Modern History Seminar
In this series, scholars present their works-in-progress on topics concerning the Qing dynasty to the present. The seminars introduce the research of young scholars in the region and innovative projects being conducted by mid-career scholars.


Friday, October 30, 2009   4:15 pm

Debating “Culture” in Early Twentieth-Century China
Ya-pei Kuo, research fellow, International Institute for Asian Studies, Leiden University, The Netherlands

Through tracing the changing semantics of wenhua in early-twentieth-century China, Dr. Kuo identifies the rise of a linguistic site where conceptions of history and identity were contested. In their critiques of the prevailing unilinear view of history, journalists such as Du Yaquan and academics such as Liang Shuming transformed the late-Qing loanword from Japanese bunga into a key lexicon for conceptualizing China’s national particularity during the 1910s and the early 1920s. Their polemics forcefully engaged prominent figures, such as Chen Duxiu and Hu Shi, into the newly delineated linguistic field, hence the proclamation of xin wenhua in the early 1920s.

Ya-pei Kuo received her PhD from University of Wisconsin, Madison, in 2002. She was an assistant professor at Tufts University from 2003 to 2008 and has been a research fellow at International Institute for Asian Studies, Leiden University, since 2009. Her forthcoming book, Debating "Culture” in Interwar China, deals with the construction of China's cultural identity in the 1920s and its political significance. She also researches and publishes on the changing image of Confucius in the late Qing and the Christian missionaries’ narrative of Confucianism in the second half of the nineteenth century.

Location: CGIS South, 1730 Cambridge Street, Room S153, Cambridge, MA
Contact: lkluz@fas.harvard.edu

 

 

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