Fall 2016 Events

Thinking Through Things in Qing China Workshop, held at Johns Hopkins University, September 22-23, 2016

​On September 22-23, 2016, a multi-generational group of scholars gathered for an interdisciplinary workshop on material culture in early modern China.  The program, “Thinking Through Things in Qing China,” featured historical, literary, and art historical approaches to objects ranging from used clothing to jade chimes to steppe mushrooms. Several papers dealt specifically with lens technology; others treated questions of craftsmanship, rulership, and ethnic identity as expressed in material culture. Some papers dealt with things-as-objects; others dealt with representations of things in text. Thus, in some papers, the authors “thought through things” in order to draw conclusions about Qing society; whereas in others, the authors reflected on how people in the past used representations of things to comment on their lived experience. Dorothy Ko of Barnard College set the stage by highlighting the contributions of the papers that followed—framing the contributions by way of the children’s game rock (material), paper (text), and scissors (craft/skills). Her introduction was followed by panels titled: “Things in the World,” “The Stuff of Empire,” “Quotidian Things,” “Efficacious Things,” and “Seeing Things.” The workshop is the second in a series of three annual programs on late imperial Chinese culture and society supported by a grant from the Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation and to be held at Johns Hopkins University.
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Sinophone Studies: New Directions International Conference, held at Harvard University, October 14-15, 2016

​“Sinophone” is arguably one of the most provocative concepts of world literary studies since the turn of the new millennium. The Sinophone Studies: New Directions International Conference, held at Harvard University on October 14-15, 2016, was co-organized by Professor Jing Tsu of Yale University and Professor David Der-wei Wang of Harvard University, following their joint effort on the same subject matter in 2007. The conference focused on four themes: site and sight, sound and script, roots and routes, history and potentiality. Professor Shu-mei Shih of UCLA and Professor Ng Kim Chew from Taiwan were the two keynote speakers. The two-day program was packed with more than 40 presentations by scholars from Asia, Europe, and North America, including two young scholars’ panels featuring a total of 12 Ph.D. students from America, Taiwan, and Singapore. The program also included a writers’ forum, which gathered renowned writers from all over the Sinophone world including Ng Kim Chew, Lo Yi-chin, Shih Shu Ching, Ha Jin, Ge Fei and the publisher of Linking, Woo Kamloon. The conference drew a sizable audience, including not only faculties, graduate students, and visiting scholars at Harvard but also graduate students from Yale and UCLA. The latest publication by Linking, Hua yi feng: Huayu yuxi wenxue duben (Sinophone/Xenophone: Contemporary Sinophone Literature Reader), co-edited by David Der-wei Wang, Ko Chia-cian, and Woo Kamloon made its debut at the conference and was highly commended by scholars in the field of Sinophone studies.
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The Modern Chinese Culture Seminar, held at the University of British Columbia,
Fall, 2016

​The Modern Chinese Culture Seminar, sponsored by the CCK-IUC, is a collective project to promote the study of modern Chinese culture since the 19th century. The Seminar invites leading scholars and cultural figures to conceptualize new directions for the field of modern Chinese cultural studies, and to discuss these ideas in seminars, workshops, lectures, and other public forums. The seminar is convened by Professor Christopher Rea.
 
Lecture by Xue Yiwei, October 17, 2016
 
On October 17, the Montreal-based author Xue Yiwei spoke at UBC about “New Directions in Contemporary Chinese Literature.” Hailed by Ha Jin as “a maverick in contemporary Chinese literature,” Xue discussed recent shifts in focus in the Chinese literary field, including the role of periodical editors, the China Writers’ Association, translators, and literary prizes. He also shared an outline of his own acclaimed literary career, including his experience in the literary fields of China and Canada. He also read the short story “The Peddler,” from his first book to be translated into English, Shenzheners (2016).
 
Lecture by Joan Judge, October 28, 2016
 
On October 28, Professor Joan Judge of the York University Department of History gave a lecture at the UBC Department of Asian Studies on her new research project, “In Search of the Chinese Common Reader: Usable Knowledge and Wondrous Ignorance in the Age of Global Science.” Professor Judge’s presentation offered an ethnography of Chinese readers of the late Qing and Republican periods, focusing on the genre of daily-use encyclopedias known as “complete compendia of myriad treasures” (wanbao quanshu) and the street side bookstalls which proffered avidly consumed—and widely condemned—cheap reading material. Her talk covered questions such as: Who were the common readers of this period? What information did they consider useful? And where did they turn to find it? Professor Judge also led a graduate methodology seminar for students of literature, cinema, and history on “horizontal reading,” drawing examples from her most recent book, Republican Lens: Gender, Visuality, and Experience in the Early Chinese Periodical Press (California, 2015).
 
Lectures by Darryl Sterk, October 31 - November 2
 
From October 31 to November 2, the Modern Chinese Culture Seminar hosted Professor Darryl Sterk, an acclaimed translator and faculty member in the Graduate Program in Translation and Interpretation at National Taiwan University, for a series of events at UBC. On October 31, Professor Sterk spoke to 70 undergraduate students in Professor Alison Bailey’s course “Fiction and Film from Modern Taiwan” about a novel he translated, Wu Ming-yi’s The Man with the Compound Eyes. The following day he offered a graduate seminar on English-Chinese literary translation, discussing both how to translate and how to bring a translation to market. On November 2, Professor Sterk spoke at the UBC First Nations Longhouse about the state of indigenous filmmaking in Taiwan, followed by a screening of LOKAH LAQI: Hang in There, Kids! (2016), the most recent feature film by director Laha Mebow.

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“Inventing Nana Hsu: Creativity in Academic Writing,” Lecture by Professor Joseph R. Allen at Harvard University, November 18, 2016

​In the fall of 1948, a young woman in Shanghai left behind her high school Chinese literature textbook just as Communist forces made their way into the city and the Nationalists beat a hasty retreat to Taiwan. In 2011, Professor Joseph R. Allen chanced upon the textbook at the Shanghai Library, when he was collecting materials related to middle school Chinese literature textbooks in the Republican period. During his visit to Harvard University on November 18, 2016, Professor Allen, Professor Emeritus of Chinese Literature and Cultural Studies at the University of Minnesota, shared with a roomful of faculties, graduate students, and visiting scholars how he came to discover the erstwhile owner of that textbook, Ms. Nana Hsu. The textbook was filled with Nana’s numerous jottings, including the name of “Wang Yunwu.” It turned out that Nana Hsu was the niece of Wang Yunwu, publisher and former Nationalist minister of finance. More surprisingly, Professor Allen found Nana Hsu and they established contact in 2014. The audience enjoyed Professor Allen’s talk, which was like a detective story imbued with personal imagination.