Reading Sinophone Women Writers
2025-04-04 14:00 - 17:00 (America/New_York) | Plimpton Room (133), Barker Center, 12 Quincy St., Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
Speakers: Li Zishu 黎紫書Lu Pin 鹿苹Lin Zhao 林棹Dorothy Tse 謝曉虹Moderators:David Der-wei Wang, Harvard UniversityMingwei Song, Wellesley CollegeDingru Huang, Tufts University

Venue

Harvard College China Forum 2025 | April 4th - 6th
2025-04-04 17:00 - 2025-04-06 15:00 | MA
Founded in 1997, Harvard College China Forum (HCCF) is dedicated to a constructive dialogue on the challenges, trends, and issues affecting China. The Forum aims to engage leaders in business, academia, and politics in a discourse that offers insights and generates ideas. HCCF is North America’s leading and longest-running student-run conference on China. The annual Forum takes place every April in Boston, Massachusetts. Over a thousand attendees and nearly a hundred speakers attend the forum, making it the largest of its kind.You can find the full list of speakers for this 28th annual conference here: 2025 Harvard College China Forum Speakers.The event is free for Harvard undergraduates. Register to attend here. For further questions, please email: contact@harvardchina.org.

Venue

Film Screening: Wang Bing's Youth Trilogy - Youth (Spring) Qingchun
2025-04-04 18:00 - 20:00 | Harvard Film Archive, Carpenter Center, 24 Quincy St, Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
More than two decades after making his monumental West of the Tracks (2002), documentary auteur Wang Bing (b. 1967) has released a new cinematic fresco of Chinese workers. Whereas his debut work memorializes the declining Socialist industrial complex in Northeast China and its aging employees, the Youth trilogy chronicles the plights of young migrant workers struggling with the vagaries and pressures of a free capitalist market. Between 2014 and 2019, Wang Bing and his crew shot around 2,600 hours of footage in the garment-making township of Zhili, near Shanghai, with hundreds of thousands of seasonal laborers from all over the country sewing children’s clothes in some 18,000 workshops. The three installments of Youth—Spring, Hard Times and Homecoming—premiered in competition at the Cannes, Locarno and Venice film festivals, respectively. Taken together, this documentary trilogy not only provides a nuanced, empathetic and critical look at China’s fashion industry, but could also inspire in its audiences alternative experiences of time, space and the material fabric of our lives.

Youth (Spring) QingchunThe first in Wang Bing’s opus centered on young migrant laborers in Zhili employs his trademark long takes and fixed camera setups, contrasting routine days of sewing, stitching and scissoring with bustling street scenes and after-hours sequences set in the workers’ cramped living quarters, chancing upon dramas that inevitably emerge from such a repetitive, cloistered and threadbare existence. While Zhili’s privatized structure and incentive-based production model allows for certain advantages over the kind of centrally governed factories seen in earlier Wang films like West of the Tracks (2002), it also leaves employees at the mercy of predatory managers, a situation the director depicts as an endless tug-of-war for better pay. With textbook rigor, Wang captures a new economic reality that, for all it promises, has only fostered a new form of exploitation. – Jordan Cronk

Directed by Wang Bing

France/Hong Kong/Luxembourg/Netherlands 2023, DCP, color, 215 min. Mandarin with English subtitles

General Admission Tickets $10, $8 Non-Harvard student, seniors, Harvard faculty and staff. Harvard students admitted free to regularly priced shows.

Special event tickets (for in-person appearances) $15 – $20.

Tickets go on sale 30 minutes prior to show time at the box office and are also available in advance on the HFA website.

Venue

Film Screening: Wang Bing's Youth Trilogy - Youth (Hard Times) Qingchun: Ku
2025-04-05 18:00 - 20:00 | Harvard Film Archive, Carpenter Center, 24 Quincy St, Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
More than two decades after making his monumental West of the Tracks (2002), documentary auteur Wang Bing (b. 1967) has released a new cinematic fresco of Chinese workers. Whereas his debut work memorializes the declining Socialist industrial complex in Northeast China and its aging employees, the Youth trilogy chronicles the plights of young migrant workers struggling with the vagaries and pressures of a free capitalist market. Between 2014 and 2019, Wang Bing and his crew shot around 2,600 hours of footage in the garment-making township of Zhili, near Shanghai, with hundreds of thousands of seasonal laborers from all over the country sewing children’s clothes in some 18,000 workshops. The three installments of Youth—Spring, Hard Times and Homecoming—premiered in competition at the Cannes, Locarno and Venice film festivals, respectively. Taken together, this documentary trilogy not only provides a nuanced, empathetic and critical look at China’s fashion industry, but could also inspire in its audiences alternative experiences of time, space and the material fabric of our lives.

Youth (Hard Times) Qingchun: Ku

Focusing on the factory laborers’ economic struggles and workplace conflicts, the second installment of Youth follows multiple narrative threads that stretch and tighten, sometimes to a breaking point of violence and despair. A young woman keeps making mistakes and must redo several batches of trousers, while her colleagues discuss ways to dodge the manager’s surveillance. Just released from police detention after an altercation with his boss, a young man searches in vain for his lost account book. Parents pore over sewing machines while their child plays with scissors and cell phones. From the balcony outside their shop, a group of workers watch their indebted boss beat up a fabric supplier and run away without paying their wages, so they sell the shop’s sewing machines while the landlord cuts the power and water of their living quarters. In another dark dorm, a worker who made tons of unsold denim recounts his participation in a labor riot and the ensuing police brutality. The exhaustion of overtime and deadlines thus alternates with the anxiety of dead time and wasted time, accruing into the bitterness at the core of Wang Bing’s trilogy.

Directed by Wang Bing

France/Luxembourg/Netherlands 2024, DCP, color, 226 min. Mandarin with English subtitles

General Admission Tickets $10, $8 Non-Harvard student, seniors, Harvard faculty and staff. Harvard students admitted free to regularly priced shows.

Special event tickets (for in-person appearances) $15 – $20.

Tickets go on sale 30 minutes prior to show time at the box office and are also available in advance on the HFA website.

