Chinese Studies

“Contemporary Theater Art” Seminar Series No. 9: "Comedies in contemporary Chinese theatre - a sudden boom"
2022-03-16 13:00 - 14:30 (Europe/Helsinki) | Online
Speaker: Sabine Heymann, Dr. Anna Stecher
Zoom Meeting: https://uni-goettingen.zoom.us/j/97996297643
Meeting ID: 979 9629 7643
Language: English
Organizer:
The Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Göttingen
The Department of Theater, Film and TV Arts at Nanjing University
Partner:
The Center for Modern East Asian Studies at the University of Göttingen
The Academic Confucius Institute at the University of Göttingen
The Journal of Ying Ming Theater
The Chinese Students and Scholars Association in Göttingen
Content:
Sabine Heymann in conversation with Anna Stecher about her new book „Die Konjunktur her Komödie im China der Gegenwart“ (The boom of comedies in contemporary China) – which presents six current successful comedies from China in German translation.
Chinese theatre is not famous for comedies. As far as we know, up to now no Western book has been explicitly dedicated to this topic. However, comedies are among the most watched and discussed plays in contemporary Chinese theatre of recent years – and someone might even argue, that in present time comedy has become the most serious theatrical expression on the Chinese stage. Entangled with the commercialization of theatre, new cultural structures and the changing of urban audiences, the ques-tion is: How is this phenomenon to be understood? As a sudden boom influenced by narrative conven-tions of Western cinema? As a special expression of a millennial tradition of entertainment – and cri-tique? It has to be said: comedies as an own genre didn’t really exist within the Chinese theatre tradi-tion. On the other hand: elements of comedy have always been an important piece of the big xiqu tragedies.
While Chinese audiences are familiar with actors and plays, academic research does not appear to be interested in contemporary comedies, not to mention possible readers and audiences outside China, which have hardly heard of them. This was the reason for Anna Stecher and her colleague Xu Jian in Beijing to plan a book project focusing on contemporary Chinese comedies. It presents some of the most popular recent plays, written by Nick Yu, Wen Fangyi, Huang Weiruo, Lin Weiran, Guo Shixing and Li Jing. It also aims to propose different approaches towards Chinese theatre – every play in translation is introduced by an expert from the fields of Chinese studies or Theatre studies. In addition, it intends to contextualize the recent phenomenon of comedies within different fields, such as the social reality in contemporary China and the history of comedy in China and to discuss questions like: Which topics are contemporary Chinese comedians interested in? How can this phenomenon be understood in the con-text of 20th and 21st century in China? How can these comedies be understood in Europe? Last but not least, it aims at exploring comedy as a text for intercultural communication. When watching theatrical comedy performances on stage or on tape you think: what the heck is so funny about them? Questions like these are discussion topics of the the book – and some more will be addressed in the “Contempo-rary Theater Art” Seminar Series.
Short Bio:
Sabine Heymann – the managing director of the ZMI (Interdisciplinary Research Center for Media and Interactivity) at the University of Giessen from the foundation in 2001 until 2017, theatre critic and journalist, translator of theatre texts, fiction and non-fiction books, as well as an expert on the theatre scenes in Italy and China. Already during her studies of German and Romance studies at the University of Giessen she had been working as a cultural journalist and theatre critic for the German newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau and the German public-service television and radio broadcaster Hessischer Rundfunk. From 1981 to 1994 she was a cultural correspondent in Rome, where she worked for several important German newspapers, the prestigious theatre review Theater heute and radio stations. Various lectureships brought her to the Freie Universität Berlin, to the Universities of Mainz and Frankfurt am Main, as well as to the Institute for Applied Theatre Studies at the Univer-sity of Giessen, where she gave lectures about the subject of “Post-dramatic Theatre in Italy”. In 1994 she became curator of supporting programs at the Art and Exhibition Hall of the Federal Re-public of Germany in Bonn. She returned to the University of Giessen in 1996 and became the per-sonal assistant of the President of the University of Giessen. She started working on Chinese theatre with the moderation of the Workshop “One table two chairs” at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin) in 2000, followed by several journeys and work stays in different parts of China. In 2009 she published a report about the theatre scene in Shanghai in Theater heute. She took part on several European-Chinese culture dialogues, conferences and workshops of Goethe Institut and EUNIC as well as within the cooperation between ZMI and Shanghai Theatre Academy. In 2011 she curated the third German-Chinese Theatre Forum in Chongqing (Goethe Institut). She gave lectures and took part on scientific round-tables in Shanghai, Hamburg, Munich, Salzburg, Weimar, Hellerau, Frankfurt etc. and in 2015 she moderated the panel about New German Musiktheater inside the in-ternational conference “Turning Point of the Theatre” (Shanghai). Her book “Contemporary theatre in China” (Alexander Verlag, Berlin, published in 2017 together with Cao Kefei and Christoph Lep-schy) immediately became a reference work on the subject in Germany. At present, she is concerned by translations, publishing of scientific essays, teaching at different universities.
Anna Stecher
Dr. Anna Stecher is an assistant professor at the Institute of Sinology at Ludwig-Maximilians- Universi-tät (LMU) Munich. She studied Oriental History at the University of Bologna and Modern Chinese Litera-ture at Beijing Normal University (MA and PhD). She also holds a PhD (Dr. phil) in Theatre Studies from LMU. Her main research interests are Chinese theatre and modern Chinese literature. She is the author of a book-length study on Lin Zhaohua, China’s most influent theatre director of the late 20th and early 21st century (Im Dialog mit dem chinesischen Schauspieljahrhundert. Studien zum Theater von Lin Zhao-hua), co-editor of a volume with contemporary Chinese plays (Chinas Schauspiel. Nah am Nerv. Sechs Stückübersetzungen), and co-translator of a collection of sanqu-songs from Yuan China (Lieddichtungen aus der Yuan-Zeit). Her publications further include a number of literary translations from Chinese.

Waiting for Testing: Rewriting Theater History - A Workshop by Tian Gebing and WANG Yanan
2022-04-13 13:00 - 15:00 | VG 3.104, the University of Göttingen, Platz der Göttinger Sieben 7, Göttingen, 37073
We are very honored to invite Director TIAN Gebing and Choreographer WANG Yanan. They will host the workshop at the University of Göttingen on April 13 and 14. Amid the commonly experienced disorientation in this game-changing crisis, the workshop “Waiting for Testing – Rewriting Theatre History” proposes to hold a discussion on the history of the past two decades to look again at how, in contemporary performance, fugitive resistance and personal insurgence have formed biographies of surprise, as well at how collective heterogeneous energy was generated through fragmentary and inorganic connections, against the backdrop of the development of socio-historical space and power landscape in China. Director Tian will also briefly introduce his new performance at the Humboldt Forum in Berlin. He will lead the workshop from the modern history of East-West exchanges since the 18th century to enter topics such as “revolution” and “colonization”, trying to initiate discussions from a historical and macro perspective.

