Spring 2019 Events

May Fourth @ 100: An International Symposium on China and the World, 1919-2019 Harvard University, April 12-13, 2019

On April 12-13, 2019, David Wang (Harvard University) and Song Mingwei (Wellesley College) hosted “May Fourth @ 100: An International Symposium on China and the World, 1919-2019.” Bringing in scholars from across China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, and Korea, as well as North America and Europe, the two-day event featured presentations about topics ranging from the impact and legacy of the May Fourth movement on the Korean peninsula to the beginnings of the ex libris tradition and their later collection. The symposium features two keynote speakers. On the first day, Rudolph Wagner (Heidelberg University) spoke about “Reconstructing May Fourth: The Role of Communication, Propaganda, and International Actors,” while on the second day Chen Pingyuan (Peking University) delivered a lecture entitled “From ‘Touches of History’ to ‘Exercises in Thought’: My Views on May Fourth and May Fourth Studies.” Overall, the symposium featured 21 individual presentations by both junior and senior scholars representing the humanistic disciplines. Each day concluded with round table discussion; the first day represented the voices of established scholars in the field while the second day concluded with a panel of graduate students, the “new youth” of the field. The event was attended by approximately 100 people each day and all panels were followed by robust discussions between the audience and presenters.

Below are links to audio recordings of both keynote speeches, hosted by the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard: https://soundcloud.com/fairbank-center/reconstructing-may-fourth-keynote-speech-by-rudolf-wagner; https://soundcloud.com/fairbank-center/may-fourth-keynote-speech-by-chen-pingyuan.