Venue

Film Screening: Wang Bing's Youth Trilogy - Youth (Homecoming) Qingchun: Gui
2025-04-06 18:00 - 20:00, 2025-04-25 18:00 - 20:00 | Harvard Film Archive, Carpenter Center, 24 Quincy St, Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
More than two decades after making his monumental West of the Tracks (2002), documentary auteur Wang Bing (b. 1967) has released a new cinematic fresco of Chinese workers. Whereas his debut work memorializes the declining Socialist industrial complex in Northeast China and its aging employees, the Youth trilogy chronicles the plights of young migrant workers struggling with the vagaries and pressures of a free capitalist market. Between 2014 and 2019, Wang Bing and his crew shot around 2,600 hours of footage in the garment-making township of Zhili, near Shanghai, with hundreds of thousands of seasonal laborers from all over the country sewing children’s clothes in some 18,000 workshops. The three installments of Youth—Spring, Hard Times and Homecoming—premiered in competition at the Cannes, Locarno and Venice film festivals, respectively. Taken together, this documentary trilogy not only provides a nuanced, empathetic and critical look at China’s fashion industry, but could also inspire in its audiences alternative experiences of time, space and the material fabric of our lives.

Youth (Homecoming) Qingchun: Gui

The final installment of the Youth trilogyzooms in on a handful of workers as they return to their villages for the Lunar New Year, meanwhile zooming out spatially from Zhili’s garment workshops to China’s vast countryside. After seeking payment of their owed wages, Mu Fei and Dong Minyan board a packed train to Yunnan and take a van up a hazardous mountainside road. In homes decorated with giant Chairman Mao portraits, their parents speak of illnesses and injustices, debts and expenses. Firecrackers, a confetti gang, bride-carrying and karaoke create an exuberant atmosphere at Shi Wei’s and Liang Xianglian’s wedding. From the southwest mountains, the film moves to the lower Yangtze River to celebrate the God of Prosperity and another wedding banquet. After the holidays, the bride Fang Lingping takes her husband to Zhili and teaches him to sew. The last third of the film revisits familiar characters from Spring and Hard Times such as Lin Shao and Chen Wenting, no longer teenagers in love but young parents, uncertain how the cycles of seasonal labor will shape their children’s future.

Directed by Wang Bing

France/Luxembourg/Netherlands 2024, DCP, color, 160 min. Mandarin with English subtitles

General Admission Tickets $10, $8 Non-Harvard student, seniors, Harvard faculty and staff. Harvard students admitted free to regularly priced shows.

Special event tickets (for in-person appearances) $15 – $20.

Tickets go on sale 30 minutes prior to show time at the box office and are also available in advance on the HFA website.

Venue

China's Future: Navigating Geopolitics in a New Era
2025-04-07 17:00 - 18:00 | Room L-166, Littauer Building, 79 JFK St., Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, United States
Register now

Speakers:David J. Firestein, President and CEO of the George H. W. Bush Foundation for U.S.-China Relations

Andrew S. Erickson, Professor of Strategy, U.S. Naval War College China Maritime Studies Institute; Fairbank Center Visiting Scholar

Venue

Chen Chunxiao — Chinese Migrants in the Middle East during the Mongol-Yuan Period: Settlements and Activities
2025-04-08 11:30 - 13:00 | Common Room, 2 Divinity Ave., 2 Divinity Ave., Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, United States
Speaker: Chen Chunxiao, Associate Professor, Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology Chinese Academy of Social Sciences; HYI Visiting Scholar, 2024-25

Chair/Discussant: Mark Elliott , Mark Schwartz Professor of Chinese and Inner Asian History; Vice Provost for International Affairs, Harvard University

HYI Visiting Scholar Talk

Venue

Urban China Lecture Series Featuring Qiao Shitong — Neighborhood Democratization in Urban China
2025-04-08 20:30 - 22:00 | Presented via Zoom
Zoom meeting link

Speaker: Qiao Shitong, Professor of Law and Ken Young-Gak Yun and Jinah Park Yun Research Scholar, Duke University

Based on six-year fieldwork across China including over 200 in-depth interviews, this book provides an ethnographic account of how hundreds of millions of Chinese homeowners practice democracy in and beyond their condominium complexes. Using interviews, survey data, and a comprehensive examination of laws, policies and judicial decisions, this book also examines how the party-state in China responds to the risks and benefits brought by neighborhood democratization. Moreover, this book provides a framework to analyze different approaches to the authoritarian dilemma facing neighborhood democratization which may increase the regime’s legitimacy and expose it to the challenge of independent organizations at the same time. Lastly, this book identifies conditions under which neighborhood democratization can succeed.

Shitong Qiao is Professor of Law and Ken Young-Gak Yun and Jinah Park Yun Research Scholar at Duke University. He also taught property and comparative law at the University of Hong Kong and New York University and was Law and Public Affairs fellow at Princeton University. Professor Qiao employs mixed methods to explore the relationship between political power, law, and private ordering. He has published numerous articles in the top Chinese and US law journals and a prize-winning book about law and marketization, Chinese Small Property: The Co-Evolution of Law and Social Norms (Cambridge University Press, 2017).

We would like to thank the MIT Sustainable Urbanization Lab, the University of British Columbia’s School of Community and Regional Planning, and the Harvard Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies for supporting this event. Please subscribe to our mailing list if you’d like to receive e-mail notifications: http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/urbanchinaseminar.

Zoom Meeting Link: https://mit.zoom.us/j/97147498753

Venue

Critical Issues Confronting China Series featuring Chenggang XU — How Will China's Institutional Problems Cripple its Economy?
2025-04-09 12:00 - 13:15 | CGIS South S020, Belfer Case Study Room, 1730 Cambridge St., Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
Speaker: Chenggang XU, Senior Research Scholar, Stanford Center on China’s Economic and Institutions; Visiting Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University; Visiting Professor, Department of Finance, Imperial College London

Discussant: Meg Rithmire, James E. Robison Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School

Chenggang Xu is a Senior Research Scholar at the Stanford Center on China’s Economic and Institutions, and a Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and a Visiting Professor, Department of Finance, Imperial College London.

Chenggang received his PhD in Economics from Harvard University in 1991. He previously taught at the University of Hong Kong as Chung Hon-Dak Professor of Economics, at Tsinghua University as Special-term Professor of Economics, at Seoul National University as World-Class University Professor of Economics, and at LSE as Reader of Economics. He was the President of the Asian Law and Economics Association. He was a first recipient of China Economics Prize (2016) and a recipient of the Sun Yefang Economics Prize (2013).

Chenggang’s research is in political economics, institutional economics, law and economics, development economics, transition economics and the Chinese political economy. His research and opinions have been covered widely in the Greater China area and in the world. He is currently a board member of the Ronald Coase Institute (RCI) and a research fellow of the CEPR.

