Conference to examine China

Conference to examine China’s late Qing era

BY LINDSEY FIELDER
Rice News staff

New research on the the late Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) and the early Republic of China will be the focus of a weekend conference to be held at Rice University March 3-6.

“Beyond Tradition and Modernity: Gender, Genre and the Negotiation of Knowledge in Late Qing China” will demonstrate that the period encompassing the last decade of the 19th century and the first decade of the 20th century was not simply a time “between two worlds,” but a world unto itself. The conference sessions will bring to light new literary, artistic and historical sources and archives that challenge existing views of the reforms that took place during the late Qing period. These sessions will also focus on three interrelated issues that helped shape the direction of change in this era: the construction of new gender roles, the profusion of literary and artistic genres and the negotiation of knowledge. These themes have been ignored or underrepresented in existing literature on the late Qing period.

Papers presented at the conference will provide a fresh perspective on social, intellectual and cultural life in late Qing China, expanding the boundaries of modern Chinese history moving beyond the political, military and economic themes that have previously dominated scholarship on this time period. In the past, researchers have ignored broader cultural trends and the contested social meanings of both nationalism and modernity in evaluating the reforms of the late Qing era.

Sessions at the conference will also demonstrate that the standard image of the reform era as a period of anxiety and self-doubt is misleading.

The conference is organized by Nanxiu Qian, associate professor of Chinese literature; Richard Smith, the George and Nancy Rupp Professor of Humanities and professor of history; and Grace Fong from McGill University. The event is sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities, Rice’s Center for the Study of Cultures, the Asian Studies Program and the Study of Women and Gender Program.

For a full schedule of events and a list of the scholars presenting their research, visit <www.ruf.rice.edu/~betramod/>.