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Lecture Series
“Rethinking China” Lecture Series
Founded in 2001, the Institute for Chinese Studies sees its mission to study the Chinese world in its full regional, linguistic, cultural and ethnic complexity. As the People’s Republic of China is reemerging as a major international force, it is important to look to beyond a monolithic perception of “China” and instead develop a dynamic, diverse and multicultural view of what is designated as “China” and “Chinese.”
In the current hype surrounding China’s resurgence, history often gets lost. To counter such amnesia, ICS seeks to foster historical perspectives designed to show “China” as a process of complex interactions between shifting centers and peripheries, indigenous peoples and internal settlers, foreign sojourners and immigrant communities, universalist aspirations and ethnic minority rule, transregional and cross-border exchanges, and between competing historiographies within China and beyond.
In order to explore these multiple linguistic and cultural facets, the 2006-07 ICS Lecture Series “Rethinking China” was born. Topics to be explored by speakers in the coming year include the border-crossing of shamanistic practices, Tibetan Buddhism and state-building in modern China, Southwestern Chinese folklore, Taiwanese documentary filmmaking, and contemporary Chinese-Malay writers among others.
OSU College of Humanities coverage of this lecture series:
http://humanities.osu.edu/news/express/yr2006/september_article03.cfm
Fall 2007 "Rethinking China" Presentation
November 2, 2007
Steven B. Miles (Washington University in St. Louis)
Lecture: “Social Mobility, Local Identity, and Cultural Production in Nineteenth-Century Guangzhou”
Time and Location: 1:30pm; 110 Orton Hall
Steven Miles is an assistant professor in the History Department at Washington University in St. Louis. His research interests encompass the social and cultural history of early modern China, including the geographical and social mobility in the creation of a Cantonese frontier along the West River basin during the early modern era. In his presentation, Prof. Miles will revisit the main themes of his recent book, The Sea of Learning: Mobility and Identity in Nineteenth-Century China (Harvard University Asia Center, 2006). Prof. Miles describes how he came to focus on Guangzhou’s famous Xuehaitang academy as part of a shift from intellectual history to local social and cultural history. He argues that the group of scholars most closely associated with the Xuehaitang was largely composed of urban, in-migrating, socially ascendant elites. Through the production of localist texts celebrating “Cantonese” culture, literati associated with the Xuehaitang articulated a local identity different from that found in texts produced by the lineage-based elites of the Pearl River delta hinterland.
“RealWorlds” Lecture Series
Real Professionals - Real Experiences - Real World Business. Within the context of Ohio State’s commitment to becoming a truly global university, ICS's new "RealWorlds" Lecture Series will feature a diverse line-up of successful business professionals. These professionals will share their experiences, expertise, and insights on international careers and related issues. The RealWorlds lecture series aims to stimulate students’ imaginations, facilitate the development of an international perspective, raise interest in international study, and demonstrate the many paths towards global careers (particularly relating to China and Asia). Download the RealWorlds flier here.
Fall 2007 “RealWorlds” Presentations
October 24, 2007
Jeanne Bartholomew; International Business and Development Consultant
Presentation: "So…you want to pursue an International Career?”
Location: 305 Schoenbaum Hall
Time: 12:30pm
Jeanne Bartholomew is an OSU graduate and Ohio entrepreneur with, quite literally, a world of experience. Over the past 15 years, Jeanne has negotiated business deals in China, managed or consulted on World Bank and UNDP projects in Mongolia, provided marketing advice to apple growers in Moldova, and even witnessed first-hand the “Rose Revolution” in Georgia while serving as a rural development specialist on a USDA project. Jeanne has authored, coauthored, edited and translated numerous publications, project proposals and studies for governments, NGOs, and businesses around the globe. As the inaugural speaker in ICS’s new “RealWorlds Lecture Series”, Jeanne will share her vast experience, provide valuable insight, and discuss the realities involved in preparing for and pursuing an international career. Students, faculty, and members of the general public are welcome to attend what promises to be a fascinating presentation.