Venue

Film Screening + Discussion – River Elegy (河殇), Episodes 1 & 2 featuring Rana Mitter and Yasheng Huang
2025-04-09 17:00 - 19:30 | CGIS South, Tsai Auditorium (S010), 1730 Cambridge St, Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
Rana Mitter, ST Lee Chair in US-Asia Relations, Harvard Kennedy SchoolYasheng Huang, Epoch Foundation Professor of Global Economics and Management, MIT Sloan School of ManagementModerator: Dorinda (Dinda) Elliott, Executive Director, Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Harvard University

“It may have been the most important television program ever broadcast in the history of the world.”—Rana Mitter, BBC Radio 4’s In Our Time, “The May Fourth Movement,” December 9, 2021

Join us for a special screening of River Elegy (河殇), the landmark 1988 Chinese documentary series that ignited nationwide debate with its bold critique of China’s historical path and traditional culture. The event will feature a panel discussion with distinguished scholars Rana Mitter (Harvard University), Yasheng Huang (MIT), and Fairbank Center Executive Director Dorinda (Dinda) Elliott.

We will present a newly restored digital transfer of the series’ first two episodes, “In Search of a Dream” and “Destiny”, both in Chinese with newly translated English-language subtitles.

First aired on CCTV1 in June 1988, River Elegy uses the color “yellow” (symbolizing the Yellow River and the Yellow Emperor) as a metaphor for cultural and political stagnation, contrasting it with “blue” (representing the open sea and maritime exploration) as a symbol of modernity and openness. Through poetic narration and a provocative visual collage of archival footage, the series critiques China’s Confucian traditions and historical isolationism, arguing that these forces hindered the country’s progress in the 20th century. It calls instead for reform, global engagement, and celebrates the economic liberalization taking place under Deng Xiaoping.

River Elegy struck a deep chord with a generation navigating the tensions of modernization. Its writer, Su Xiaokang, quickly became one of China’s most prominent public intellectuals. The documentary received high-level endorsement from Party figures including former president Yang Shangkun, Deng Pufang (son of Deng Xiaoping), and premier Zhao Ziyang—each of whom supported and even hosted special screenings of the series. But following the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests—which some scholars argue were partly catalyzed by River Elegy’s widespread influence—the series was banned amid a sweeping political crackdown.

Decades later, River Elegy remains a powerful historical document. Its themes continue to resonate, particularly as the liberal values that the series championed—democracy, human rights, the rule of law—appear increasingly embattled, not only in China, but also in the United States and around the world.

Rana Mitter is ST Lee Chair in US-Asia Relations at the Harvard Kennedy School. He is the author of several books, including Forgotten Ally: China’s World War II (2013), which won the 2014 RUSI/Duke of Westminster’s Medal for Military Literature, and was named a Book of the Year in the Financial Times and Economist. His latest book is China’s Good War: How World War II is Shaping a New Nationalism (Harvard, 2020). His writing on contemporary China has appeared recently in Foreign Affairs, the Harvard Business Review, The Spectator, The Critic, and The Guardian. He has commented regularly on China in media and forums around the world, including at the World Economic Forum at Davos. His recent documentary on contemporary Chinese politics “Meanwhile in Beijing” is available on BBC Sounds. He is co-author, with Sophia Gaston, of the report “Conceptualizing a UK-China Engagement Strategy” (British Foreign Policy Group, 2020). He won the 2020 Medlicott Medal for Service to History, awarded by the UK Historical Association. He previously taught at Oxford, and is a Fellow of the British Academy.Yasheng Huang is Epoch Foundation Professor of Global Economics and Management at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. From 2013 to 2017, he served as an associate dean in charge of MIT Sloan’s global partnership programs and its action learning initiatives. His previous appointments include faculty positions at the University of Michigan and at Harvard Business School. He is the author of 11 books in both English and Chinese and of many academic papers and news commentaries. His book, The Rise and the Fall of the EAST: How Exams, Autocracy, Stability, and Technology Brought China Success, and Why They Might Lead to Its Decline, was published by Yale University Press in 2023. He is collaborating with Chinese academics on a book project, The Needham Question, based on a comprehensive database on Chinese historical inventions and politics.

Venue

Lin Chen — Contested Sociocultural Spaces of Aging in Rural China: From Older Adults’ Lived Experiences
2025-04-10 11:30 - 13:00 | Common Room, 2 Divinity Ave., 2 Divinity Ave., Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, United States
Speaker: Lin Chen, Associate Professor, Department of Social Work, Fudan University; HYI Visiting Scholar, 2024-25

Chair/Discussant: Arthur Kleinman, Esther and Sidney Rabb Professor of Anthropology, Harvard University

HYI Visiting Scholar Talk

Venue

China Economy Lecture featuring Christine Wong — From Growth Engine to Fiscal Drag: Rethinking China’s Local Government Finance
2025-04-10 16:00 - 17:15 | CGIS South Room S250, 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, United States
Speaker: Christine Wong, Visiting Research Professor, East Asian Institute, National University of Singapore

China’s local governments drive 85% of public spending and over 80% of infrastructure investment, yet their finances are in crisis. A long-term fiscal erosion, collapsing land revenues, and soaring debt have left them struggling to meet obligations. These challenges stem from deeper structural issues—tax reforms that weakened revenue growth, an overreliance on land sales to fund budgets, and a misalignment between spending responsibilities and fiscal capacity. While recent debt relief measures provide temporary breathing room, they fail to address the root causes. Bold reforms will be needed to close the fiscal gap, reduce land dependence, and realign revenue with spending. Without decisive action, local fiscal distress will continue to impede economic stability and effective macroeconomic management in China.

Christine Wong is Visiting Research Professor at the East Asian Institute (EAI), National University of Singapore; and Honorary Professorial Fellow at the Asia Institute, University of Melbourne. She also teaches at the Schwarzman College, Tsinghua University. Prior to joining EAI Christine taught at the University of Melbourne, University of Oxford, University of Washington, and Mount Holyoke College. She also held senior staff positions in the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank.

Her research focuses on China’s public finance and public sector reform, especially the impact of fiscal decentralization on policy implementation in education, health, social welfare, environmental protection, and urbanization

Venue

Public Matters: Intellectuals and Political Life in China: A Symposium in honor of Merle Goldman (1931-2023)
2025-04-11 09:00 - 17:30 | Room G-08, Larsen Hall, 14 Appian Way, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, United States
Co-sponsored by the Harvard-Yenching InstitutePlease join us at the Fairbank Center for a day-long workshop in honor of the work of Merle Goldman, a leading figure at the center and a foremost scholar of her generation who pioneered the study of contemporary Chinese intellectuals.