Time: April 13, 1: 00 PM-3: 00 PM (TIAN)
Venue: VG3.104, the University of Göttingen
The first in-person event is limited to 40 attendees. Scan the QR code on the poster to register.
TIAN Gebing is a director, curator, and writer. He graduated from the Central Academy of Drama in Beijing in 1991. In 1997 he initiated the founding of Paper Tiger Studio. Over the past 20 years, he has created a large number of artistic works and events mixing visual arts and performance. His works are seen in international cities and festivals around the world. Early works are exemplified by “Killer is Not Cold and High Art” (1998), “Cool” (2006), “Reading” (2010). From 2010 on he has shifted his focus to transcultural research and collaboration. Works in this period include “Dekalog” (2016), “500 Meters: Kafka, Great Wall or Images from the Unreal World and Daily Heroism” (2017), “Infection, State of Emergency, Beethoven” (2020). Further in 2014 “Totally Happy” premiered at Münchner Kammerspiele. In 2021, he collaborated with the ensemble of Muenchner Kammerspiele for “Hart Chamber Fragments”.

Time: April 14, 1: 00 PM-4: 00 PM (Wang)
Venue: VG3.104, the University of Göttingen
The second in-person event on April 14 is limited to 20 attendees. Scan the QR code on the poster to register.
WANG Yanan is a dancer and choreographer. She graduated from Beijing Dance Academy. Since 1999 Wang worked for ten years with Living Dance Studio and was part of productions such as Birth Report and Body Report. She toured international cities and festivals and won the ZKB Award at Zürcher Theater Spektakel. In 2004, she founded Le Se Dance Studio and has created works such as Le Se 1, Le Se 2, House, etc. She collaborated with artists with various backgrounds and toured in European countries. She has been part of Paper Tiger works since 2001, as a performer, concept, and choreography. In 2014, she was commissioned by Hong Kong Arts Festival for Iron Horse. In 2014 she collaborated with Münchner Kammerspiele and Goethe Institute (China) for Totally Happy. In 2016 she was commissioned by Stary Teatr Kraków for “Dekalog”. In 2017 she worked with Thalia Theater Hamburg to create 500 Meters: Kafka, Great Wall or Images from the Unreal World, and Daily Heroism. In 2021 she collaborated again with Münchner Kammerspiele for “Heart Chamber Fragments”.
Initiator: Dr. Yumin Ao
Assistants: Nathalie Morenings, Jiayue Li
Organizers:
The Department of East Asian Studies of the University of Göttingen; The Department of Theater, Film and TV Arts of Nanjing University; The Academic Confucius Institute at the University of Göttingen
Partners:
The Center for Modern East Asian Studies; The Journal of Ying Ming Theater; The Chinese Students and Scholars Association in Göttingen

"Contemporary Theater Art" Seminar Series
2022-04-20 14:00 - 16:00
Ms. ZHU Yi, a New York-based bilingual playwright, is to give a talk on “Writing New Plays in China and the US” on April 20th.
Zoom Link: https://uni-goettingen.zoom.us/j/98307551103
Professor Xiaomei CHEN from the University of California, Davis, will present a talk about “Performing the Socialist State” on May 4th.
Zoom Link: https://uni-goettingen.zoom.us/j/95966904122
For more information about the events and the guest speakers, please visit https://yingmingtheater.com/chinese-culture-seminar-series/.
Kind regards,
Yumin

Lecture Kai Vogelsang (Universität Hamburg): China’s Fragmented Modernity
2022-04-22 12:00 - 14:00 | KWZ 0.610 sowie Online
April 22, 2022, 12:00 PM Amsterdam, Berlin, Rome, Stockholm, Vienna
On Campus: KWZ 0.610 (Heinrich-Düker-Weg 14, 37073 Göttingen)
On Zoom: For registration, please use this zoom link.
When modern concepts and institutions entered China in the early 20th century, they met a society which was quite unlike its European and American counterparts. While functional differentiation, especially in the cities, did make its appearance, Chinese society was still characterized by a fragmentary substructure made up of so many families, lineages, and personal networks. This paper will introduce the concept of segmentary society and present some preliminary thoughts on how this social structure affected the formation of Chinese modernity: the concepts of a public vs. private sphere, the individual, social classes, and others.
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This lecture is part of the lecture series New Perspectives on Modernity in China.
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Organizers:
Prof. Dr. Axel Schneider, University of Göttingen
Prof. Dr. Thomas Fröhlich, University of Hamburg

Global China Conversations #9: Diskussionsreihe mitorganisiert durch das CeMEAS - Centre for Modern East Asian Studies
2022-04-28 11:00 - 12:00 | Online
Sprecherinnen
Prof. Dr. Doris Fischer, Universität Würzburg
Veronique Dunai, IHK Frankfurt am Main
Dystopie eines autoritären Überwachungsstaats oder moderne Vision datenbasierter Regierungsführung? Das chinesische Sozialkreditsystem hat seit seiner offiziellen Ankündigung im Jahr 2014 für zahlreiche kontroverse Debatten gesorgt. Was genau jedoch ist das neue Bonitätssystem und wie wirkt es sich auf die chinesische Wirtschaft und europäische Unternehmen in China aus? Mit dem neuen Fünfjahresplan (2021–2025) soll auch das Sozialkreditsystem weiterentwickelt und vor allem zentralisiert werden. In zwei nationalen Datenbanken werden Informationen über Unternehmen geführt und Schwarz- sowie Rotlisten veröffentlicht. Positive Entwicklungen sowie Verstöße einzelner Unternehmen gegen Bestimmungen und Gesetze werden in den Datenbanken aufgeführt. Das System soll so zu mehr Compliance führen, Vertrauens- und Kreditwürdigkeit von Unternehmen einsehbar machen, aber auch Sanktionen bei gröberen Vergehen ermöglichen. Welche administrativen und bürokratischen Herausforderungen kommen auf europäische Unternehmen zu? Welche Risiken bestehen für Unternehmen auf “schwarze Listen” zu kommen? Wie wirkt sich die starke Fragmentierung des Systems auf Unternehmen aus? Kann das Sozialkreditsystem dazu beitragen, Geschäftsbeziehungen zu verbessern? Wie entwickelt sich das Sozialkreditsystem weiter und welche Auswirkungen hat es auf das internationale Handelssystem? Diese und weitere Fragen diskutieren wir mit Ihnen und unseren Expertinnen in der neunten Global China Conversation.
Hier finden Sie mehr Information.

