandarin with English subtitles. In-person discussion with the director follows the film screening. As if created to refute the notion that artists are notoriously aloof about discussing their own work, Afternoon ostensibly grants Tsai’s devoted audience an all-access peek behind the curtain of his decades-long artistic partnership with his muse

    $15

  • Modern China Lecture featuring Philip Thai – Communist China’s Capitalist Front: The China Resources Company in Cold War Hong Kong

    CGIS Knafel K262 1737 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, MA, United States

    Speaker: Philip Thai, Northeastern University The China Resources Company is a Hong Kong-based, Chinese state-owned conglomerate with diverse businesses interests in real estate, retail, pharmaceuticals, energy, and other industries. Today, it is one of the largest corporations in the world and currently ranked no. 70 on the Fortune Global 500. During the Cold War, China

  • Critical Issues Confronting China Series featuring John K. Culver: How China’s Catastrophic Success, US Strategic Blunders Fueled Rivalry

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

    Read our blog post on the event: Ex CIA Analyst: China and U.S. in “Existential Struggle” between Democracy and Authoritarian Rule Speaker: John Culver, Senior Fellow, Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub; Former Senior Intelligence Officer, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) John K. Culver is a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub and

  • Zhang Changdong – Taxation and State Building Contradiction: Grassroots State Reconfiguration under Tax State Transition in Rural China

    Common Room, 2 Divinity Ave. 2 Divinity Ave., Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States

    Speaker: Zhang Changdong, Peking University; HYI Visiting Scholar 2022-23Chair/discussant: Elizabeth J. Perry, Henry Rosovsky Professor of Government at Harvard University; Director of the Harvard-Yenching Institute. Taxation is regarded as an important dynamic in state building, and plays a crucial role in driving the process of bureaucratization. However, this process could be contradictory under certain circumstances. Through