November 1, 2007
Orian Williams; Financial Leadership Development Program Analyst, Johnson & Johnson
Presentation: "Local goes Global: A recent OSU alumnus's story of building an international career in business"
Location:330 Schoenbaum Hall
Time:12:30pm
Recent Ohio State alumnus, Orian Williams, has made it his life's passion to become a leading expert on the Asian Pacific Rim. During his time as an undergraduate he was able to become involved in a number of activities and programs both within and outside of the traditional classroom, which would ultimately prepare him for a career including a number of international travel assignments in Asia and elsewhere. Since graduating from OSU his work in financial audit in the Pacific Rim and domestically for a Fortune 100 company has taken him to Taiwan, China, South Korea, and Japan. Orian will describe the components of his collegiate experiences that best prepared him for his role as a financial analyst working globally, including coursework, international study, language study and tutoring, internships, and extracurricular activities that were integral to his future in global business markets. Orian holds dual degrees in Business Administration (Fisher) and International Studies (Arts & Sciences). Orian looks forward to the chance to share his story with students and members of the university community interested in international studies and international careers.
November 16, 2007
Edward Fisher; Property and Casualty Practice Leader, Oswald Companies
Lecture: “From Toys to Pet Food: Product Liability, the US, and China”
Location:305 Schoenbaum Hall
Time:12:30pm
Edward Fisher is Property and Casualty Practice Leader and one of the senior Employee-Owners of the Oswald Companies—the largest independent broker in the state of Ohio (45th in the US), with $45,000,000 in revenue, 400 employees, and a 115 year history. Ed has over 25 years of experience as an insurance professional, and has worked on the risk management programs of some of the world’s largest companies including General Motors, TRW, British Petroleum, Marathon Oil and Owens-Illinois. Recent news headlines have highlighted the potential risk to children, adult consumers, US distributors, US retailers, and “iconic” brand global manufacturers arising from deficient products manufactured and imported into the U.S. marketplace. Even international relations between the US and China are being affected by these events. Ed Fisher’s presentation will explore the legal background, product liability/risk management issues impacting US distributors, US brand manufacturers, Chinese manufacturers, and US governmental agencies. What are the legal liability ramifications to US companies? How will US consumers respond? Are there insurance solutions? The timely subject matter of Ed Fisher’s presentation will be of interest to all consumers, business professionals, and students interested in a global career.
Spring 2007 “Rethinking China” Lectures
April 13, 2007
Christopher Atwood (Indiana University)
Lecture: "Clansmen from the Barbarian Tribes: Can We Actually Find Them North of China?"
Time and Location: 1:30pm; Room 251 Hagerty Hall
 Christopher Atwood received his PhD from Indiana University in 1994. His research interests include Mongolian nationalism in Mongolia and Inner Mongolia (China); Mongol and Chinese elites in the Mongol Empire; family history and demography. His current projects include translations of Chinese primary sources on the Mongol world empire; family and marriage in Mongolia's imperial and Qing-era upper class. Dr. Atwood’s publications include Encyclopedia of Mongolia and the Mongol Empire and Young Mongols and Vigilantes in Inner Mongolia’s Interregnum Decades 1911-1931.
April 19, 2007
Sarah Fraser (Chair, Department of Art History; Northwestern University)
Lecture: “Antiquarianism or Primitivism?: The Edge of the Chinese Imagination in Republican China (1928-1947)”
Time and Location: 5pm; Room 162 Hopkins Hall
 Dr. Sarah Fraser teaches and researches primarily in Chinese painting with an emphasis on questions of gender, national identity formation, and artistic enterprise. Her books include Performing the Visual: Buddhist Wall Painting Practice in China and Central Asia, 618-960. (Stanford University Press, 2004), which concerns Chinese theories of spontaneity and workshop production in the middle period. Fraser's edited volume on Buddhist material culture published by the Shanghai Fine Arts Publishers, 2003, Merit, Opulence and the Buddhist Network of Wealth, contains the Chinese proceedings of a major conference she organized with Peking University in 2001. Fraser also directs an international research project on Buddhist art at Northwestern. Under the auspices of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, this path breaking 3-D digital archive features wall paintings and manuscripts from western China in a multimedia environment. She served as Director of Graduate Studies from 2000-2003 and now serves as Chair. This event is co-hosted with OSU Department of History of Art: http://history-of-art.osu.edu/ . For more information, please contact Prof. Susan Huntington Huntington.1@osu.edu.
