Chinese Language Courses for Researchers, September 2013

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Places are available for the upcoming teaching sessions in the BICC Chinese Language Course for Researchers (CLCR). The programme is open for postgraduate research students and early career academics.

Elementary or Intermediate Level: 28 September to 2 October 2014 [*please note revised date]

The BICC offers Chinese language courses at elementary and intermediate levels for researchers. These courses consist of week-long sessions of intensive teaching. Each teaching session will be followed by a term of online learning with feedback from the BICC language teachers.

The course runs from 10 a.m. Saturday 28 September, through to and including Wednesday 2 October. Classes will run on Saturday 28th and Sunday 29th. The detailed teaching timetable will be advertised on  http://www.ctcfl.ox.ac.uk/BICC/index.htm It is most likely that the elementary classes will take place in the mornings and the intermediate classes will take place in the afternoons. The daily contacting time for each student will be 3.5 hours. The Language Laboratory is available every day for students to do their assignments and exercises over that period.

Applying for places

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

Applicants for the programme should contact the programme convenor, Mr Shio-yun Kan, by 4 pm on 5 September 2013, via the BICC administrator, Ms Grania Pickard, at hums-bicc@bristol.ac.uk. Please provide details of your doctoral topic and affiliation, name of your PhD supervisor, or your current position, as well as a brief description of your Chinese language learning experience, including how many Chinese characters (or words) that you have learnt, and how much time that you have spent in China.

We are likely to ask shortlisted candidates to secure a statement of support from their supervisiors.

‘Historical Photographs of China’ on new AHRC image gallery

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The ‘Historical Photographs of China’ project, which has been supported over the past year by the BICC, has been chosen to provide materials for the second display on the new online Image Gallery on the website of the Arts & Humanities Research Council. A selection of images was made from a recently-digitised collection of photographs mainly taken by a young printing manager, Jack Ephgrave, who worked for the British American Tobacco Company in Shanghai from 1929 onwards. These have just gone live under the title Picturing China with commentary from Robert Bickers, with the assistance of BICC research associate Dr Tehyun Ma and Jamie Carstairs, Project Digitzation Officer.

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

‘British Born Chinese’ website goes live

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We are happy to announce the launch of the website for ‘British Born Chinese’, an audio-visual collaborative project between BICC’s Elena Barabantseva and Andy Lawrence (Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology, University of Manchester, and All Rites Reversed). This research documentary project explores what it means to be a British born Chinese person in the twenty-first century. The website and the trailer can be viewed here

‘China’s war with Japan, 1937-1945’: New book by Rana Mitter

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BICC research network leader Rana Mitter’s new book cover_China_Japan_WarChina’s war with Japan, 1937-1945: The Struggle for Survival is published this week by Allen Lane.  It is the first comprehensive history of the politics, experience, and aftermath of the Sino-Japanese War that became part of World War II, seen from the Chinese side and drawn from a wide range of Chinese materials.  It argues for a revisionist view of the Nationalist contribution to the Allied war effort, and that a new model of authoritarian social welfarism emerged from the conflict.  Mitter’s book will be published under the title Forgotten Ally in North America in September.

Here, Rana Mitter talks to Rob Gifford, China editor of The Economist, about the book:  http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2013/06/legacy-sino-japanese-war

Reviews and comments have already been published in The Economist; The Guardian; The Spectator; Prospect; Financial Times:

“Restor[es] a vital part of the wartime narrative to its rightful place. . . . A remarkable story, told with humanity and intelligence; all historians of the second world war will be in Mitter’s debt. . . . No one could ask for a better guide.” – Richard Overy, Guardian

“The best narrative of that long-ago war, whose effects still linger in China today.” – Jonathan Mirsky, The Spectator  (London)

“Illuminating and meticulously researched. . . . It is the voice of the Chinese [. . .] that gives the distinctive tone to Mitter’s narrative. From the diaries of Chiang Kai-shek to those of national journalists and middle-class Chinese fleeing the conflict, these first-person observations are woven skilfully into his chronicle of the battles and struggles.”  –The Economist

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.

Introducing Dr Mike Gow

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Mike Gow ProfileI was fortunate enough to receive funding from BICC as part of the first cohort of scholarships awarded in 2006.  I undertook my academic training at Masters and Doctoral level at the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Bristol, supervised by Professor Susan Robertson and Professor Jeffrey Henderson.  BICC has been the determining factor in shaping my career, affording me an opportunity for academic development that I otherwise would not have had.  In addition, I have made some lifelong friends through BICC who are already active as China scholars across a range of disciplines.

My research focuses on the strategic transformation of Chinese higher education, and aims to understand how national modernization projects are materialized within China’s political society and then mediated and institutionalized.  The thesis recognizes processes of negotiation, consent and coercion between China’s political society and civil society, discerning a tightly interwoven relationship between the state and Chinese HE and also proposes that HE is central to the negotiation of hegemony within the contemporary Chinese historic bloc.  However, it also aims to understand the complex social, cultural and institutional environment of Chinese HE through which overarching national projects must be processed.  The research utilizes Burawoy’s Extended Case Method and theoretical framework constructed around Antonio Gramsci’s theory of hegemony and Bourdieu’s concepts of capital, field and habitus.

I have taught a range of subjects over the last few years, including Contemporary Chinese Society, Chinese Political Systems, Contemporary Chinese Cultural Conventions and Chinese Business Context.  As of August 2013 I will be taking a post at NYU Shanghai as Global Postdoctoral Fellow in the inaugural year of this new campus of New York University.  My role will be research-focused, but I am also looking forward to contributing to a Freshman course “Global Perspectives on Society” led by NYU Shanghai Vice Chancellor Professor Jeffrey Lehman.  The course will introduce students to some of the greatest thinkers from both western and Chinese traditions.

Chinese HE continues to be the focus of my research and I blog on Chinese HE, internationalization of Chinese HE and Chinese HE policy at http://www.thedaxue.org

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