Category Archives: Events

New Perspectives on the Chinese 1950s Workshop: programme details

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Final preparations are underway in York for the New Perspectives on the Chinese 1950s Workshop, an international event bringing together experts from around the world to discuss new developments in this burgeoning area of historical research.

The event follows a recent expansion in Asian History at the University of York (in Chinese, Japanese, Southeast and South Asian History) and is supported by the British Inter-University China Centre (AHRC) through the Chinese 1950s Network with additional support from the Department of History at the University of York. The initial CFP can be read here.

The Chinese 1950s network explores new approaches China’s domestic and international history in this period, it is hosted at the University of York and partnered with East China Normal University (ECNU) in Shanghai.

The aim of the workshop is to promote the sharing of ideas on historical issues and primary source work, to establishment of a network of researchers and to explore the potential for future collaborative work.

Details of panels and attendees follow:

PLEASE NOTE: For logistical reasons this is an invitation-only event, panel details are for information only 

New Perspectives on the Chinese 1950s Workshop 

King’s Manor, University of York 

19-21 July 2012

Friday 19th July

Panel 1 – Writing the 1950s (culture, society, knowledge and history) Chair: Karl Gerth

Felix Wemheuer (University of Vienna), How to Write a People’s History of 1950s: A Thought Experiment

Jennifer E. Altehenger (King’s College London), Finding the Right Words: Encyclopedic dictionaries, self-help guides, and the politics of knowledge in China, 1949-1956.

Panel 2 – Individuals and Institutions, Chair: Julia Lovell

Xiaobing Tang (University of Michigan), The Idea of Socialist Art in the 1950s.

Christine Vidal (Université Lille III), From Beijing to Hangzhou: Song Yunbin and his experience of united front work (1949-1957).

Gordon Barrett (University of Bristol), Transnational Contacts and Foreign Policy: the CCP, Chinese Scientists, and the World Federation of Workers, 1947-1966

Saturday 20th July

Panel 3 – The Economy and Society, Chair: Tehyun Ma

Robert Cliver (Humboldt State University), Surviving Socialism: Private Industry and the Transition to Socialism in China

Felix Boecking (University of Edinburgh), Dismal scientists among the hundred flowers: Chinese economists in the 1950s

Benno Weiner (Appalachian State University, NC), High Tide on the High Plateau: The United Front and Pastoral Collectivization in Northeast Tibet (Amdo), 1955-1956

Keynote by Yang Kuisong (East China Normal University/Peking University) on the state of the field and future directions

Panel 4 – China and Japan in the 1950s, Chair: Chris Hess

Amy King (Australian National University), Dealing with the ‘Enemy’: Overseas Japanese in the Soviet Union and People’s Republic of China, 1945-1956

Barak Kushner (University of Cambridge), The Dissolution of the Japanese Empire and the Struggle for Legitimacy in Postwar East Asia, 1945–1965

Sunday 21st July

Panel 5 – China’s Urban 1950s, Chair: Jon Howlett

Karl Gerth (University California, San Diego), Compromising with Consumerism in Socialist China: Transnational Flows and Internal Tensions in ‘Socialist Advertising’

Christian Hess (Sophia University), Living the socialist high life? Colonial legacies and the making of urban socialism in Dalian, 1945-1955

Jiang Jin (East China Normal University), Urbanism vs. Communism? Best-Seller theatres in Early PRC Shanghai

Hello, Chongqing! 重庆您好!

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hpc-proxy

Steps in Taiping Men, Chungking, 1920, Swire collection, Sw19-066.

BICC researcher Dr Tehyun Ma is representing the Centre at the launch today of a new exhibition, ‘Historical Photographs of China: Photographs from British Collections‘, ‘1870-1950:英国收藏的中国影像’. While the core of this exhibition was recently on display in Beijing, the Sichuan outing of the show contains many additional rare shots of the city of Chongqing, mainly from the G.W. Swire and Fu Bingchang collections held within the ‘Historical Photographs of China’ website.