April 26-27, 2007
Dan Shao (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign)
Lecture: “From Conquerors to the Colonized: Manchus' Pasts in the Present”
Time and Location: 1:30pm; Room 130 Page Hall
 Dr. Shao is assistant professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Her chief areas of research include China’s borderlands (Manchuria/Northeast China), issues of ethnicity (Manchus), Sino-Japanese relations, and the legal history of Modern China. Prof. Shao’s publications include: Crossed Histories: Manchuria in the Age of Empire. Honolulu: Association for Asian Studies and University of Hawai’i Press, 2005.; "Between Empire and Nation: Manchus and Manchuria in the early 20th century," Special Issue on Manchuria as a borderland, East Asian History, forthcoming, December 2005. She is currently working on her book, Borderlanders in Empire and Nation: Manchus, Manchoukuo and Manchuria (1909-1985) and another paper titled "Chinese by Definition: Jus Sanguinis and Nationality Law, 1909-1982".
Based on interviews, unpublished investigation reports, local gazetteers (difangzhi), genealogical records, and memoirs, Prof. Shao’s presentation will analyze the reconfiguration of the Manchus' ethnic and national identities, viewed through the prism of their memories of two Manchu empires—the late Qing Empire and “Manchoukuo” (1932-1945).
May 3, 2007
Laurent Sagart (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique [CNRS]; Paris, France)
Lecture: The Baxter-Sagart System of Old Chinese Reconstruction, Version 0.97
Time and Location: 3:30pm; Room 359 Hagerty Hall
Dr. Sagart is Directeur de Recherche at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS, Paris, France). His research interests encompass Chinese dialectology, especially the Gan-Hakka dialects; Old Chinese reconstruction; morphology and etymology; Chinese loanwords into neighboring languages; and genetic relationships of Chinese-Tibeto-Burman with Austronesian. He has been Visiting Professor and Visiting Scholar at Tsinghua University (1987-89), at the University of Hawai'i (1992-1993), at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (2000, 2001), and at La Trobe University in Australia (1999). He is currently a visiting professor at Cornell University. Dr. Sagart is the author of The Roots of Old Chinese, and serves as a member of the editorial committees of Cahiers de Linguistique - Asie Orientale, and of Bulletin de la Société de Linguistique de Paris.
May 11, 2007
Justin Tighe (The Ohio State University; University of Melbourne)
Lecture: “Rethinking the Frontier: Northwest Travel in Republican China”
Time and Location: 1:30pm; Room 251 Hagerty Hall
 Dr. Justin Tighe, a lecturer in Chinese Studies at the University of Melbourne, is currently a post-doctoral fellow sponsored by the East Asian Studies Center at the Ohio State University. His research interests include late Qing / Republican constructions of Inner Asia and their significance in the making of empire and nation state. Tighe is the author of Constructing Suiyuan: The Politics of Northwestern Territory and Development in Early Twentieth Century China (Brill 2005). He is currently teaching a course at OSU titled “Taiwan: Transformation and Identity,” which examines contemporary Taiwan within its historical context, focusing on the cultural and physical landscape changes over the past 400 years. During Spring 2007 he will teach a course titled “China and Inner Asia”.
May 30, 2007
Li Yu (Williams College)
Lecture: “Women’s Reading in Late Imperial China”
Time and Location: 3:30pm; Room 115 Mendenhall Lab
 Dr. Yu is an assistant professor of Chinese language and culture at Williams College. Her research interests encompass Chinese language pedagogy, the history of reading in late Imperial China, and multimedia learning materials development. Li Yu’s current research involves utilizing data made possible through the recently launched McGill-Harvard Yenching digital library to examine poems written by women poets of the 18th and 19th centuries. Through this research, Dr. Yu hopes to develop a better understanding of the poets’ self image as readers (mostly through the perspective of gender) and the concept of dushu (reading/learning), while at the same time trying to construct a detailed overview of elite women's reading experiences as a whole.
