Harvard University, Cambridge

Acclaimed Chinese poet in exile Yang Lian visited Harvard University on Wednesday, April 8, in an event sponsored by CCK-Inter-university Center for Sinology and the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations.? After a welcoming introduction by Harvard Visiting Professor Michel Hockx, Yang Lian lectured on the significance of form, particularly symmetrical and non-linear forms, in his work and discussed the contemporary Chinese poetry scene as a whole.? His speech was illustrated by some readings of his poems, including those from his celebrated collection, Where the Sea Stands Still.? Following his readings, the novelist Yo Yo, added to the discussion on form by applying its poetic sense to narrative writing, and closing with a reading from her latest novel, Ghost Tide.

Shanghai, Hangzhou, Fuyang
Urban Splendor: City Life in East Asia over the Past 1500 Years

March 26, 2009-March 29, 2009

After a long period of preparation, the international conference on Urban Splendor: City Life in East Asia over the Past 1500 Years, co-organized by National Institute for Advanced Humanistic Studies at Fudan University and East Asian Language and Culture Department of Harvard University, was held from March 26 to 29, 2009 in China (two days at Fudan in Shanghai, one day in Hangzhou and one day in Fuyang). ?The themes of the conference include:

1. Western Views on the East: Discuss the history of East Asian city life over the past 1500 years in a Western background.
2. City Life of the Common People: Facets of life in ancient East Asian cities such as recreation, restaurants, gatherings, religion, transportation, bazaars, etc.
3. Landscape Painting and Metropolitan Genre Painting: The ancients’ vision of rural and city life embodied in artistic images.
4. Maps of Ancient Cities: Urban layout and spatial imagination in East Asian cities from the perspectives of political history, intellectual history and cultural history.
5. A Panorama Pieced Together: Features of architecture and life styles in East Asian cities as compared with Western ones.
6. Other topics on the history of East Asian city life.

Conference at the Fudan Site

Conference at the Fuyang site

Hong Kong, Lingnan University

Taipei, Cheng-Chih University

Eighth International Junior Scholars’ Conference on Sinology Held at Cheng-Chi University
On March 14th, nearly three dozen scholars representing nineteen universities from around the world convened at National Cheng-chi University (NCCU) in Taipei for a conference on “Late Qing and Republican Era Print Culture.” The event was the eighth in a series of Chinese-language conferences initiated by Harvard Professor David Der-wei Wang that aim to promote scholarly exchange between a global community of Ph.D. students, early career scholars, and established scholars working in various disciplines of Chinese studies. This year’s event was the first opportunity for face-to-face interaction for many scholars who had previously met “virtually” on a new late Qing and Republican print culture blog established by Professor Cheng Wen-huei and her students at NCCU: http://blog.sina.com.tw/late_qing/.

NCCU President Dr. Se Hwa Wu kicked off the festivities with words of welcome and opening remarks about the importance of humanities research in Taiwan. Also speaking at the opening ceremony were Dr. Lin Chi-ping, Chair of NCCU’s Department of Chinese, Dr. Liao Ping-hui, Director General of the Social Sciences of the National Science Council’s Department of Humanities, and Professor Rudolf Wagner, Director of the Centre of East Asian Studies at the University of Heidelberg.

Over three days, twenty-three individual papers were presented in eight panels, each led by senior scholars from Taiwan and abroad. Papers encompassed a diversity of topics, ranging from theoretical debates on drama in the Shenbao newspaper to Malaysian-Chinese diasporic literature; from the cinematic adaptation of the novel Jade Pearl Spirit to satirical cartoons and theories of popular visuality; from illustrated dictionaries of Shanghai slang to revolutionary thought in Japanese-occupied Taiwan; from the influence of Emma Goldman on anarchistic thought during the Northern Expedition to the translation of La Dame aux Camelias; and from Republican tabloids in Beijing and Shanghai to literary periodicals in Nanjing during the Pacific War. Professors Jin Guantao and Liu Qingfeng also gave a demonstration of a powerful research tool they have been building as part of a multi-year project, which is now housed at NCCU: a keyword-searchable database of late Qing and Republican periodicals.