The exhibiton at Chongqing Tiandi is being opened by Benedict Mann, British Deputy Consul-General in Chongqing, and is the resul of a collaboration between the Consul-General Press Team, RCUK China, and the British Inter-university China Centre. BICC is funded by the AHRC and the ‘Historical Photographs of China’ has been supported as an Academy Research Project since 2006 by the British Academy.

The project also runs the related ‘Visualising China‘ portal, and the Visualising China blog, and the latest post there explores Chongqing, the Yangzi, and its place in the British imagination.

New Perspectives on the Chinese 1950s Workshop; 19-21 July 2012

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New Perspectives on the Chinese 1950s Workshop

King’s Manor, University of York

19-21 July 2012

This workshop has been funded by the British Inter-University China Centre (AHRC) through the Chinese 1950s Network. The network explores new approaches China’s domestic and international history in this period, it is hosted at the University of York and partnered with East China Normal University (ECNU) in Shanghai.

The aim of the workshop is to promote the sharing of ideas on historical issues and primary source work, the establishment of a network of researchers and to explore the potential for future collaborative work.

PLEASE NOTE:  For logistical reasons this is an invitation-only event, panel details are for information only

 Friday 19th July

Panel 1 – Writing the 1950s (culture, society, knowledge and history) Chair: Karl Gerth

Felix Wemheuer (University of Vienna), How to Write a People’s History of 1950s: A Thought Experiment

Jennifer E. Altehenger (King’s College London), Finding the Right Words: Encyclopedic dictionaries, self-help guides, and the politics of knowledge in China, 1949-1956.

Panel 2 – Individuals and Institutions, Chair: Julia Lovell

Xiaobing Tang (University of Michigan), The Idea of Socialist Art in the 1950s.

Christine Vidal (Université Lille III), From Beijing to Hangzhou: Song Yunbin and his experience of united front work (1949-1957).

Gordon Barrett (University of Bristol), Transnational Contacts and Foreign Policy: the CCP, Chinese Scientists, and the World Federation of Workers, 1947-1966

 Saturday 20th July

Panel 3 – The Economy and Society, Chair: Tehyun Ma

Robert Cliver (Humboldt State University), Surviving Socialism: Private Industry and the Transition to Socialism in China

Felix Boecking (University of Edinburgh), Dismal scientists among the hundred flowers: Chinese economists in the 1950s

Benno Weiner (Appalachian State University, NC), High Tide on the High Plateau: The United Front and Pastoral Collectivization in Northeast Tibet (Amdo), 1955-1956

Keynote by Yang Kuisong (East China Normal University/Peking University) on the state of the field and future directions

Panel 4 – China and Japan in the 1950s, Chair: Chris Hess

Amy King (Australian National University), Dealing with the ‘Enemy’: Overseas Japanese in the Soviet Union and People’s Republic of China, 1945-1956

Barak Kushner (University of Cambridge), The Dissolution of the Japanese Empire and the Struggle for Legitimacy in Postwar East Asia, 1945–1965

 Sunday 21st July

Panel 5 – China’s Urban 1950s, Chair: Jon Howlett

Karl Gerth (University California, San Diego), Compromising with Consumerism in

Socialist China: Transnational Flows and Internal Tensions in ‘Socialist Advertising’

Christian Hess (Sophia University), Living the socialist high life? Colonial legacies and the making of urban socialism in Dalian, 1945-1955

Jiang Jin (East China Normal University), Urbanism vs. Communism? Best-Seller theatres in Early PRC Shanghai

Oxford: Philippe Régnier talk at 2.15 pm, Monday 20 May

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Philippe Régnier

Professor, SIDGS, University of Ottawa, Canada

will speak on

“EU cooperation in science & technology with China and India:

recent trends and shifting paradigms”

Phillipe Regnier

Prof Regnier is the co-author of the 2012 independent report to the EU Commission reviewing the EU-India cooperation agreement in science and technology (2007-11)

All welcome

2.15 pm, Monday 20 May

Room 205, Institute for Chinese Studies, Walton Street, University of Oxford

For more information, contact: rana.mitter@chinese.ox.ac.uk

The Yuanmingyuan in Britain and France: Manchester 8-9 July 2013

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Yuanmingyuan workshop - Manchester - 8-9th July‘The Yuanmingyuan in Britain and France: Representations of the ‘Summer Palace’ in the West’

A workshop organised by the Centre for Museology and funded by the Centre for Chinese Studies

In October 1860, at the culmination of the Second Opium War, British and French troops looted, and then burnt, the imperial buildings in the Yuanmin­gyuan (or ‘Summer Palace’) in the north of Beijing. Over a million imperial ob­jects are estimated to have been taken from the site: many of these are now scattered around the world, in private collections and public museums.