In a full day of panel presentations and discussions, an interdisciplinary group of China scholars from North America, Asia, and Europe will highlight ongoing research that either builds directly on Merle’s work or addresses some of the central concerns that animated her professional career: literary dissent, state-intellectual relations, conceptions of citizenship and political rights, and more.

The panels will explore the myriad ways in which Chinese intellectuals, from imperial days to the present, have sought to express political agency and the extent to which their impact has matched their aspirations.

Please join in this celebration of our late colleague’s important legacy!

Organizers: Elizabeth J. Perry, Harvard UniversityTimothy Cheek, University of British ColumbiaJoseph Fewsmith, Boston UniversityNancy Hearst, Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies

Program

9:00 AM – Welcome

9:15 AM – Panel 1Chinese Intellectuals and Chinese Society: Mobilization? Accommodation? Engagement? Alienation? Moderator: Elizabeth J. Perry, Harvard UniversityPeter Zarrow, University of Connecticut — The Language of Republicanism: Liang Qichao and Civic VirtueJoan Judge, York University — Towards the Notion of a Politics of Accommodation: The minjian Classicist, Hu Puan 胡檏安 (Yunyu 韞玉 1878 – 1947)Sebastian Veg, School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences (EHESS) — The Rise and Fall of minjian Intellectuals

10:45 AM – Break

11:00 AM – Panel 2Chinese Intellectuals and the Chinese State: Proactive? Reactive? Reformist? Conservative?Moderator: Timothy Cheek, University of British ColumbiaEls Van Dongen, Nanyang Technological University — Jiang Shigong’s Foucault and Selective Borrowing in Reform Era Intellectual DebatesMatthew Johnson, The Jamestown Foundation — Wang Huning’s Journey from Establishment Intellectual to ‘Red Eminence’: The Party as Ideological FortressJoseph Fewsmith, Boston University — A Through Train to Democracy? Xiao Gongqin and the Yan Fu Paradox

12:30 PM – Lunch Break (on your own)

1:30 PM – Panel 3Between State and Society: Dissent? Acquiescence? Subversion? Support?Moderator: Joseph Fewsmith, Boston UniversityHang Tu, National University of Singapore — The Covert Sphere: Persecution and the Subtle Art of Literary Dissent in the People’s RepublicEddy U, University of California, Davis — Subversive Sociality: The Resistance of Intellectuals in the Chinese Cultural RevolutionTimothy Cheek, University of British Columbia — Polishing the Mirror: Historians as Public Intellectuals in Xi’s ChinaDenise Ho, Georgetown University — A ‘New-Style Socialist University with Chinese Characteristics’

3:00 PM – Break

3:30 PM – Panel 4Beyond State and Society: Nationalism? Cosmopolitan? Globalism?Moderator: Orville Schell, Asia SocietyJeffrey Wasserstrom, University of California, Irvine — Chinese Publics Beyond Chinese Borders: Political Exiles and Political Debates from Late Qing Times to the PresentAngela Xiao Wu, New York University — Postsocialist Press Theory: Information for Infrastructural ModernityClyde Yicheng Wang, Washington and Lee University — The End of ‘Balanced’ Nationalism: Popular Revolt against Hu Xijin and the Changing Roles of Establishment Intellectuals

5:00 PM – Wrap-up: Toward a Conference Volume

Light reception to follow

Venue

Daisy Yan Du - Chinese Animation: Multiplicities in Motion
2025-04-11 12:00 - 13:30 | CGIS South, Room S153, 1730 Cambridge St., Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, United States
Register now

Speaker: Daisy Yan Du, Associate Professor, Division of Humanities, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Moderator: Alexander Zahlten, Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University

Registration appreciated for planning purposes.

Chinese Animation: Multiplicities in Motion is the first edited volume that explores the multiple histories, geographies, industries, technologies, media, and transmedialities of Chinese animation, from early animated special effects to socialist classics, from computer-generated-imagery (CGI) blockbusters to edgy independent films, and from stop-motion to virtual reality.

Its fifteen chapters, grouped under the five themes of junctures, gender, identities, digitality, and practices, span a century of animation since the 1920s across mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, and the diasporic world. Derived from the 2021 Inaugural Conference of the Association for Chinese Animation Studies (ACAS), this volume as a whole defines Chinese animation studies as a new field of research emerging from the peripheries of modern Chinese literature and film studies on the one hand, and from the margins of Western and Japanese animation studies on the other. Incorporating diverse academic approaches and perspectives, this groundbreaking book is an indispensable guide for a rapidly growing community of scholars, students, animators, fans, and general readers interested in Chinese and world animation.

Venue

Art of Journeys: From Ape Tales to the Monkey King Wukong
2025-04-11 13:00 - 17:30 | Sackler Building, Lower Level, 485 Broadway, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, United States
Register now

The launch of the hit game, “Black Myth: Wukong,” in August 2024 has sparked renewed interests in the many historical sites that inspired its stunning visuals. In fact, the role that players take on in the game—an anthropomorphic monkey with supernatural abilities—also has many previous incarnations in the history of Chinese and East Asian art at large. The most well-known is perhaps the Monkey King Sun Wukong, from Wu Chengen’s monumental sixteenth-century novel Journey to the West. Yet Wu’s Journey to the West was only one of the converging points that brought together visual and textual sources dating back to the Han dynasty. Harvard Visual China’s 2025 Graduate Symposium presents two panels on the topic of Art of Journeys—From Ape Tales to the Monkey King Wukong.For a complete program and more information, visit https://www.harvardvisualchina.com/hvc-2025-symposium-info-reg.

Venue

Visiting Scholar Presentation featuring Andrew Erickson — China’s Naval Leadership: Corruption and Capabilities
2025-04-14 15:00 - 16:15 | CGIS South, Room S050, 1730 Cambridge St, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, United States
Speaker: Andrew Erickson, Professor of Strategy, China Maritime Studies Institute, U.S. Naval War College

Regarding China’s ability to seize Taiwan or achieve other top-level military objectives, does corruption matter? Since assuming power in 2012, paramount leader Xi Jinping has officially purged seven sitting and retired members of the Central Military Commission (CMC), including two Vice Chairmen. Beyond the CMC, many other military leaders have likewise fallen, including more than a dozen senior People’s Liberation Army (PLA) officials and defense industry executives over the past two years. The fight against “corruption” appears to be intensifying in 2025, with more shoes set to drop. Second-ranked CMC Vice Chairman General He Weidong has not appeared at two recent meetings at which his attendance would be expected. Despite PLA Navy (PLAN) Political Commissar Yuan Huazhi having an inherently high-profile public role, he has not been seen or heard from publicly since 7 September 2024. Many in the media and beyond speculate that these purges are significantly disrupting and limiting China’s military capabilities.

