China Humanities

CHINA HUMANITIES SPEAKER: Kerstin Storm, University of Münster Perceptions of old age and aging in so-called traditional China are often reduced to two extremes: on the one hand, respect for the elderly, commonly associated with the Confucian cardinal...

CHINA HUMANITIES SPEAKER: Wendy Swartz, Rutgers University This lecture will examine accounts of wen (writing, literary creation) by two of China’s earliest and most innovative literary theorists: “Rhapsody on Writing” by Lu Ji and The Literary Mind and...

CHINA HUMANITIES SPEAKER: Yunxiao Xiao, University of Washington This talk explores how written information was organized, edited, and transmitted through the ancient media of bamboo and wood. Drawing on excavated manuscripts from the Warring States...

CHINA HUMANITIES SPEAKER: Huan Jin, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Emerging at the turn of the eleventh century out of contact with non-Han people, "tao" 套 (set/module) shows the productiveness of cross-cultural interactions. Rooted in...

CHINA HUMANITIES SPEAKER: Natasha Heller, University of Virginia The “ecocritical turn” has reached premodern studies and Asian humanities, but both contexts present significant challenges. Although the nonhuman world and the experience of it would have...

CHINA HUMANITIES SPEAKER: Rebecca Doran, University of Miami The various regimes that emerged during third through sixth centuries grappled from different perspectives with the establishment of dynastic dress regulations, meant to promote hierarchical...

CHINA HUMANITIES SPEAKER: Nathan Vedal, University of Toronto This talk, introducing a forthcoming monograph ( Translation, Emulation, and Manchu Literary Culture ), will consider the institution of a civil service translation examination during the Qing...

CHINA HUMANITIES SPEAKER: Matthias Richter, University of Colorado at Boulder Audiences in early China were probably more aware of technicalities in texts than we are today, since they had first-hand experience of a predominantly oral textual culture and...

CHINA HUMANITIES SPEAKER: Lili Xia, Barnard College The geocultural significance of the “North” was crucial to the competing claims to China between the Jurchen Jin (1115–1234) and Southern Song (1127–1279) dynasties. This talk examines the contemporary...

CHINA HUMANITIES SPEAKER: Zhuming Yao, Boston University Many poems in the Shijing 詩經 feature a lyric “I,” a first-person voice speaking about intense emotions. Yet, who those “Is” are has never been clear. After two millennia of commentarial writings, we...