Dr. Yu’s lecture will explore the reading activities of several historical female readers/writers of the Jiangnan area, and investigates how the act of reading played a critical role in elite women’s daily life during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Event co-sponsored with OSU’s Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures (DEALL): http://deall.osu.edu/
Previous 2006-2007 “Rethinking China” Lectures
ICS “Rethinking China” Inaugural Lecture:
“China and the Islamic World in the Medieval Period: A General View”
Dr. Liu Yingsheng
Nanjing University
Thursday August 3rd, 2006
This talk will address the historical relationships between China and pre-Islamic and Islamic societies. The presentation will explore the early contacts between the Chinese and Muslims, with particular attention to the formation of the Muslim (Huihui) minority group in China. The lecture will cover the social status and language practices of Muslims in medieval China.
Professor Yingsheng LIU received his Ph.D. from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in 1985. Since 1988, he is a Professor of History at Nanjing University, where he also heads the Institute for Asian Studies and the Institute for Korean Studies. He also serves as the deputy chair National Chinese National Society of the History of Mongols since 1997 and the chair of the Chinese National Society of Mongol-Yuan Studies since 2004. He is a specialist on Sino-Islamic relations and has published extensively in that field.
Liu Yingsheng Flier (PDF)
“Silver Butterflies: Displaying Miao (Hmong) Folklife in China”
Ms. Wu Yifang
Guizhou Provincial Museum
Wednesday October 25th, 2006
Wu Yifang is a public sector folklorist in the ethnic minority division of the Guizhou Provincial Museum in mountainous Guizhou province in southwest China. Numbering about 8 million, the Miao (or Hmong) are one of the largest ethnic minority groups in China, with strong traditions of folk song and story, folk dance, and a material culture that includes weaving and silver work. Along with PowerPoint presentation images, Wu will demonstrate a number of these folk traditions and discuss how they are integrated into museum and tourist displays. The daughter of Miao scholar and epic singer, Jin Dan, Wu will also perform a short segment of a Miao antiphonal epic recently translated by Prof. Mark Bender, DEALL. Everyone is welcome to this exciting presentation which will enhance our understanding of the diversity of China.
Wu Yifang Flier (PDF)
“Shamanistic Remains as Seen from Xinjiang Archaeology”
Dr. Wang Binghua
Friday Nov. 17th, 2006
The Institute for Chinese Studies is proud to present Dr. Wang Binghua, renowned scholar and specialist of Xinjiang archaeology. Dr. Wang is currently a visiting scholar at Yale University, and his research on the mummies of Xinjiang, China has been featured in both NOVA and Discovery Channel documentaries.
Dr. Wang’s presentation will begin with a focus on recent archaeological work in Xinjiang, which has revealed early shamanistic remains in the Altai, Lop Nor, and Turfan areas. Additionally, he will discuss some basic concepts in shamanistic worship, drawing examples from the Hezhen, Ewenki, and Oroqen peoples. He will also discuss the objects of shamanistic worship, and their associated rituals. Included in Dr. Wang’s presentation will be a discussion regarding archaeological discoveries of shamanistic remains in the Altai Mountains, the Lop Nor Xiaohe, Gumugou, Turfan Yanghai, and Hami Wubao Bronze Age burial grounds; as well as the burial grounds of Turkish leader Bilga Khaghan (AD 716-734) in Mongolia.
Wang Binghua Flier (PDF)
“Translating the West”
Dr. Kuei-fen Chiu
National Tsing-Hua University, Taiwan
Friday Feb. 9th, 2007
The Institute for Chinese Studies is proud to present Dr. Kuei-fen Chiu, Professor of Taiwan Literature in the Graduate Institute of Taiwan Literature at National Tsing-Hua University. Since the early 1990s, she has been teaching and conducting research on postcolonial theories, feminist literary criticism, and Taiwan women’s fiction. Her recent areas of research include documentary studies, historiography and popular culture from below.
“Translating the West”
“Translating the West” is a problem for many non-Western countries. While cultural translation may be seen as an indispensable constituent of modernity, the practice of ‘translating the West” is always tied up with the question of Western cultural imperialism. Dubbed as “literature of Westernization,” Taiwanese modernist literature in the 1960s generated heated debates that have far-reaching repercussions to date. Focusing on the controversy raised by Taiwanese modernist writers’ determined pursuit of modernity through “Westernization”, this talk will re-think the issues revolving around the practice of translating the West in the field of Taiwanese literary production. How should we re-conceptualize the problem of “translating the West” which has become, in a sense, part of the tradition of literary production in Taiwan and many non-Western countries?
Kuei-fen Chiu Flier (PDF)
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