Lecture Rebecca Nedostup, Associate Professor of History & East Asian Studies (Brown University): Is Modern Chinese History Secular?
2022-04-29 16:00 - 18:00 | Online
April 29, 2022, 4 PM, Amsterdam, Berlin, Rome, Stockholm, Vienna
On Zoom: For registration, please use this Zoom link.
This lecture takes up the most fundamental construction of secularization – the separation of the religious realm from that of politics, philosophy, science, economics, and so on – and asks not simply how it has influenced modern Chinese history, but also historians’ imaginations of modern China. What are some routes by which the modern secularist narrative has been naturalized in considerations of the twentieth century, and where is it challenged or reinforced? Is a flourishing field of modern religious history sufficient to break down such barriers? How might other fields and disciplines redirect inquiry in positive critical directions? In its second part, the lecture will consider two cases of mid-twentieth-century transformations in conceptions of self, sovereignty, and community – one centered on sacrifice, the other on aid and recovery. These cases offer one possible set of methods among many, in which attention to scale and juxtaposition of sources portray the continued existence and reworkings of senses of space and time apart from the secular-nationalist narrative.
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This lecture is part of the lecture series New Perspectives on Modernity in China.

“Contemporary Theater Art” Seminar Series No. 10
2022-05-04 16:00 - 18:00 | Online
Topic: Performing the Socialist State
Speaker: Prof. Xiaomei Chen
Time: May 4, Wednesday, Europe 4:00 PM, California 7:00 AM, Beijing10:00 PM
Zoom Meeting: https://uni-goettingen.zoom.us/j/95966904122
Meeting ID: 959 6690 4122
Language: English
Organizer:
The Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Göttingen
The Department of Theater, Film and TV Arts at Nanjing University
Partner:
The Center for Modern East Asian Studies at the University of Göttingen
The Academic Confucius Institute at the University of Göttingen
The Journal of Ying Ming Theater
The Chinese Students and Scholars Association in Göttingen
Content
The lecture offers a quick overview of Xiaomei Chen’s forthcoming book, Performing the Socialist State: Moments, Crisis and Success of Modern Chinese Theater (Columbia University Press, 2022). It begins with the theatrical achievements of Tian Han, Hong Shen, and Ouyang Yuqian, three founders of spoken drama, and ask how their legacies in the Republican period played important roles in constructing socialist theater. She will demonstrate how these multi-faceted leaders provided the blueprints for the Maoist theater in the PRC, contrary to the conventional claim that the PRC theater is a total break-away from the Republican period. To this end and in this context, she will reflect on the continuities with the performing culture in the Republican period through examinations of “Rightist satirical comedies” in the 1950s, women’s theater and film “red classic” in the 1960s, scientists on stage in the Maoist and post-Maoist periods, and soldiers in transformation from the Republican, to the socialist, and finally, to the post-socialist stage. She will also explore the relationship between science and theater, music and theater, and artists and their collective identities as “new cultural workers.”
Short Bio
Xiaomei Chen is Distinguished Professor at the University of California at Davis where she teaches modern Chinese literature, film, and theater. She is the author of Occidentalism (1995), Acting the Right Part (2002), and Staging Chinese Revolution (2016). She is the editor of Reading the Right Text (2003) and Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Drama (2010) and co-editor, with Claire Sponsler, of East of West: Cross-Cultural Performances and the Staging of Difference (2000)”; with Julia Andrew, of Visual Culture in Contemporary China (2001), with Steven Siouan Liu, Hong Shen and the Modern Mediasphere in Republican-Era China (2016), and with Tarryn Chun and Siyuan Liu, Rethinking Socialist Theater Reform (2021).

“Contemporary Theater Art” Seminar Series
2022-05-04 16:00 - 18:00 | Online

Lecture Justin Ritzinger, Associate Professor of Religious Studies (University of Miami): Push and Pull: Toward a Taylorian Theory of Alternative Modernities
2022-05-06 16:00 - 18:00 | Online
May 6, 2022, 4 PM Amsterdam, Berlin, Rome, Stockholm, Vienna
On Zoom: For registration, please use this zoom link.
Religion occupies a vexed position in many visions of modernity. It stands as the embodiment of “tradition,” of the nonmodern, of the irrational. It is thus presumed to be condemned to a shrinking sphere of social and cultural life. This has typically been construed as a “challenge” to which religion must “adapt” lest it face extinction. This adaptation typically includes demythologization, rationalization, and social engagement. Such understandings of modernization, which I term “push models,” are useful but insufficient. They fail to account not only for religion’s continuing hold on the hearts of many but also the inspiration modernity gave to many modernizing figures. This talk will offer a counterbalancing “pull model,” drawing upon the account of moral frameworks in Sources of the Self to develop a Taylorian theory of the formulation of alternative modernities. Illustrated with reference to developments in religion in Republican China, this theory may offer new angles for understanding this process in other areas of cultures as well.
Justin Ritzinger is associate professor of Religious Studies at the University of Miami. He received his PhD in the Study of Religion from Harvard in 2010. His work focuses on modern and contemporary Chinese Buddhism. He is the author of a monograph on the reinvention of the cult of Maitreya, entitled Anarchy in the Pure Land, and articles dealing with eschatology, engagements with evolutionary theory, and international monastic exchange, as well as tourist development in the contemporary People’s Republic. He is currently working on an ethnographic study of a blue-collar lay Buddhist group in Taiwan. At the University of Miami, Ritzinger teaches courses in Asian religions.
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This lecture is part of the lecture series New Perspectives on Modernity in China.

Lecture Viren Murthy, Associate Professor of History (University of Wisconsin-Madison): Conservative Radicalism: Watsuji Tetsuro’s Critique of Civil Society and Its Implications for Chinese Intellectual History
2022-05-20 12:00 - 16:00 | KWZ 0.610 sowie Online
May 20, 2022, 12:00 PM Amsterdam, Berlin, Rome, Stockholm, Vienna
On Campus: KWZ 0.610 (University of Göttingen, Heinrich-Düker-Weg 14, 37073 Göttingen)
On Zoom: For registration, please use this zoom link.
Since the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as the Meiji state quickly modernized, Japanese intellectuals confronted the atomization and alienation associated with new forms of labor in civil society. Unlike in the family, where affective bonds govern human action, in civil society, people ventured into the world as purposive individuals entering into wage-contracts, which forced them into a means-end relationship. While scholars have dealt with attempts to overcome modernity twentieth century Japan, few have focused on the how the ideal of the family served as a trope to reconcile the antagonism between the individual and the community. The Japanese philosopher, Watsuji Tetsuro (1889-1960) critically drew on Hegel’s conception of the family to attack civil society. While his critique is clearly conservative, I argue that his position overlaps with leftist treatments of modern alienation and reveals the contradictions between spheres of the family and civil society. Watsuji develops his position in an essay written in the 1930s on the city, where he translates the civil society (bürgerliche Gesellschaft) as “interest society (rieki shakai)”, a sphere where people pursue personal gain. In response to this, he advocates rekindling to older forms of society, where work and family are not so clearly severed. Towards the end of my presentation, I examine the implications of Watsuji’s critique of urban life for the study of Chinese intellectual history. Specifically, in both contexts, my study suggests that we at times blur the lines between radical and conservative because they often have a similar object of critique, namely capitalism, which they each grasp with varying degrees of success.
Viren Murthy teaches transnational Asian History and researches Chinese and Japanese intellectual history in the Department of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
This lecture is part of the lecture series New Perspectives on Modernity in China.

