Introducing Dr Rachel Silberstein

rachel-silbersteinI am a historian of early modern and modern China with a focus on the history of women and gender, and visual/material culture. Funding from the BICC enabled me to pursue DPhil studies at the University of Oxford from 2008-14, where I wrote a dissertation entitled ‘Embroidered Figures: Commercial Production and Popular Culture in the Early Modern Chinese Fashion System’, supervised by Shelagh Vainker, Curator of Chinese Art at the Ashmolean Museum, and Associate Professor of Chinese Art at University of Oxford. The dissertation explored how textile handicraft commercialization and urban popular culture transformed women’s engagement with fashionable dress, enabling women to contribute to local economies and cultures, and was further supported by the KS Scholarship for Chinese Art, and the Gervers Fellowship for Textiles and Dress at the Royal Ontario Museum. Since graduating, I have published articles in Late Imperial China (2015), Costume (2016), and Fashion Theory (2016), and taught as Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of History of Art and Visual Culture at Rhode Island School of Design from 2015-16.

For 2016-17, I have been awarded an ACLS / Luce Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship to develop my dissertation into a book manuscript. I will also visit China to begin a new project which moves into the twentieth century, and examines needlework as a medium of encounter between Chinese and Western women as handicraft workers, missionaries, shop-owners, students and teachers, at a time when long-held notions of gender were uprooted, handicraft industries were revolutionized by industrialization and globalization, and embroidery’s materiality was transformed by new needlework forms introduced by foreign missionaries and merchants. The BICC played a crucial role in providing the financial support, training and academic freedom to develop my research interests in fashion and dress as a mode of cultural and economic creation, and how processes of commercialization, modernization and industrialization in textile handicrafts impact upon women’s experiences in the home, community and society.

Britain and China, 1840-1970: new book from BICC researchers

Britain and China, 1840-1970 coverJust published by Routledge, and very much a BICC volume, Britain and China, 1840-1970: Empire, Finance and War, is co-edited by Robert Bickers and Jonathan J. Howlett. The volume presents some of the research first aired at BICC’s August 2011 conference ‘Britain and China, pasts, presents and futures’. Held at the University of Bristol this event brought together over 30 speakers from across the globe.

The collection presents 11 essays, outlining the results of research into new archives, or exploring new paradigms for understanding the course of Britain-China relations.

Contributors include BICC researcher Isabella Jackson, and essays by Paul Bailey, John Carroll, Chen Qianping, Koji Hirata, Sherman Xiaogang Lai, Benjamin Mountford, Stephen R. Platt and Hans van de Ven. The cover photograph shows the pipes of the Shanghai Scottish Company of the Shanghai Volunteer Corps in action on a Shanghai street in 1924: source, Hutchinson collection, Historical Photographs of China project (C) Barbara Merchant.

BICC congratulates …

… the following former holders of its doctoral studentships for their recent successes:

Dr Nicholas Horsburgh, for her appointment to a Lectureship at the University of Sheffield;

Dr Isabella Jackson, who is moving to take up a Lectureship at Trinity College Dublin;

Dr Andrew Wormald, for securing a Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation award to support his post-doctoral research at the University of Groningen;

and Dr Holly Snape, for success in her PhD viva at the University of Bristol.

And we congratulate, too, Dr Yangwen Zheng, BICC Director, for her elevation to a personal chair at the University of Manchester.

Introducing Dr Andrew Wormald

Wormald_PhotoMy Ph.D. was completed at the University of Bristol with support from the British Inter-University China Centre’s language based area studies scheme. As such, I was very fortunate to receive a year of language training at Peking University, and further training in reading classical Chinese Buddhist texts with my supervisor, Dr. John Kieschnick, in Bristol. My thesis, entitled ‘Voices of Experience: Modernity and Buddhist Meditation in Republican-era China,’ examines Chinese Buddhism’s response to the intellectual and political reconstructions which took place at the beginning of twentieth century. It looks at the writings of a number of important Buddhist figures from the period, examines the discourse taking place in the then newly emerging Buddhist journals, and compares these findings with current scholarly consensus regarding Buddhism’s adaptation to the modern period. I am currently working on converting this thesis into a monograph, and am preparing a journal article on the prominent reformist monk Shi Yuanying’s presentation of The Awakening of Faith in Mahāyāna. My intention, moreover, is to continue the research developed during my Ph.D., and I am therefore working on a project to investigate the reception of classical Buddhist mediation manuals in Republican era Buddhist journals, and the manner in which Buddhist meditation was secularised and made part of the self-strengthening discourse at this time.

Introducing Holly Snape

HollyI have always had a deep interest in Chinese culture, since as far back as I can remember. This grew to become a strong interest in the country’s language, society, and politics. What the BICC PhD scholarship has given me is an opportunity to develop an academic-based career and a life for myself in China.

Today, working in Beijing for the Central Compilation and Translation Bureau (CCTB) – a bureau directly under the Central Committee of the CPC – I have a job that I find fascinating, that challenges me, and that gives me great room to further develop my understanding of China. I work in a team of exceptionally skilled translators and scholars, and since starting at the Bureau in July 2014, have already had the opportunity to work on the translation of a book by President Xi Jinping and the official translation of the resolution from the Fourth Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee.