The conference concluded with a roundtable featuring Professors Lin Qi-ping and Cheng Wen-huei of NCCU, Professor Rudolf Wagner, and Professor Theodore Huters of UCLA. As a representative of one of NCCU’s partner schools, Heidelberg, Professor Wagner reminded the ensemble to bring a global, multilingual perspective to their research and seek out the resonances between cultural phenomena in late Qing China and turn-of-the-century Europe, Japan, and America.

The conference was co-organized by NCCU professor Cheng Wen-huei and Harvard professor David Der-wei Wang and sponsored by Harvard University’s Department of East Asian Languages & Civilizations, University of Heidelberg’s Graduate School of East Asian Studies, University of Heidelberg’s Department of Sinology, NCCU’s Department of Chinese, and the NCCU School of Humanities’ “Late Qing and Republican Periodicals and Culture Research Group.” Generous funding was also provided by the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange and the Department of Humanities of the Social Sciences of the National Science Council.

Cambridge, Harvard University

Renowned Chinese writer Yu Hua gave a talk on his new novel Brothers, translated by Eileen Cheng-yin Chow and Carlos Rojas at Harvard University on March 12, 2009. He was joined by the two translators as well as two accalimed Asian-American novelists Ha Jin and Gish Jen.

New York, Columbia University

Conference: “Writing and Literacy in Early China”
In the Columbia University Early China Seminar

The Columbia University Early China Seminar held a two-day conference on Writing and Literacy in Early China, on 7-8 February, 2009. The Seminar is an inter-university forum for the study of early Chinese civilization from the Neolithic period to the end of the Han Dynasty (A.D. 220), founded in 2002. Between 2006 and 2008, with the support of the CCK Foundation Inter-University Center for Sinology, the Seminar has hosted a number of papers and discussions dealing with problems of literacy and the social uses of writing, under the leadership of Profs. Li Feng 李峰 of Columbia University and David Prager Branner [林德威] of the American Oriental Society. From these discussions, Profs. Li and Branner are now preparing a book on the subject of “Writing and Literacy in Early China”.

During the second half of 2008, eleven of the Seminar’s members prepared substantial revisions of their papers for a public conference on writing and literacy. Each of these papers was cross-reviewed by at least three other participants, and the topics were carefully vetted by the chairs so that a representative array of topics would be covered. On February 7-8 of 2009, all eleven papers were presented at a public conference at Columbia University, with over 60 participants attending. The program concentrated on how literacy was related to the nature and origin of the Chinese script and what the social context was for its use and transmission.

The chairs are now in final discussions with a scholarly press over a contract for the book. (David Prager Branner)

Cambridge, Harvard University

On December 5 and 6, an international conference "Loyalty and Betrayal in Modern Chinese Literary and Cultural Studies" was held in the Humanity Center at Harvard University. Sponsored by the CCK-IUC, this event focused on the following four interrelated aspects to further examine the ambiguous and complex relationship between loyalty and betrayal, and how each manifests itself on the levels of literary creation, cinematic production, as well as translation:

Cambridge, Harvard University

From October 27-29, 2008, independent Chinese documentary filmmaker Hu Jie visited Harvard to screen three films about the Cultural Revolution--"Though I am Gone," "Red Art," and "In Search of Lin Zhao's Soul"--and answered questions from the audience.? His visit and the screenings were sponsored by the CCK-IUC, the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, and the Department of EALC at Harvard.? The turn-out at each screening was about 50-70 people, and the audience was quite moved by the films.? Many of their questions had to do with the production and distribution of these films, which cannot be screened in public venues in the PRC, but which have reached a wide underground audience through the Internet and private reproductions.? Additionally, Hu Jie also had a conversation with Harvard undergraduates in Chinese in the framework of the course "Art and Violence of the Cultural Revolution"