This presentation will examine politicized corruption-related removals within PLAN leadership specifically and argue in contrast that their imposition of costs regarding endemic behavior are fundamentally a speedbump at most, rather than a showstopper. Related removals are neither an indicator of prohibitive service incompetence nor a self-defeating constraint on operational capabilities. The PLAN may be playing high-stakes musical chairs with its leadership, but it has a deep enough talent pool to do so without prohibitive problems and enjoys substantive strengths in its own right. Regardless of corruption’s pervasive persistence, cutting-edge ships and weapons systems regularly enter service and PLAN capabilities to employ them operationally continue to improve. Corruption may impose inefficiencies, but does not curtail the PLAN’s rapid advances across the waterfront.

Andrew S. Erickson is a Professor of Strategy in the U.S. Naval War College (NWC)’s China Maritime Studies Institute, which he helped establish and has served as Research Director, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He testifies periodically before Congress and briefs leading officials, including the Secretary of Defense. Erickson helped to escort the Commander of China’s Navy on a visit to Harvard and subsequently to establish, and to lead the first iteration of, NWC’s first naval officer exchange program with China. He has received the Navy Superior Civilian Service Medal, NWC’s inaugural Civilian Faculty Research Excellence Award, and NBR’s inaugural Ellis Joffe Prize for PLA Studies. His research focuses on Indo-Pacific defense, international relations, technology, and resource issues.

Venue

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
2025-04-14 16:00 - 18:00 | Common Room, 2 Divinity Ave., 2 Divinity Ave., Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, United States
Speaker: Tamara Chin, Associate Professor of Comparative Literature, Brown University

The 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.

Tamara 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).

Venue

Urban China Lecture Series Featuring Cecilia Chu — Building Colonial Hong Kong: The Production of Space in a Speculative City
2025-04-15 20:30 - 22:00 | Presented via Zoom
Zoom meeting link

Speaker: Cecilia Chu, Associate Professor in Architecture, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

This talk will explore three central aspects of urban development in colonial Hong Kong: the advent of modern planning closely entwined with early British segregation policies; the role of property investment in the shaping of building forms; and the emergence of a distinct urban milieu in which different constituencies sought to claim a stake in a burgeoning colonial economy through housing speculation. Two historical periods will be revisited: the mid-1890s, which witnessed the disastrous plague outbreak that prompted the territory’s first large-scale urban renewal project, and the early 1920s, when the opening of New Kowloon and intensified land speculation led to a series of ambitious planning schemes along racial lines. The intersections of economic interests and the politics of race have contributed to the forms and norms of the city and an evolving sense of local identity. Notably, these discourses and policies have remained powerful frameworks for urban transformation in the post-colonial present.

Cecilia L. Chu is an Associate Professor and Director of the MPhil-PhD Programme in the School of Architecture at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Trained as an urban historian with a background in design and conservation, her works focus on the social and cultural processes that shape the forms of built environments and their impacts on local communities. She is the author of the award-winning book, Building Colonial Hong Kong: Speculative Development and Segregation in the City, which received the 2023 Best Book in Non-North American Urban History Award from the Urban History Association and the 2024 International Planning History Society Book Prize. Her other book publications include The Speculative City: Emergent Forms and Norms of the Built Environment (2022) and Hong Kong Built Heritage (forthcoming 2025).

We would like to thank the MIT Sustainable Urbanization Lab, the University of British Columbia’s School of Community and Regional Planning, and the Harvard Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies for supporting this event. Please subscribe to our mailing list if you’d like to receive e-mail notifications: http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/urbanchinaseminar.

Zoom Meeting Link: https://mit.zoom.us/j/97147498753

Venue

Indigenous Narrative: The Dynamic Biographies of gShen-rab Mi-bo, Founder of the Tibetan Bon Religion
2025-04-16 11:30 - 13:00 | Common Room, 2 Divinity Ave., 2 Divinity Ave., Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, United States
Speaker: Konchok Tsering, Assistant Professor, School for Tibetan Studies, Minzu University of China; HYI Visiting Scholar, 2024-25

Chair/Discussant: Janet Gyatso, Hershey Professor of Buddhist Studies, Harvard University

This talk delves into the transformation of gShen-rab Mi-bo’s life stories within the Tibetan Bon religion, examining three significant texts: mDo ‘dus, mdo gzer mig, and mdo dri med gzi brjid. Each biography, emerging from distinct historical contexts, showcases the evolving nature of Bon religious thought and its interaction with cultural influences. The mDo ‘dus, a concise tenth-century work, is recognized as an early foundational narrative. mdo gzer mig, believed to originate in the eleventh century, is essential for understanding the integration of Buddhist elements within Bon literature. The expansive mdo dri med gzi brjid, from the fourteenth century, enriches the narrative tapestry with folkloric and cultural details, demonstrating how oral traditions have shaped its development. This exploration highlights the adaptive storytelling of the Bon tradition, reflecting shifts in historical and cultural landscapes.

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Critical Issues Confronting China Series featuring Li Zhang — Anxious China: Rethinking Therapeutic Governing Before and After the Pandemic
2025-04-16 12:00 - 13:15 | CGIS South S020, Belfer Case Study Room, 1730 Cambridge St., Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
Speaker: Li Zhang, Professor of Anthropology, University of California-Davis

Discussant: Arthur Kleinman, Esther and Sidney Rabb Professor of Anthropology; Professor of Medical Anthropology in Social Medicine; Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard University

Li Zhang (Ph.D. Cornell 1998) is Professor of Anthropology at the University of California-Davis. She is the author of three award-winning books: Strangers in the City (Stanford 2001), In Search of Paradise (Cornell 2010), andAnxious China: Inner Revolution and Politics of Psychotherapy (UC 2020). She is also a co-editor of Privatizing China, Socialism from Afar (Cornell 2008) and Can Science and Technology Save China? (Cornell 2020). Broadly speaking, her research concerns social, political, spatial and psychological repercussions of the post-Mao economic reform and postsocialist transformations in contemporary China. Currently, she is working on a new project on aging, care, and the digital divide in post-COVID 19 China. She was a 2008 John Simon Guggenheim Fellow and the President of the Society of East Asian Anthropology (2013-15). She also served as Interim Dean of the Division of Social Sciences (2015-17) and Chair of Anthropology Department (2011-15) at UC Davis.