Contemporary Theater Art” Seminar series No. 12: "Writing a Play Script and Teaching How to Write One"
2022-05-25 14:00 - 16:00 | Online
Topic: Writing a Play Script and Teaching How to Write One
Speaker: Guy Chenzi
Time: Wednesday, May 25, 2: 00 PM
Zoom Meeting: https://uni-goettingen.zoom.us/j/62861416226
Meeting ID: 628 6141 6226
Language: Chinese
Content：
1. Can we “learn” how to write a play? What are the pros and cons of playwriting “apprenticeships”?
2. Can we “teach” how to write a play? Is teaching playwriting equivalent to play diagnosis?
3. What is dramaturgy in the opinion of a playwright? How did I write “Hudec”?
Short bio:
Guo Chenzi, M.A., associate professor of Shanghai Theater Academy. Her works written include the dramas performed in black box theaters “Don’t Ask Who I Am”, “Love Slimming”, “Resurrection”, the musical drama “Zhong Kui”, “A Moment Is Not Forever”, the musical “Jews in Shanghai” (cooperation with others), stage plays “Hudec” and “Clear Ripples”, etc. She has published books Kunqu Opera: The Past Life I See in This Life, A Moment Is Not Forever – Guo Chenzi’s Drama Collection, The Curtain Opens – Guo Chenzi’s Drama Critic Collection and Chenzi Watching Dramas.
Organizers:
The Department of Theater, Film and TV Arts at Nanjing University
The Department of East Asian Studies, the University of Göttingen
Partners:
The Center for Modern East Asian Studies at the University of Göttingen
The Academic Confucius Institute at the University of Göttingen
The Journal of Ying Ming Theater
The Chinese Students and Scholars Association in Göttingen
写剧本，教写剧本
——编剧与编剧教学
1. 写剧本能“学”吗？编剧“学徒制”的利与弊。
2. 写剧本能“教”吗？编剧教学=剧本诊断？
3. 编剧眼中的Dramaturgy与《邬达克》的写作。
个人简介：
郭晨子，文学硕士，上海戏剧学院副教授。
编剧并上演的作品主要有小剧场话剧《别问我是谁》《爱情瘦身》《还魂记》、音乐话剧《钟馗》《瞬间不是永远》、音乐剧《犹太人在上海》（与人合作）、舞台剧《邬达克》《清清涟漪》等。出版有《昆曲 今生看到的前世》《瞬间不是永远——郭晨子剧作集》《大幕拉开——郭晨子戏剧评论集》和《晨子看戏》
组织：
南京大学戏剧影视艺术戏
哥廷根大学东亚系
合作：
哥廷根大学现代东亚研究中心
哥廷根大学学术孔子学院
《嘤鸣戏剧》
哥廷根大学中国学生学者联谊会

Lecture: Understanding the Alienated Self: The Interest in and Problematization of the Village in the Post May-Fourth Period 认识被化外的自我：后五四时期对乡村的关注和农村的问题化 Luo Zhitian 罗志田 (Distinguished Professor), History Department, Sichuan University
2022-05-27 10:00 - 12:00 | Online
May 27, 2022, 10:00 AM Amsterdam, Berlin, Rome, Stockholm, Vienna
On Zoom: For registration, please use this zoom link.
The lecture will be held in Chinese.
乡村曾被视为中国社会与文化的基础，在近代改称“农村”后，逐渐被认为出了问题。农村怎样成为“问题”及其所成的“问题”本身，既伴随着中国现代性展开的进程，也因其间的“现代”眼光所生成。这背后的一个要因，是城市的兴起和城乡的对立。由于城市被视为国家的主体，原来作为广土众民代表的乡村逐渐沦为化外，不复能表述自己。在五四后出现一种读书人想要了解自己国家的倾向，先是开始关注已近于未知的农村，观感褒贬参半；接着是被关注者逐渐问题化，见解贬多于褒；最后是问题化的农村升级为“破产”或“崩溃”，表述以贬为主。其间一个重要特点，是一些人因缺乏了解而把常态看成变态，甚至把国家整体的危难移植到农村身上。
This lecture is part of the lecture series New Perspectives on Modernity in China.
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Organizers:
Prof. Dr. Axel Schneider, University of Göttingen
Prof. Dr. Thomas Fröhlich, University of Hamburg
CeMEAS – Centre for Modern East Asian Studies & Department of East Asian Studies, University of Göttingen
Asia-Africa- Institute, Department for Chinese Language and Culture, University of Hamburg
Department of East Asian Studies, University of Göttingen
Sponsor:
Academic Confucius Institute, University of Göttingen

Global Conflicts, Global Collaboration: China in a Changing World Order
2022-06-02 - 2022-06-04 | Universität Göttingen und Online
This conference is organized by a Joint Center of Advanced Studies entitled “Worldmaking from Global Perspective: A Dialogue with China.” Funded by the Federal Ministry of Educa-tion and Research (BMBF) since November 2020, the Joint Center is characterized by its highly integrated network system. It brings together scholarly teams from Freie Universität Berlin, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, Ludwigs-Maximilians-Universität München and Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg. The Göttingen part of the project is directed by Prof. Dominic Sachsenmaier and explores the transformation of conceptions of world order between the late nineteenth century and the present.
The Joint Center’s annual conference takes place in Göttingen from June 2nd to June 4th, 2022. Two panels and a keynote that deal with China’s place in shifting global orders are available to a wider public, via zoom.
Overview Public-Panels June 3rd, 2022.
Register to attend at:
https://uni-goettingen.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN___I-HO8QSBWQd_jxvEkWHQ

Lecture: Ong Chang Woei on "Building a New Chinese State from the Northwest: The Proposal of Liu Guangfen (1843-1903)"
2022-06-03 10:00 - 12:00 | Online (Zoom)
On Zoom: For registration (required), please use this Zoom link.
Abstract:
At the beginning of his book Origins of the Modern Chinese State, Kuhn asks, “What is Chinese about China’s modern state?” The answer, Kuhn explains, is not to be found by supposing that there are some distinctive cultural qualities that will ensure that “China will always be China.” Rather, it is to be found by probing how the Chinese in the recent past dealt with what he calls “constitutional issues” that had already presented themselves before the West made its impact felt. Using Liu Guangfen 劉光蕡 (1843-1903) as a case study, I would like to ask a follow-up question: “What is northwestern about China’s modern state?” My assumption is that whatever “Chinese” problems existed could be better understood if we take the regional perceptions of such problems into consideration. In this talk, I will demonstrate that Liu Guangfen’s vision of building a modern Chinese state allows us to examine how the concern over nation-state building was shaped by regional experiences. I will also try to show that by studying a particular regional version of the “Chinese” nation-state, we can learn something important about the dynamics that shape the quest for a strong nation-state in modern China in general.
This lecture series is jointly organized by
Prof. Dr. Axel Schneider, University of Göttingen
Prof. Dr. Thomas Fröhlich, University of Hamburg
CeMEAS – Centre for Modern East Asian Studies & Department of East Asian Studies, University of Göttingen
Asia-Africa-Institute, Department for Chinese Language and Culture, Hamburg University
Department of East Asian Studies, University of Göttingen

