​On September 4, 2019, Professor Pauline Yu, President Emeritus of the American Council of Learned Scholars (ACLS), delivered the final lecture in the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation’s 30th Anniversary Lecture Series, titled “A New Day Is Upon Us: Building the Field of Chinese Studies.” Her lecture traced the foundations of China Studies in North America from the late-nineteenth century to today. In particular, she argued against the commonly held assumption that Area Studies developed out of a Cold War mentality in the wake of World War II, and instead demonstrated how such a concept has already emerged as early as the turn of the twentieth century. Yu also outlined the formations and contributions of funds and research centers that focus on China and East Asia, from Luce and Ford Foundations to the ACLS and, as of 1989, the CCK Foundation. The lecture was presented to a full room of distinguished scholars and guests, including Stephen Owen, Wai-yee Lee, Mark Elliott, Karen Thornber, and Peter Bol. The discussion that followed was lively and largely focused on the issue of how to weather the current political climate and confrontational atmosphere between China and the US. The event was co-sponsored by the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University.

The 13th Annual Meeting of the Chinese Medieval Studies Workshop was held at Rutgers University on May 4, 2019. This workshop, started by Professor Wendy Swartz and funded by the Chiang Ching-kuo (CCK) Foundation, is a major academic forum for the exchange of ideas and the advancement of scholarship. Distinguished scholars from across the United States working on medieval Chinese literature, history, religion, and visual culture, have been meeting annually in this forum since 2003 to discuss their current research and ways to expand the field. Ground-breaking research and methodology first presented at these workshops have found their way into notable and award-winning books and journal articles.

​This workshop has also served as a lively forum that encourages scholars to collaborate and exchange ideas. Two publications have resulted from this Workshop. The first of its kind, Early Medieval China: A Sourcebook (Columbia University Press, 2014) presents a broadly-based selection of important texts of the period in the disciplines of literature, historiography, art history, and religion. It offers new ways of conceptualizing the early medieval period by focusing less on modern disciplinary boundaries and more on the issues and discursive spheres that animated the era. The second collaborative book, Memory in Medieval China: Text, Ritual, and Community, was published by Brill Press in 2018. This volume, edited by Wendy Swartz and Robert Campany, is the first English language book that treats the subject of memory from various perspectives: from the role of literary genre in memory construction to commemorative writings, cultural memory, nostalgia, and mnemonic practices.

This Workshop has also contributed greatly to expanding the field by providing a venue for younger, up-and-coming scholars to participate in major scholarly discussions. Over the years, graduate students from Columbia, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, The University of Pennsylvania, and Rutgers have attended the meetings. This workshop hopes to build on the momentum it has gathered over the past sixteen years and continue to be a major forum for scholarly exchange.