China Humanities

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...

CHINA HUMANITIES SPEAKER: Robert Campany, Vanderbilt University Liexian zhuan, plausibly attributed to the late Western Han scholiast and court official Liu Xiang 劉向 (79-8 BCE), is the earliest extant collection of anecdotes about individuals deemed to...

CHINA HUMANITIES SPEAKER: Tamara Chin, 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...

CHINA HUMANITIES SPEAKER: Robert Ashmore, UC Berkeley Li He’s own writings, as well as comments from his contemporaries and later critics, persistently note the centrality of song and musical traditions to his distinctiveness as a poet—from early on, his...

CHINA HUMANITIES SPEAKER: Ya Zuo, University of California, Santa Barbara Quanzhen Daoism wielded a profound influence across eastern Eurasia, shaping the intellectual landscape of the Jurchen Jin dynasty (1115–1234) and leaving a lasting impact on the...