Lecture.: The Creativeness of Modern Chinese Conservative Thinkers 王汎森: 近代保守思想家的創造性 Wang Fansen Academia Sinica
2022-06-10 10:00 - 12:00 | Online
June 10, 2022, 10:00 AM Amsterdam, Berlin, Rome, Stockholm, Vienna
On Zoom: For registration, please use this zoom link.
The lecture will be held in Chinese.
近代中國保守思想家中至少可以區分成兩類，第一類是本能地反對任何改變現狀的思想，第二類是回到一個重要的思想基盤（如宋明理學、大乘佛學）上戰鬥。在這次演講中，我想討論第二類思想家，以宋育仁（1859-1931）、熊十力（1885-1968）、唐文治（1865-1954）、劉咸炘（1896-1932）、錢穆（1895-1990）等人為例，討論一個思想史上的問題：當晚清以來的新派一直在變的時候，反對或批評他們的人，其實也一直在變換他們的言論，同時也變換他們對傳統的解釋，以便對應挑戰。
此外，我在比較仔細地審視他們的思路之後，認為他們不只是「回到本來」的樣子，而是有一個微妙的新創過程。譬如他們有時候會用「提高一格法」，把儒家思想，尤其是宋明理學，作一種新的調整、詮釋。借用卡夫卡的話：「當你凝視深淵時，深淵也在凝視你」。
This lecture is part of the lecture series New Perspectives on Modernity in China.
Organizers:
Prof. Dr. Axel Schneider, University of Göttingen
Prof. Dr. Thomas Fröhlich, University of Hamburg
CeMEAS – Centre for Modern East Asian Studies & Department of East Asian Studies, University of Göttingen
Asia-Africa- Institute, Department for Chinese Language and Culture, University of Hamburg
Department of East Asian Studies, University of Göttingen
Sponsor:
Academic Confucius Institute, University of Göttingen

Lecture: Chinese Intellectuals’ Rethinking of Science, Religion and Superstition in the 20th Century: From Yan Fu, Liang Qichao to New Confucians Huang Ko-Wu 黃克武, Academia Sinica
2022-06-17 10:00 - 12:00 | Online
June 17, 2022, 10:100 AM Amsterdam, Berlin, Rome, Stockholm, Vienna
On Zoom: For registration, please use this zoom link.
Late Qing and early Republican China has been regarded as a “secularized” age that ended “the era of classical learning” and opened the door to an empirical, scientific search for knowledge. With the progress of secularization, science gradually established its authoritative status. Thinkers of the May Fourth period, such as Hu Shi and Chen Duxiu, held science in high esteem and emphasized a clear-cut definition of science and superstition. To them, religions were superstitions that needed to be eliminated. This led to many debates. There were two famous debates in the early Republican period. One was the spiritualism debate and the other was the science and metaphysics debate. The latter was influenced by the former in terms of vocabulary and issues. This lecture will describe these two debates and use Yan Fu and Liang Qichao as two examples to illustrate their views on science, religion and superstition. Their views had a very complex origin. They attempted to rely on traditional spiritual resources to bridge East and West in order to build the moral and intellectual foundation needed for a modern state. New Confucians such as Tang Junyi and Mou Zongsan inherited the legacy of Yan and Liang. They resisted May Fourth scientism and anti-traditionalism, and thought more deeply about the serious issue of how Chinese tradition and Western modernity should converge.
Dr. Max K. W. Huang was born in Taipei, Taiwan in 1957. He received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in History from Nation Taiwan Normal University. He subsequently pursued his studies in the United Kingdom and the United States, receiving a second master’s degree from Oxford University and his Ph. D degree from Stanford University. He is a distinguished research fellow at the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica. His major fields are Ming-Qing studies and Modern Chinese intellectual history. He has published ten books and more than 100 articles. Dr. Huang’s most recent book is Yan Fu: The Man Who Enlightened China with His Pen (筆醒山河：中國近代啟蒙人嚴復, 廣西師範大學出版社，2022年).
This lecture is part of the lecture series New Perspectives on Modernity in China.
Organizers:
Prof. Dr. Axel Schneider, University of Göttingen
Prof. Dr. Thomas Fröhlich, University of Hamburg
CeMEAS – Centre for Modern East Asian Studies & Department of East Asian Studies, University of Göttingen
Asia-Africa- Institute, Department for Chinese Language and Culture, University of Hamburg
Department of East Asian Studies, University of Göttingen
Sponsor:
Academic Confucius Institute, University of Göttingen

Lecture: Prof Liu Kang (Duke University): Social Sciences, Humanities and Liberal Arts: China and the West
2022-06-20 16:15 - 17:45 | KWZ 0.609
Location: KWZ 0.609
Abstract:
The talk traces the genealogy of modern European modes of knowledge under the rubrics of ‘liberal arts’, as the origin and basis for modern China’s institutions and modes of knowledge, and then examines China’s ‘liberal arts’ as institution and modes of knowledge from the early years of the twentieth century to the present. The paper’s objective is to question the relationship between (Eurocentric) universalism and Chinese exceptionalism within the dominant modern Western institutions and modes of knowledge today.
Speaker:
Liu Kang is Professor of Chinese Studies, and Director of Duke Program of Research on China at Duke University. Professor Liu is Elected Member of Academia Europaea (The Academy of Europe) since 2015. He is the author of twelve books, and written widely in scholarly journals in both English and Chinese. In addition, He frequently contributes in the forms of op-eds, interviews, reviews, to American and Chinese print media and the internet media, on issues ranging from contemporary Chinese media and culture, globalization, to Marxism and aesthetics.