When asked recently by a friend, inspired by all the talk of the Chinese Dream, “What’s your dream Holly?”, I had to reply that, right now, this career, in the very heart of central Beijing, is what I had dreamt of. The position I am in today is in no small part due to the support of the BICC and its own leading China experts, particularly Professor Robert Bickers who has always offered me his kind advice and encouragement.

It was in 2007 while carrying out research for an MSc at the University of Bristol on Chinese grassroots NGOs that I realized how integral Chinese language would be if I wanted to develop a solid understanding of this almost impenetrably complex but vibrant area of activity in mainland China. My supervisor at that time, Dr Rachel Murphy, was a source of inspiration for me in this respect. The BICC enabled me to devote time to studying language at Peking University, which in turn helped me to secure another opportunity I remain deeply grateful for: to study at Tsinghua University’s NGO Research Center. Here, I was able to learn alongside scholars currently engaged in some of the country’s most cutting edge research on Chinese NGOs, and to gain invaluable guidance from leading expert, Professor Wang Ming, who has always been hugely generous in offering me his time and support.

The empirical work for my PhD thesis, titled “The Chinese Dream of the Good Society: Social & Political Transformation explored through the Quiet Approach of Grassroots NGOs,” led me to work at and research local grassroots NGOs, some of which I continue to work for today. All of this – my position at the CCTB, the academic foundation I draw on in this job, the great teachers I have gained and friends I have made at both Tsinghua and through BICC, the opportunity I have found to work with some truly inspiring NGO practitioners, and ultimately the career and the life I was looking for in China, which I hope in its own small way might contribute to fostering positive relations between Britain and China – all of this was made possible by the support of the BICC.

‘Picturing China’ on film, and in Shanghai

As part of a series of events and films marking its tenth anniversary year, the AHRC, which funds the BICC though its LBAS scheme, has made a short film about the ‘Historical Photographs of China‘ project at the University of Bristol. The project has received a lot of support from BICC and the AHRC, and is also being showcased on 2-4 March at the government’s UK Trade & Investment’s ‘GREAT Festival of Creativity’ in Shanghai.

World Factory

World factory graphicWorld Factory is a new BICC-supported project that aims to explore the relationship between China and the UK – and the relationship of both countries to consumer capitalism, through the lens of the global textile industry. Textile production in 19th century Manchester provides the starting point for an exploratory process focussing on the rapid change underway in contemporary China. Professor Dagmar Shäfer at the University of Manchester is collaborating with METIS ARTS who are working with Shanghai-based Chinese theatre director Zhao Chuan and his company Grass Stage to undertake the research and development.

WORLD FACTORY – A CAFÉ CONVERSATION- Centre for Chinese Contemporary Arts, Manchester

Wednesday 25 February 2015 , 6.30 – 8.30 pm
Jasmine Suite

This informal evening offers an introduction to the World Factory project – an investigation of global consumer capitalism through the lens of the textile industry, from the heart of the industrial revolution in nineteenth-century Manchester to the world behind the ‘Made-in-China’ labels on our clothes today.

Four expert speakers with different perspectives on the global textile industry will discuss the relationship between production and consumption patterns in China today, and Manchester’s clothing and textile history, before opening up the conversation to the wider audience. There will also be a live demo of the digital World Factory shirt – with an opportuntity to trial our phone app to scan barcodes on the shirt – to reveal the people and processes behind how each shirt was made.

The speakers are to include Sara Li-Chou Han  researcher, designer and co-founder of Stitched Up collective

Amanda Langdown – Senior Lecturer, Fashion, Illustration with Animation at Manchester Metropolitan University with an interest in sustainable development

Tracey Cliffe – costume assistant, designer and organiser of a recycled fashion show at the Museum of Science and Industry

Lena Simic–  performance practitioner, co-organiser of the Institute for the Art and Practice of Dissent at Home and Senior Lecturer in Drama at Liverpool Hope University

 

 

 

 

New BICC Chinese Language Courses for Researchers

Chinese Language Courses for Researchers (CLCR) at upper-intermediate and intermediate Levels

The BICC offers Chinese language courses through intensive teaching and online learning at upper-intermediate and intermediate levels. The next two programmes will take place from 12-16 January 2015, and from 20-24 April 2015, at the Oxford China Centre, Canterbury Road, Oxford.

The initial intensive teaching weeks will focus on active learning skills, while the eight weeks of online learning will concentrate on listening and reading comprehension skills, and translation. During the online learning part of the courses, participants will have to complete weekly online assignments, and language instructors will hold Chat Room sessions.

Participants will have to spend at least two hours a day studying new materials, and revising spoken and written texts and lexis. These courses will encourage the development of learner autonomy in the field of Chinese language study, will enable learners to put a wide range of essential communication skills into practice, and will allow learners to read Chinese newspapers, documents and relevant texts with confidence.

A few partial bursaries are available for participants, to defray travel, accommodation and subsistence costs.

Applicants for the language courses should email the language co-ordinator, Mr Shio-yun Kan, by 30 November 2015, at shioyun.kan@orinst.ox.ac.uk with a brief description of their Chinese language learning experience, including how many Chinese characters (or words) that they have learnt and how much time that they have spent in China.