This two–day workshop at The University of Manchester, 8th-9th July 2013, will explore the ways in which objects from the Yuan­mingyuan have been represented in the West. It will be the first such event to combine approaches from specialists in the history of collecting with the views of curators of Yuanmingyuan objects.

Confirmed speakers include James Hevia (Chicago), Greg Thomas (Hong Kong), Nick Pearce (Glasgow), Vincent Droguet (Château of Fontainebleau).

For further details contact: louise.tythacott@manchester.ac.uk

There is no charge for attendance but numbers are limited. To secure a place contact: hannah.mansell@manchester.ac.uk

Callahan shows ‘China Shadows’ film at UQ

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This seminar offers a film screening followed by a discussion with the film’s director – Prof. William A Callahan (University of Manchester).

After decades of Cold War hostility, in the late 1970s people from the US and its allies started going to China – again. ‘China Shadows’ (28 min.) presents memories of these first encounters, raising questions of where is China, what is China, and who is Chinese.

These interviews with people from Thailand, the US, Taiwan, Belarus, England and India form the basis of a growing archive of first encounters with Otherness – or more to the point, they record diverse experiences of what it means to be the Other in China.

New Publications by BICC Researchers

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Modern Asian Studies image - Jon

Two BICC researchers have just published important new work.

Jon Howlett, University of York, has had an article published in Modern Asian Studies:  ‘The British boss is gone and will never return’: Communist takeovers of British companies in Shanghai (1949–1954)

 

Sam Geall book front coverSam Geall, Departmental Lecturer in Human Geography of China at Oxford and BICC funded student, has edited China and the Environment: The Green Revolution

Blurb: Sixteen of the world’s 20 most polluted cities are in China. A serious water pollution incident occurs once every two to three days. China’s breakneck growth causes great concern about its global environmental impacts, as others look to China as a source for possible future solutions to climate change. But how are Chinese people really coming to grips with environmental problems? This book provides access to otherwise unknown stories of environmental activism and forms the first real-life account of China and its environmental tensions.

New book: Anna Lora-Wainwright, ‘Fighting for Breath: Living Morally and Dying of Cancer in a Chinese Village’

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Congratulations to BICC researcher Dr Anna Lora-Wainwright, whose new book Fighting for Breath: Living Morally and Dying of Cancer in a Chinese Village, has just been published by the University of Hawai’i Press.ALW book cover

Numerous reports of “cancer villages” have appeared in the past decade in both Chinese and Western media, highlighting the downside of China’s economic development. Less generally known is how people experience and understand cancer in areas where there is no agreement on its cause. Who or what do they blame? How do they cope with its onset? Fighting for Breath is the first ethnography to offer a bottom-up account of how rural families strive to make sense of cancer and care for sufferers. It addresses crucial areas of concern such as health, development, morality, and social change in an effort to understand what is at stake in the contemporary Chinese countryside.

Encounters with cancer are instances in which social and moral fault lines may become visible. Anna Lora-Wainwright combines powerful narratives and critical engagement with an array of scholarly debates in sociocultural and medical anthropology and in the anthropology of China. The result is a moving exploration of the social inequities endemic to post-1949 China and the enduring rural-urban divide that continues to challenge social justice in the People’s Republic. In-depth case studies present villagers’ “fight for breath” as both a physical and social struggle to reclaim a moral life, ensure family and neighborly support, and critique the state for its uneven welfare provision. Lora-Wainwright depicts their suffering as lived experience, but also as embedded in domestic economies and in the commodification of care that has placed the burden on families and individuals.

Fighting for Breath will be of interest to students, teachers, and researchers in Chinese studies, sociocultural and medical anthropology, human geography, development studies, and the social study of medicine.