Lecture: What is to be Done? Literature and History in China’s Revolutionary Twentieth-Century, Rebecca Karl Professor of History, New York University
2022-06-24 10:00 - 12:00 | KWZ 0.607 or Zoom
June 24, 2022, 10:00 AM
On Campus: KWZ 0.607 (University of Göttingen, Heinrich-Düker-Weg 14, 37073 Göttingen)
On Zoom: For registration, please use this zoom link.
This talk will address the problem of literary and historical narrative in China’s twentieth century. Revolutionary time is a particular kind of time, requiring different kinds of narrative. In an analytical pass through a century of narrativizations/re-narrativizations, the talk will examine how successive revolutionaries and writers attempted to answer the constantly posed and re-posed radical question of “what is to be done” (shto delats? 怎么办?).
This lecture is part of the lecture series New Perspectives on Modernity in China.
.
Organizers:
Prof. Dr. Axel Schneider, University of Göttingen
Prof. Dr. Thomas Fröhlich, University of Hamburg
CeMEAS – Centre for Modern East Asian Studies & Department of East Asian Studies, University of Göttingen
Asia-Africa- Institute, Department for Chinese Language and Culture, University of Hamburg
Department of East Asian Studies, University of Göttingen
Sponsor:
Academic Confucius Institute, University of Göttingen

Lecture: Modernity without Alienation: New Possibilities for 20th century Chinese Buddhism, Eyal Aviv Assistant Professor of Religion, Department of Religion, George Washington University
2022-07-01 12:00 - 14:00 | KWZ 0.606 or Zoom
July 01, 2022, 12:00 PM (GMT +2) in Amsterdam, Berlin, Rome, Stockholm, Vienna
On Campus: KWZ 0.606 (University of Göttingen, Heinrich-Düker-Weg 14, 37073 Göttingen)
On Zoom: For registration, please use this zoom link.
Intellectuals, such as Nietzsche, Weber, and Adorno, described modernity as a period of alienation resulting from the collapse of pre-modern social and political structures and the disintegration of shared values. Alienation leaves the individual disconnected from organic relational networks from which humans derive a sense of meaning. But is alienation an inevitable side effect of modernity? In this talk, I will explore the examples of some leading Chinese Buddhist intellectuals in the modern period and argue that far from being alienated, Chinese Buddhists seized the significant changes of the period as an opportunity to transform Buddhism and adapt it to the new era. While they were aware of China’s predicament after the collapse of the imperial world order and the spread of colonialism, still, they approached it in an engaged and constructive spirit. In the talk, I will reflect on what prevents alienation from occurring and why not all modernisms were born alike.
This lecture is part of the lecture series New Perspectives on Modernity in China.
.
Organizers:
Prof. Dr. Axel Schneider, University of Göttingen
Prof. Dr. Thomas Fröhlich, University of Hamburg
CeMEAS – Centre for Modern East Asian Studies & Department of East Asian Studies, University of Göttingen
Asia-Africa- Institute, Department for Chinese Language and Culture, University of Hamburg
Department of East Asian Studies, University of Göttingen
Sponsor:
Academic Confucius Institute, University of Göttingen

Nationalism in China and Europe: Global Divergence and Convergence of an Idea
2022-07-06 14:00 - 15:30 | Oeconomicum OEC 0.169
Nationalism as a concept is often considered to be rooted in European experience. However, the introduction, translation, and appropriation of nationalism have also changed the course of history in East Asia. On this panel, Stefan Berger and Xin Fan contrast and compare the role of nationalism in the making and unmaking of modern China and Europe over the course of the twentieth century, and they ask, ––What is the role of nationalism in unifying or dismantling political formations? Why did it break Europe into multiple states but hold China together as a unitary political entity? To answer these questions, they return to the historical writings about the nation during the twentieth century and re-examine the global divergence and convergence of nationalism as an idea. Getting beyond the ethnic-centric framework of historical interpretations, the presenters attempt to forge a truly global dialogue on nationalism studies in the twentieth-first century.
The speakers:
Stefan Berger is Professor of Social History and Director of the Institute for Social Movements at Ruhr Universitaet Bochum. He is also executive chair of the Foundation History of the Ruhr in Bochum and a Honorary Professor at Cardiff University in the UK. He has worked extensively on comparative labour history, the history of historiography, nationalism, the theory of history, British-German relations, industrial heritage, the memory of social movements and the history of deindustrialization. His latest monograph is ‘History and Identity: How Historical Theory Shapes Historical Practice, Cambridge University Press, 2022.
Xin Fan is Associate Professor of History at the State University of New York at Fredonia. His research areas include Chinese intellectual history, historiography, and global history. He is the author of World History and National Identity in China: The Twentieth Century (Cambridge University Press, 2021), and he also coedited Receptions of Greek and Roman Antiquity in East Asia (Brill, 2018).
Access:
This event will take place in a hybrid format:
Venue: Universität Göttingen, Oeconomicum, OEC 0.169
Register to attend at:
https://uni-goettingen.zoom.us/meeting/register/u50udOipqT8sGdRzNIVLa3ur2xQH4Irc85c3

Lecture (Eugenio Menegon, Associate Professor of History, Boston University): Empire of Paper. Missionaries, Diplomats, and Early Sinologists as Social Carriers of Translingual Practices and Worldviews, through the Story of a Manuscript Vocabulary between Beijing and Rome, 1760s-1820s
2022-07-07 18:00 - 20:00 | VG 3.103
July 07, 2022, 18:00 (GMT +2) in Amsterdam, Berlin, Rome, Stockholm, Vienna
On Campus: VG 3.103 (University of Göttingen, Verfügungsgebäude, Platz der Göttinger 7, 37073 Göttingen)
On Zoom: For registration, please use this zoom link.
Dictionaries compiled in the last phase of the manuscript age (late 16th to early 19th century) acted as metaphorical soldiers of the “empire of paper” that European observers in China – predecessors of the modern China watchers – enlisted to crack the secrets of the Chinese language and to convert the Chinese to Christianity. Through them, information on China, its language, and culture circulated in Europe, and assisted the birth of academic sinology. Such texts also reflect the role of missionaries, diplomats, and sinologists as “social carriers” of a hybrid cultural worldview developed between Europe and China, and their translingual practices. The story of a vocabulary preserved at the Vatican Library, the object of this study, illuminates the past of the Catholic mission in imperial Beijing during the eighteenth century, and in particular the operations of the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith or de Propaganda Fide, the “ministry of missions” of the Holy See. It also shows how linguistic knowledge of Chinese was treasured and sought for by European diplomats, linguists, and missionaries alike, and how manuscript culture continued to have an important role in the cross-cultural circulation of knowledge about China well into the nineteenth century.
This lecture is part of the lecture series Conceptions of World Order and Their Social Carrier Groups.
Speaker:
Eugenio Menegon 梅歐金 (BA University of Venice Ca’ Foscari, Italy; MA & PhD, UC Berkeley) teaches Chinese history and world history at the Department of History at Boston University, and was Director of the Boston University Center for the Study of Asia in 2012-2015. His interests include Chinese-Western relations in late imperial times, Chinese religions and Christianity in China, Chinese science, the intellectual history of Republican China, the history of maritime Asia, and Chinese food history. He has been Research Fellow in Chinese Studies at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium), An Wang Post-Doctoral Fellow at Harvard University’s Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Boston University Humanities Center Junior and Senior Fellow, a Member of the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton, and Senior Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies at Boston College.
He has published widely, including the book Ancestors, Virgins, and Friars: Christianity as a Local Religion in Late Imperial China (Harvard University Press, 2009; recipient of the AAS 2011 Joseph Levenson Book Prize) centers on the life of Catholic communities in Fujian province between 1630 and the present. He is currently a Berenson Fellow at the Harvard Center for Italian Renaissance Studies – Villa “I Tatti” (Florence).
Organizers:
Prof. Dr. Dominic Sachsenmaier, University of Göttingen
Benjamin Creutzfeldt, PhD, University of Göttingen
Worldmaking from a global perspective: A Dialogue with China
Department of East Asian Studies, University of Göttingen
Sponsor:
University of Göttingen

