Liyu Hua, Ph.D. student in Asian Studies, Cornell.

“How does Language Work?: Vasubandhu(世親)’s Discussions from the Abhidharmakośa(bhāṣya) (阿毘達磨倶舍論)”

Liyu Hua studies the history of religions in northwestern India during the Kushan period (100 CE to 300 CE).

The Cornell Classical Chinese Colloquium (CCCC) 古文品讀 is a reading group for scholars interested in premodern Sinographic (古文) text. The group typically meets monthly during the semester to explore a variety of classical Chinese texts and styles. Other premodern texts linked to classical Chinese in Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese have been explored. Presentations include works from the earliest times to the 20th century. Workshop sessions are led by local, national, and international scholars.

All are welcome, with any level of experience with classical Chinese or Sinographic text.

Japan is seen as an ethno-national country in which “Japanese” is synonymous with Japanese nationality, race, ethnicity, language, and customs. How solid is the boundary between the Japanese mainstream and those with immigrant backgrounds? In evaluating the Japanese native side of the international boundary, we found a great deal of variation about what criteria foreigners must meet to be considered Japanese. This evidence suggests that a significant percentage of the population is willing to welcome immigrants and their children into their society as full citizens who will also, most importantly, be considered fully Japanese.

Faculty host: Tristan Ivory (ILR, Cornell)

Michael Nylan (Jane K. Sather History Chair, University of California-Berkeley) will explore in the second of our four guest presenters:

Xunzi's (荀子) "On Rituals" (禮論)

She is a truly interdisciplinary scholar. Her single goal is to know as well as possible the extant texts and artifacts that her historical subjects knew during the early empires in China.

The Cornell Classical Chinese Colloquium (CCCC) 古文品讀 is a reading group for scholars interested in premodern Sinographic (古文) text. The group typically meets monthly during the semester to explore a variety of classical Chinese texts and styles. Other premodern texts linked to classical Chinese in Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese have been explored. Presentations include works from the earliest times to the 20th century. Workshop sessions are led by local, national, and international scholars.

All are welcome, with any level of experience with classical Chinese or Sinographic text.

Casey Stevens (Ph.d. student, Asian Studies, Cornell) will launch the Classical Chinese Colloquium Spring '23 with Content and Form: Dunhuang Anthologies of Tang Poetry.

The Cornell Classical Chinese Colloquium (CCCC) 古文品讀 is a reading group for scholars interested in premodern Sinographic (古文) text. The group typically meets monthly during the semester to explore a variety of classical Chinese texts and styles. Other premodern texts linked to classical Chinese in Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese have been explored. Presentations include works from the earliest times to the 20th century. Workshop sessions are led by local, national, and international scholars.

All are welcome, with any level of experience with classical Chinese or Sinographic text.

Michael Nylan (History, UC Berkeley) gives this year's Annual Hu Shih Distinguished Lecture on "Majority Rule and Consortial Policymaking: The Evidence from Early China."

Inspired by Hu Shih’s many contributions to the study of Chinese history — among them, his careful outline of “the logical method in ancient China” and his many writings on “freedom” — this talk intends to challenge a popular narrative equating “Asian values” or, more narrowly, “Chinese tradition,” with “one-man, top-down rule.” The talk will instead show first, that a range of theoretical writings in classical Chinese advocate consortial rule and wide consultation, for cogent reasons, and second, that not only the Han histories but also the built environment in the Western Han capital of Chang’an attest to the importance the court placed on facilitating frequent exchanges between members of the governing elites and those they governed, via well-established institutions, networks, and communication corridors. The newly excavated materials support this revisionist picture for all administrative levels during the early empires in China, suggesting that Hu Shih's optimistic vision of a brighter Chinese future was not entirely utopian. Please rsvp for the in-person event. Though we request an rsvp, no one will be turned away as long as we have capacity.