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Rethinking Taiwan Workshop - New Interpretations of Taiwan History and Identity
2025-04-17 14:30 - 16:00 | CGIS South, Room S153, 1730 Cambridge St., Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, United States
Speakers:Chia-Chiun Shih Chen (陳嘉君), 2024-25 Visiting Fellow of Practice; Chairperson, Shih Ming-Te Cultural FoundationSarah Plovnick, 2024-25 Hou Family Post-Doctoral Fellow in Taiwan Studies, Fairbank Center for Chinese StudiesHardy Stewart, 2024-25 Hou Family Pre-Doctoral Fellow in Taiwan Studies, Fairbank Center for Chinese StudiesModerator: David Der-wei Wang, Edward C. Henderson Professor of Chinese Literature, Harvard UniversityJoin us for three presentations by Taiwan experts on new interpretations of Taiwan’s history and identity. David Der-wei Wang, Eric C. Henderson Professor of Chinese Culture, will join as discussant.

Rethinking Taiwan Identity—Chia-Chiun (Jessica Gina) Chen Shih

Shifting the Taiwan narrative in American public discourse—Sarah Plovnick

Phantom Routes, Phantom Roots: Diaspora Subjects of Provincial Taiwan (1885–1915)—Hardy Stewart

Chia-Chiun Shih Chen (陳嘉君) is the chairperson of Shih Ming-Te Cultural Foundation. Her research project examines how the widespread systematic deployment of informants and secret police during the Taiwanese White Terror Period (1949-1991) affected Taiwanese democratization and political culture

Sarah Plovnick received her PhD in Ethnomusicology from the University of California, Berkeley. Sarah uses ethnographic methods to study the role of communication media in contentious political environments. Her dissertation, entitled “Listening Through the Firewall: A Sonic Narrative of Communication Between Taiwan and mainland China,” examines the recent history of the Taiwan Strait (1949-present) from the perspective of sound and audio technologies, from loudspeakers and radio through social media and videogames.

Hardy Stewart Hardy Stewart is a Ph.D. Candidate in Chinese Language at the University of California, Berkeley, where he works on Taiwanese literature and poetry. Hardy asks how classical Chinese poetry traveled to Taiwan and changed or was changed by the island context. His doctoral dissertation, “Man Beyond the Sea 海外人: Hong Qisheng 洪棄生 (1866–1928) and Peripheral Poetics of Provincial Taiwan,” studies the influence of marginality on the genesis of cultural style and historical representation.

David Der-wei Wang holds a joint appointment in Comparative Literature. He is Director of CCK Foundation Inter-University Center for Sinological Studies, and Academician, Academia Sinica. His research interests include modern and contemporary Chinese literature, late Qing fiction and drama; comparative literary theory; colonial and modern Taiwanese fiction, and Asian American and diasporic literature; plus Chinese intellectuals and artists in the mid-20th century. Wang took his B.A. in foreign languages and literature from National Taiwan University, and his M.A. (1978) and Ph.D. (1982) in Comparative Literature from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Wang taught at National Taiwan University (1982-1986) and Columbia University (1990-2004). He first came to Harvard in 1986, serving as Assistant Professor of Chinese for four years. He rejoined the Harvard faculty in 2004, when he was named Edward C. Henderson Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures. Wang’s recent publications include Taiwan under Japanese Colonial Rule (co-ed. with Ping-hui Liao, 2007), Globalizing Chinese Literature (co-ed. with Jin Tsu, 2010),and The Lyrical in Epic Time: Modern Chinese Intellectuals and Artists through the 1949 Crisis (2014). He is Editor of Harvard New Literary History of Modern China (forthcoming, 2015). Wang received the Changjiang Scholar Award in the PRC in 2008. He was the 2013-14 Humanitas Visiting Professor of Chinese Studies at CRASSH, the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities, at Cambridge University (U.K.), where he gave a series of three public lectures on the ‘Chineseness’ of Chinese literature.

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What is China? New Perspectives in New Eras — An International Symposium
2025-04-18 14:00 - 2025-04-19 17:30 | Yenching Auditorium, 2 Divinity Ave., Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, United States
Keynote Speaker: Ge Zhaoguang 葛兆光, Fudan UniversitySpeakers:April 18, 2-5:30pm, Yenching AuditoriumMark C. Elliot, Harvard UniversityJames Robson, Harvard UniversityPeter K. Bol, Harvard UniversityRonald C. Po, London University of Economics Kung Ling-wei, Academia Sinica David Der-wei Wang, Harvard UniversityApril 19, 9:30 am – 5:30pm, The Yenching Common RoomLi Yuyang, Beijing Normal UniversityYing Lei, Amherst College Tu Hang, National University of SingaporeRichard Yu-cheng Shih, Brown University Liu Shih Diing, University of MacauDingru Huang, Tufts UniversityDavid Dadui Yao, Hainan University Kyle Shernuk, Georgetown UniversityMichael Hill, College of William and MaryMichael O’Krent, Harvard University Li Jing, Chinese National Academy of ArtsYedong Sh-Chen, Harvard UniversityRoundtable:Chair: David Der-wei Wang ,Harvard UniversityAnnie Zhanling Wang, Harvard UniversityJames Evans, Harvard University Sophie Xiaofei Lei, (Harvard UniversityShengqiao Lin, Harvard UniversitySponsors:Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies Harvard-Yenching Institute East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation

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Visiting Scholar Presentation featuring Shih-Diing Liu — Who’s Afraid of Gender? Revisiting Engendering China 31 Years On
2025-04-21 12:00 - 13:00 | Room K354, CGIS Knafel, 1737 Cambridge St, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, United States
Speaker: Shih-Diing Liu (刘世鼎), Professor of Communication and Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Advanced Studies, University of MacauDiscussant: Susan Greenhalgh, Professor of Anthropology; John King and Wilma Cannon Fairbank Professor of Chinese Society, Harvard UniversityThis presentation has two intertwined goals: to highlight the significance of gender in understanding Chinese society and to underscore the role of emotion in shaping gender dynamics in China and beyond. I will develop my discussion by revisiting Engendering China: Women, Culture, and the State, an edited volume published by Harvard University Press in 1994, just before the landmark Beijing Women’s Forum in 1995. Through a symptomatic reading of Engendering China, I articulate my perspective on the gender-emotion nexus—an articulation often overlooked not only in Chinese studies but also in gender studies more broadly. Rather than focusing on the conventional notion of gender “consciousness,” I advocate for a critical inquiry into gender “emotion” – to explore the deeply felt but often unrecognized and repressed dimensions of gendered feelings, experiences, fantasies, investments, promises, and practices. My analysis of pop culture and stardom illustrates that gender power operates not merely through structural imposition but through emotions. By recontextualizing Judith Butler’s polemic Who’s Afraid of Gender? (2024), my presentation examines how the return of the repressed—including emotions such as fear, anxiety, optimism, and frustration—shapes the gender landscape, offering new insights into both its constraints and possibilities for emancipation.