Lecture Wang Hui (Professor of History, Tsinghua University): Heavenly Principle and the Trends of the Times: Some Thoughts on Confucianism
2022-07-08 10:00 - 12:00 | Online
July 08, 2022, 10:00 AM (GMT +2) in Amsterdam, Berlin, Rome, Stockholm, Vienna
On Zoom: For registration, please use this zoom link.
Between the 1920s and the 1940s, first Naitō Torajirō and then Miyazaki Ichisada introduced several important propositions regarding the Tang to Song transition, capitalism during the Song Dynasty, and East Asian early modernity. Since then, despite constant controversy, revision, and improvement, one Kyoto School proposition has garnered universal acclaim: there is a basic difference between the Tang and Song, and the Song Dynasty deserves special status in history. In the fields of Chinese intellectual history or philosophy, some of the characteristics of the Confucianism of the Northern and Southern Song dynasties (and especially the School of Principle of the Cheng brothers and Zhu Xi) have been of use to modern Confucian scholars as a reference for understanding the early modern in Chinese or East Asian history. Follow this trend, the basic principles of Confucianism are not only organized into the European philosophical categories of ontology and epistemology, but also into such historical categories as: an inward turn, rationalization, and secularization. So, was there an early modern in Chinese history, or how to interpret China and its “modernity”? This talk will take the establishment of the concept of heavenly principle as a clue to address the above issues.
This lecture is part of the lecture series New Perspectives on Modernity in China.
.
Organizers:
Prof. Dr. Axel Schneider, University of Göttingen
Prof. Dr. Thomas Fröhlich, University of Hamburg
CeMEAS – Centre for Modern East Asian Studies & Department of East Asian Studies, University of Göttingen
Asia-Africa- Institute, Department for Chinese Language and Culture, University of Hamburg
Department of East Asian Studies, University of Göttingen
Sponsor:
Academic Confucius Institute, University of Göttingen

The World of Everyday Political Thought: A Transcultural History of a 'Chinese' Rhetorical Curriculum, ca. 1200-1600
2022-07-11 13:00 - 14:30 | Waldweg 1.201 or Zoom
Speaker: Shoufu Yi (University of British Columbia)
On Campus: Hörsaal 1.201, Waldweg
On Zoom: The digital participation at this event is open to everyone who registers prior to the event: Registration
This talk has two goals. First, it develops a new approach to the studies of political theory and philosophy, one that I call everyday political thought. This approach invites us to explore how ordinary individuals were able to come up with remarkable ideas despite the fact that they were living under and working within different forms of oppressive powers. Second, employing everyday political thought as method, I provide a new narrative of the history of early modern political thought by excavating a rhetorical curriculum that flourished in East Eurasia. This rhetorical curriculum trained individuals to write official documents in literary Sinitic, a lingua franca of the regions. I use documents in Chinese, Mongolian, Manchu, and Persian, among other languages, to reconstruct how the curriculum took its shape under Mongol-ruled China, flourished in post-Mongol East Eurasia, until it was finally restructured under the Manchu Empire. Practicing both close and distant readings of a large number of previously untapped sources that have survived in different parts of the world, I show that this form of education enabled individuals thus trained to philosophize the state, bureaucracy, and counterfactual histories in their everyday settings. In sum, this talk seeks to demonstrate how new method and toolkits, combined with large corpora of overlooked materials, will allow us to write new kinds of intellectual histories that decenters Western Europe and China while foregrounding the theoretical contributions of “everyday” thinkers of different locals and traditions.
Further Details: https://www.worldmaking-china.org/en/veranstaltungen/lecture-The-World-of-Everyday-Political-Thought_-A-Transcultural-History-of-a-Chinese-Rhetorical-Curriculum-ca_-1200_1600.html

Hun 魂 and Po 魄: An ancient Chinese approach to human psyche and soul
2022-07-13 10:00 - 12:00 | KWZ 0.701 or Zoom
Dr. Dr. Dominique Hertzer
Visiting Lecturer, Department of East Asian Studies, University of Göttingen
July 13, 2022, 10:00 AM
On Campus: KWZ 0.701 Conference Room (University of Göttingen, Heinrich-Düker-Weg 14, 37073 Göttingen)
On Zoom: For online participation, please use this zoom link.
Is there only one soul? What is the relation between body and mind or is there only a body? We will explore the meaning and function of the Chinese concept of the human soul, as it is represented in the dynamic relation between spirit (shen 神), hun 魂 (etheral soul) and po 魄 (body soul). We will look into the ideas underlying the differentiation of these three aspects and see what are the consequences for the relationship of body and mind. Finally, we will discuss which impact this may have for our own understanding of the human psyche.
This lecture announcement is beyond our currently running lecture series.
Organizers:
Department of East Asian Studies, University of Göttingen

Arab-Chinese Entanglements in the Age of Global Empires
2022-07-18 13:00 - 14:30 | ZHG 104 or Zoom
Speaker: Wen Shuang (New York University of Shanghai)
This talk narrates four little-known stories of Arab-Chinese entanglement in the age of trans-imperial collaboration and competition in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Although much attention is paid to China’s relationships with the Middle East today, I argue that this relationship did not emerge out of nowhere. Chinese and Arab lands were not entirely separate worlds until recently. Rather they have been entangled in complex ways well before the turn of the twenty-first century. The discovery of these episodes of largely invisible interactions resulted from my original juxtaposition of primary sources in Arabic and Chinese from multi-sited research in Beijing, Cairo, Damascus, London, Nanjing, Taipei, Washington DC, and Zhangzhou.
On Campus: ZHG (Zentrales Hörsaalgebäude) 104
On Zoom: The digital participation at this event is open to everyone who registers prior to the event: Registration
Further Details: https://www.worldmaking-china.org/en/veranstaltungen/lecture-Arab-Chinese-Entanglement-in-the-Age-of-Global-Empires.html