Michale Nylan bio:

Michael Nylan 戴梅可generally writes in three disciplines: the early empires in China, philosophy, and art and archaeology. Her current projects include a reconstruction of a Han-era Documents classic (submitted to press; under review); a general-interest study of the "Four Fathers of History" (Herodotus, Thucydides, Sima Qian, and Ban Gu), which is nearly done, and a study of the politics of the common good in early China tentatively entitled The Air We Breathe. Recent published books include Chang'an 26 BCE: an Augustan age in China, with substantive comparisons to Rome and the Roman empire; The Chinese Pleasure Book; and two translations, of Yang Xiong's Fayan and The Art of War.

Research Interests

Early China and its modern reception: Seven centuries of Warring States through Eastern Han (475 BC–AD 220), with an emphasis on sociopolitical context; aesthetic theories and material culture; and cosmological belief; gender history and the history of such emotions as "daring" and "salutary fear" (aka prudential caution).

New Research

My new research is on the Four Fathers of History (Herodotus, Thucydides, Sima Qian, and Ban Gu); on the distinctive sociopolitical and culture conditions for classical learning in the two Han dynasties; and on "the politics of the common good" in early China.

Two book-length translations for the University of Washington Press ("Classics of Chinese Thought") series: (1) The Documents (Shu ching), in collaboration with He Ruyue, Shaanxi Shifan daxue; and (2) Wang Ch'ung's Lun heng.

Education

PhD, Princeton University, 1976-81. East Asian Studies.

MA, State University of New York at Buffalo, 1970-73. History.

BA, University of California at Berkeley, 1968-70. History.

Additional Training:

Cambridge University (Oriental Studies) and the Institute of Archaeology (Beijing)

For over 70 years, Chinese script has been a driving force in shaping the digital age and pushing it beyond familiar alphabetical ecologies. Western-designed screens, printers, keyboards, character encoding schemes, and more have all been forced to adapt to accommodate the intricacies of the world's one major non-alphabetical writing system. Despite China's position as a global leader in technology, however, these ecologies of Chinese computing have long remained uncharted territories--until now. Join Stanford historian Thomas S. Mullaney on a tour of Chinese in the digital age.

Scholars of eighth-century Japanese literary works such as Kojiki, Nihon shoki, and Man’yōshū are conventionally assigned the subfield of “ancient literature.” This subfield emerged in the late nineteenth century, when two paradigms vied to define the character of Japanese antiquity and, by extension, the nature of Japanese literature. One paradigm envisioned antiquity as immature and undeveloped, and ending around 710 CE. The other claimed that Japanese antiquity was a golden age of literate production, ending in 794 CE. In this talk, I show that Tokyo Imperial University Professor Haga Yaichi changed his position from the former paradigm to the latter between 1890 and 1899, and I argue that this reversal stemmed from the desire to create a national popular literature for the Japanese ancient period. Due to Haga’s influence, the latter paradigm is now the orthodox position, with great consequence for both the academic study of premodern Japanese literature and the popular perception of its constituent texts. A reevaluation of the origins of premodern Japanese literature, and especially of ancient literature, is necessary for the field to exorcise the ghosts of Meiji nationalism.

During the so-called “Age of Discovery,” Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, and Japanese ships crisscrossed the Pacific in search of islands rich in precious metals. One of these fabled imaginaries materialized on the cartographic plane as the “Gold and Silver Isles.” They were often depicted in the northern seas off the coast of the Japanese archipelago. Known as kinshima (“Gold Isle”) and ginshima (“Silver Isle”) in Japanese, these islands became the object of both Japanese and European interests in the region, as seafarers spread word of their anticipated location. Through the transpacific voyages of Francisco Gali, Pedro de Unamuno, Sebastián Vizcaíno, Tanaka Shōsuke, and Hasekura Tsunenaga, the geographic imaginaries of Japan and New Spain found themselves intertwining at this mutual point of interest. But the isles’ location shifted and transformed as it was traded back and forth between various actors well into the eighteenth century. On the one hand, the islands reflected the conception of Japan as part of the New World—but also as separate from the New World; on the other, they provided a site of Japanese engagement with the circulating discourses on gold, silver, discovery, resource extraction, and colonization.