Shih-Diing Liu (刘世鼎) is Professor of Communication and a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies, University of Macau. Liu’s research focuses on exploring the emotional dynamics of politics, the formation of popular identity, the expressive and embodied forms of political practices, and the psychology of nationalism in contemporary China. His books include The Politics of People: Protest Cultures in China (SUNY Press, 2019) and Affective Spaces: The Cultural Politics of Emotion in China (Edinburgh University Press, 2024, with Wei Shi). Continuing with a focus on emotion from the Affective Spaces project, his current research explores the intersection of affect and gender in contemporary China. Arguing that Chinese gender has increasingly become an archive of feelings marked by ambivalence toward authorities, this book project uncovers the power of emotion in negotiating the gendered order. Meanwhile, he is also working on a book project that explores the emotional capabilities of Artificial Intelligence.

Susan Greenhalgh (葛苏珊) is Professor of Anthropology and John King and Wilma Cannon Fairbank Professor of Chinese Society at Harvard University. Before moving to Harvard, she was Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Irvine and, before that, Senior Research Associate of the NYC-based Population Council.

In April 2016, Greenhalgh was named Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation for twelve months starting July 2016. At Harvard, she was named Walter Channing Cabot Fellow for the year for the 2015 publication of her book, Fat-talk Nation. Her most recent book is Soda Science: Making the World Safe for Coca-Cola

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Modern China Lecture featuring Joseph Ho — Developing Mission: Photography, Filmmaking, and American Missionaries in Modern China
2025-04-21 16:00 - 17:30 | CGIS Knafel K262, 1737 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
Register for hybrid zoom attendance

Speaker: Joseph Ho, Associate Professor of History, Albion College, Michigan; Center Associate, Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan

Developing Mission is a transnational cultural history of US and Chinese communities framed by missionary lenses through time and space – tracing the lives and afterlives of images, cameras, and visual imaginations from before the Second Sino-Japanese War through the first years of the People’s Republic of China. When American Protestant and Catholic missionaries entered interwar China, they did so with cameras in hand. Missions principally aimed at the conversion of souls and the modernization of East Asia, became, by virtue of the still and moving images recorded, quasi-anthropological ventures that shaped popular understandings of and formal foreign policy toward China. Portable photographic technologies changed the very nature of missionary experience, while images that missionaries circulated between China and the United States affected cross-cultural encounters in times of peace and war. Developing Mission illuminates the centrality of visual practices in the American missionary enterprise in modern China, even as intersecting modernities and changing Sino-US relations radically transformed lives behind and in front of those lenses. In doing so, Developing Mission reconstructs the almost-lost histories of transnational image makers, subjects, and viewers across twentieth-century China.

Joseph W. Ho is Associate Professor of History at Albion College, Michigan, and a Center Associate at the University of Michigan’s Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies. He is a historian of modern China and Taiwan, Sino-US encounters, and transnational visual culture and media. He has published essays on his research in several edited volumes, as well as the UCLA Historical Journal, U.S. Catholic Historian, and Education About Asia. Ho is the author of Developing Mission: Photography, Filmmaking, and American Missionaries in Modern China (Cornell University Press, 2022).Also Presented via Zoom. Register at: https://harvard.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_y84X7LHMSTe1bqk20XXmgQ

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Economic Conjunctures: Planners, Residents, and Chinese-Led Urban Development in Nairobi
2025-04-22 12:00 - 13:30 | CGIS South, Room S153, 1730 Cambridge St., Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, United States
Register now

Speaker: Elisa Tamburo, Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow, Anthropology Department, Harvard University; School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford

Moderator: Michael Puett, Walter C. Klein Professor of Chinese History and Anthropology; Harvard College Professor; Director, Harvard University Asia Center

Since the early 2000s, the rise of Chinese businesses in the construction sector of Nairobi has transformed how the city is planned, built, and lived. The talk sets out to examine such urban transformations from the point of view of builders, planners, and residents. Not only does Chinese-led urban development divide the Kenyan urban middle class, but it evidences a multiplicity of interests among Chinese stakeholders. In examining how Chinese entrepreneurs have come to thrive in the real estate market in Nairobi, the paper enlivens the role of transnational economic and temporal conjunctures, which can impact individual and family trajectories in significant ways.

Registration appreciated for planning purpose.

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Urban China Lecture Series Featuring Mark Baker — Pivot of China: Spatial Politicsand Inequality in Modern Zhengzhou
2025-04-22 15:00 - 16:30 | Presented via Zoom
Zoom meeting link

Speaker: Mark Baker, University of Manchester

This event series is sponsored by the MIT Sustainable Urbanization Lab, the University of British Columbia’s School of Community and Regional Planning, and the Harvard Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies.

Zoom Meeting Link: https://mit.zoom.us/j/97147498753

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Critical Issues Confronting China Series featuring Suisheng Zhao — The Dragon Roars Back: Xi's Power Concentration and Foreign Policy Implications
2025-04-23 12:00 - 13:15 | CGIS South S020, Belfer Case Study Room, 1730 Cambridge St., Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
Speaker: Suisheng Zhao, Suisheng Zhao, Professor and Director, Center for China-US Cooperation, Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver

Discussant: Robert Ross, Professor of Political Science, Boston College; Fairbank Center Associate