Workshop: Islamic Pasts and Futures in East Asia’s Worldmaking
2022-08-23 11:00 | Historische Sternwarte, University of Göttingen, Geismar Landstraße 11, Göttingen, 37083
September 23, Friday
11:00 – 11:20 Opening and Introduction
• Dominic Sachsenmaier (University of Göttingen)
• Janice Hyeju Jeong (University of Göttingen)
• Mohammad Alsudairi (King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies)
11:30 – 14:00 Panel I. Visions and Instrumentalizations of Islam in Asia: Historical Trajectories
Chair: Janice Hyeju Jeong (University of Göttingen)
• Cemil Aydin (University of North Carolina Chapel Hill)
“Inter-Asian Muslim Experiences of World-Making and World-Breaking in the Long 20th Century”
• Ulrich Brandenburg (University of Zurich)
“Asia, Muslim Asia, and the Challenge to Geography”
• Yee Lak Elliot Lee (Leipzig University)
“Re-Territorialization of Hui Muslims in Early 20th Century China: Historical and Demographic Knowledge Production”
• Hale Eroglu (Bogazici University)
“The Awakened Muslim: Turkish Modernity in Chinese Muslim Reformist Thought”
15:30 – 16:30 Keynote Address by Selcuk Esenbel (Bogazici University)
“Islam and East Asia in World-Making: Local and Regional Maps Embedded into a Globalizing World”
17:00 – 18:45 Panel II. Crisis, Community, and Control in Altishahr/Xinjiang
Chair: Cemil Aydin (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill)
• Elke Spiessens (Leiden University, WWU Münster)
“CCP Policy towards Uyghur Islam in the 21st Century: What Changed?”
• Björn Alpermann (University of Würzburg)
“A Vanishing Act? Islam in Contemporary Xinjiang”
• Rachel Harris (SOAS University of London)
“Religious Experience and Manufactured Spectacle in Xinjiang”
September 24, Saturday
10:00 – 11:45 Panel III. The Question of “Muslim” Ethnicities and Minorities in “non-Muslim” Asia
Chair: Selcuk Esenbel (Bogazici University)
• Rian Thum (University of Manchester)
“Inter-Asian Islamophobia”
• Wlodzimierz Cieciura (University of Warsaw)
“Huizu – a Chinese ‘Muslim race’? Muslim Racialization and Self-Racialization in Modern China.”
• Yoko Yamashita (Sophia University)
“Multicultural Freedom and Discursive Modes of Control over Muslims in Contemporary Japan”

13:00 – 14:45 Panel IV. The Politics of “Acceptable” Islam: Aesthetics and Public Visibility
Chair: Liu Kang (Duke University)
• Yi Soojeong (Sogang Euro-MENA Institute)
“Social Integration in South Korea: Ban-Opticon and Recognition Struggle”
• Yang Yang (National University of Singapore)
“Traveling Muslim Men as Cultural Assets: Popularized Islam, Heritage Diplomacy, and the Silk Road in China”
• Michael Malzer (University of Würzburg)
“From Arabian Nights to China’s Bordeaux: the Vanishing Role of Islam in Yinchuan, Ningxia.”
15:00 – 16:00 Keynote Address by Engseng Ho (Duke University)
“Mobile Muslims and Majoritarian States: Open and Shut Cases”
16:30 – 18:15 Panel V. Dwelling in Migration and Displacement: Tensions and Opportunities between Global Expanses and Westphalian Borders
Chair: Zhu Guohua (East China Normal University)
• Francesca Rosati (University of Leiden)
“Muslim Women in Northwestern China between Islamization and Chinafication: The Case of Women’s Madrasas in Linxia”
• Leila Chebbi (CETOBaC)
“In the ways of Tabligh: Sinicization as a Survival Strategy for a Global Islamic Revivalist Movement?”
• Atsushi Yamagata (University of Wollongong)
“Responses to the Syrian Refugee Crisis in Japan”
There is a limited number of seats for attendance onsite. Please contact xiaoyang.zhao@stud.uni-goettingen.de for inquiries.
Please find here the program of the workshop as a PDF.

ABGESAGT: Veranstaltung für Studierende: 07.10.2022 Praxisbezogene Chinakompetenz
2022-10-07 10:00 - 12:00 | VG 1.101
Nach zwei Jahren Pandemie eine einmalige Möglichkeit, Arbeitswelten, Berufseinstieg und Kompetenzen für den chinesischen Arbeitsmarkt kennen zu lernen und zu diskutieren!
Zeit: 07.10.2022, 10:00
Ort: VG 1.101
Herr Wolfgang Krieger vom BDI (Bundesverband der Deutschen Industrie) in Peking wird einen kurzen Vortrag halten und dann für ein Q&A zur Verfügung stehen.
Wolfgang Krieger ist Deputy Chief Representative des Bundesverbands der Deutschen Industrie (BDI e.V.) in China. Er hat Regionalwissenschaften Ostasien und Volkswirtschaftslehre an der Universität zu Köln studiert. In seiner Arbeit beschäftigt er sich mit dem regulatorischen Umfeld in China, sowie den Wirtschaftsbeziehungen zwischen der EU und China.
Herr Max Hiller von der Fachgruppe Sinologie wird die Veranstaltung eröffnen und moderieren.
Wir freuen uns auf zahlreiches Erscheinen!

Informationsveranstaltung für alle Erstsemester in den BA-Studiengängen des OAS
2022-10-21 10:00 - 12:00 | Kulturwissenschaftliches Zentrum, KWZ 0.602, Heinrich-Düker-Weg 14, Göttingen, 37073
Das Ostasiatische Seminar lädt alle Erstsemester für den 21. Oktober 2022 von 10:00-12:00 Uhr zu einer Informationsveranstaltung über unsere Bachelorstudiengänge in das Kulturwissenschaftliche Zentrum KWZ 0.602 ein.
Da wir an diesem Tag bereits die Gruppeneinteilung für den Sprachunterricht vornehmen werden, wird die Teilnahme dringend empfohlen.
Hier gelangen Sie zum Orientierungsphasen-Programm des Ostasiatischen Seminars.

Information event for all first semester students in the Master Modern Sinology
2022-10-21 12:00 - 13:00 | KWZ 0.602
The Department of East Asian Studies invites all first semester students to an information event on October 21, 2022 from 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. The meeting takes place in room KWZ 0.602.
Here you get to the orientation phase program of the Department of East Asian Studies.
Here you can find the course overview of the OAS for the winter term 2023/23.
Link to the explanatory video for creating a timetable in EXA.

Sophia Kidd : Ontology of Self in Translating China's New Silk Roads
2022-10-26 16:00 - 18:00 | KWZ 0.609
Sophia Kidd
Title: Ontology of Self in Translating China’s New Silk Roads
KWZ 0.609
Abstract:
In this lecture, I discuss how the ontological unit of ‘self’ cannot be taken for granted when discussing narratives, translation of, and methodology for understanding China’s New Silk Roads. I will do this by analyzing how the ontology of self remains fluid in translation of four key terms in China’s BRI narrative: ‘Five Pillars (Wu Tong 五通)’, ‘Chinese Dream (Zhongguo Meng 中国梦),’ ‘Community of Common Destiny (Mingyun Gongtongti 命运共同体) ,’ and ‘harmony in diversity (he er bu tong 和而不同) .’ First, we will look at the epistemological and ontological ‘self’ in Western thought in contradistinction to the Chinese notion of ‘self (ziwo 自我).’ By examining selected uses of the term ziwo in Chinese literature over the past two thousand years, we arrive at a constructed Chinese notion of self which resembles the epistemological more than the ontological Western ‘self,’ while failing to reach equivalency with either. This understanding will inform our lexical and contextual analysis of Wu Tong, Zhongguo Meng, Mingyun Gongtongti, and he er bu tong.