Suisheng Zhao is Professor and Director of the Center for China-US Cooperation at Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver. A founding editor of the Journal of Contemporary China, he is member of the Board of Governors of the US Committee of the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific, a member of National Committee on US-China Relations, a Research Associate at the Fairbanks Center for East Asian Research in Harvard University, and a honorary jianzhi professor at Beijing University, Renmin University, China University of International Relations, Fudan University and Shanghai foreign Studies University. A Campbell National Fellow at Hoover Institution of Stanford University, he was Associate Professor of Political Science and International Studies at Washington College in Maryland, Associate Professor of Government and East Asian Politics at Colby College in Maine and visiting assistant professor at the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies (IR/PS) at University of California-San Diego. He received his Ph.D. degree in political science from the University of California-San Diego, M.A. degree in Sociology from the University of Missouri and BA and M.A. degrees in economics from Peking University. He is the author and editor of more than ten books, including: China and East Asian Regionalism: Economic and Security Cooperation and Institution-Building (Routledge 2012), In Search of China’s Development Model: Beyond the Beijing Consensus, (Routledge 2011), Village Elections in China (Routledge, 2010), China and the United States, Cooperation and Competition in Northeast Asia (Palgrave/Macmillion, 2008), China-US Relations Transformed: Perspectives and Strategic Interactions (Routledge, 2008), Debating Political Reform in China: Rule of Law versus Democratization (M. E. Sharpe, 2006), A Nation-State by Construction: Dynamics of Modern Chinese Nationalism (Stanford University Press, 2004), Chinese Foreign Policy: Pragmatism and Strategic Behavior (M. E. Sharpe, 2003), China and Democracy: Reconsidering the Prospects for a Democratic China (Routledge, 2000), Across the Taiwan Strait: Mainland China, Taiwan, and the Crisis of 1995-96 (Routledge, 1999). His articles have appeared in Political Science Quarterly, The Wilson Quarterly, Washington Quarterly, International Politik, The Hague Journal of Democracy, European Financial Review, The China Quarterly, World Affairs, Asian Survey, Asian Affairs, Journal of Democracy, Pacific Affairs, Communism and Post-Communism Studies, Problems of Post-Communism, and elsewhere.

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JFK Jr. Forum — The Long Game and What Comes Next: Where U.S.-China Competition Has Come From and Where It’s Going
2025-04-23 18:00 - 20:00 | JFK Jr. Forum, Harvard Kennedy School, 79 John F. Kennedy St., Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
Register now

Speaker: Rush Doshi, Deputy Senior Director for China and Taiwan Affairs on National Security Council (2021-2024)Moderator: Rana Mitter, ST Lee Chair in U.S.-Asia Relations, Harvard Kennedy School

The 2025 S.T. Lee Lecture will give attendees insight and guidance on how to view U.S.-China completion and how grand strategy may play a role here. The S.T. Lee Lecture focuses on military history and how it might shape global approaches to policymaking. The lecture also reflects Dr. Lee’s dedication to providing a platform for scholars and policymakers to address critical international issues.

Please register with a valid Harvard email address to attend in-person. All JFK Jr. Forums are publicly livestreamed on their YouTube channel.

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2025 Gender Studies Workshop — The Beauty and the Book: Women, Knowledge, Literature, and Book Culture in Late Imperial China and Beyond
2025-04-25 08:45 - 17:00 | Yenching Auditorium, 2 Divinity Ave., Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, United States
This year’s Gender Studies Workshop—The Beauty and the Book: Women, Knowledge, Literature, and Book Culture in Late Imperial China and Beyond: A Conference in Honor of Ellen Widmer—will explore new directions in the study of writings by and about women in late imperial China and will take place on April 25, 2025. The conference is generously sponsored by the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, Wellesley College, Fairbank Center (Harvard University), and Asia Center (Harvard University). It will have four panels: 1. Uncovering the Hidden; 2. New Perspectives on Gender Roles and Gender Boundaries; 3. Gender and Knowledge; 4. Modern, Post-modern, Diasporic, and Transnational Reverberations.

Panel 1, Uncovering the Hidden (9:00a.m.-10:30a.m.)Chair and Moderator: Elizabeth J. Perry, Harvard UniversityDiscussant: Dorothy Ko, Barnard College

Ellen Widmer, Wellesley College — Mingyuan shiwei, Zhang Hao, and Wang Duanshu’s Editorial HandWu Hung, University of Chicago — What is She Reading? A Closer Look at Some ‘Beautiful Women’ Paintings from Late Imperial ChinaGrace Fong, McGill University — A Significant Year: Zong Wan’s Diary of My Sojourn in Baoding, 1877Shengqing Wu, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology — Embodying ‘Pure Love’: Tactility and Female Subjectivity in Republican Literature

Panel Two: New Perspectives on Gender Roles and Gender Boundaries (10:45a.m.-12:15p.m.)Chair and Moderator: Robin Yates, McGill UniversityDiscussant: Sophie Volpp, UC BerkeleyJudith Zeitlin, University of Chicago — The Gender of the Operatic Voice from Li Yu (1611-1680) to Xu Dachun (1693-1771)Wai-yee Li, Harvard University — The Pleasure of Refusal: New Perspectives on Desire in Chen Duansheng’s (1751-1796) Love in Two Lives (Zaisheng yuan)Maram Epstein, University of Oregon — How Conservative is Hou Zhi (ca. 1768-1830)?Rania Huntington, University of Wisconsin Madison — A Laughing Flower’s Guide to the Party: Knowledge, Pleasure, and Pattern in Jinghua yuan (Flowers in the Mirror)

Lunch Break (12:15-1:30p.m.), Common Room, 2 Divinity Avenue

Panel Three: Gender and Knowledge (1:30-3p.m.)Chair and Moderator: Catherine Yeh, Boston UniversityDiscussant: Cynthia Brokaw, Brown University

Huan Jin, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology — Gender Dynamics in Late Imperial Letter-Writing ManualsXu Man, Tufts University — The Precious Mirror for Womanly Virtue (Kunde baojian): A Daily-Use Encyclopedia for Women in High Qing ChinaSuyoung Son, Cornell University — Female Authorship for Technical WritingJoan Judge, York University — Women as Vernacular Knowers in China’s Long Republic (1894-1954): What We Can Learn from Cheap Print

Panel Four: Modern, Post-modern, Diasporic, and Transnational Reverberations (3:15p.m.-4:45p.m.)Chair and Moderator: David Wang, Harvard UniversityDiscussant: Eileen Chow, Duke University

Hyaeweol Choi, University of Iowa — Christian Networks and Gender Norms in Colonial Korea from a Transnational PerspectiveEmma Teng, MIT — Cooking and Gender/Cooking and Genre: Grace Zia Chu (1899–1999)Paize Keulemans, Princeton University — The Poisonous Touch: Haptic Modes of Reading and Playing in Jin Ping Mei in the Late Ming and Early Twenty-first CenturyMingwei Song, Wellesley College — The Rise of She-SF: Chinese SF’s Next WaveReception (5p.m.-6p.m.), Common Room, 2 Divinity Avenue

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