H-ASIA: Stanford Tianxia Workshop: May 6-11, 2011 China & World History

Stanford Tianxia Workshop: "Culture, International Relations, and World 
History: Rethinking Chinese Perceptions of World Order"
May 6-11, 2011
 
Co-organized by Ban Wang, Haiyan Lee, Yiqun Zhou
 
Hartley Conference Center, School of Earth Sciences, Stanford University
Free and open to the public
 
The workshop will gather together a small group of distinguished scholars 
to engage in sustained conversations on the theoretical implications and 
practical values of the traditional Chinese vision of world order, or 
tianxia (all under heaven). This vision anchors a universal authority in 
the moral, ritualistic, and aesthetic framework of a secular high 
culture, while providing social and moral criteria for assessing fair, 
humanitarian governance and proper social relations. Varied discourses 
indebted to tianxia have resurfaced in modern China in quest of moral and 
cultural ways of relating to and articulating an international society. 
We believe that the Chinese vision may prove productive in exploring 
possibilities of world culture and literature in the tension-ridden yet 
interconnected world. In this workshop, we will examine the ways in which 
Chinese thinkers and writers have envisioned China’s place in and as 
world history and its new responsibility in the interstate world system.
 
The workshop is co-sponsored by the Confucius Institute, the Department 
of East Asian Languages and Cultures, the Center for East Asian Studies, 
and the School of Humanities and Sciences. Major funding is provided by 
Stanford’s Presidential Fund for Innovation in the Humanities.
 
Friday, May 6
 
9:45. Opening remarks: Ban Wang, William Haas Professor in Chinese Studies
 
Panel I. Universalism, Particularism and the Idea of Tianxia (chair: Yu 
Zhang)
 
10:00-11:30. Mark Lewis & Mei-yu Hsieh, “The Politics of Tianxia in Han
     China: the Emergence of a Trans-cultural Empire” (discussant: Yearley)
 
11:45-1:00. Lee Yearley, “Appearances: Harmony, Order, Conflict”
     (discussants: Lewis & Hsieh)
 
2:00. Dean’s remarks: Debra Satz, Marta Sutton Weeks Professor of Ethics
     in Society and Senior Associate Dean for the Humanities & Arts
 
Panel II. Empire, State, and Cultural Difference (chair: Yu Zhang)
 
2:30-3:45. Kuan-hsing Chen, “Tracking Tianxia: On Intellectual
     Self-Positioning in the Context of ‘the Rise of China’” (discussant:
     Duara)
 
4:00-5:30. Prasenjit Duara, “The Perils and Possibilities of Archaic
     Universalisms” (discussants: Chen)
 
Saturday, May 7
 
Panel III. Moral Visions of the World and Critiques of Modernity (chair:
     Fang Xie)
 
9:45-11:00. Wang Hui, “The Voices of Good and Evil: What is Enlightenment?
     Rereading Lu Xun’s ‘Towards a Refutation of the Voices of Evil’”
     (discussant: B. Wang)
 
11:15-12:30. Ban Wang, “Kang Youwei’s Vision of International Ethics in
     Interstate Conflict” (discussant: H. Wang)
 
Panel IV. Social and Political Landscapes of World History (chair:
     Chenshu Zhou)
 
1:30-2:45. Daniel Bell, “Realizing Tianxia” (discussant: Lin)
 
3:00-4:15. Lin Chun, “Marxism and the Politics of Positioning China in
     World History” (discussant: Rofel)
 
4:30-5:45. Lisa Rofel, “Whither China’s Worlding?” (discussant: Bell)
 
Sunday, May 8
 
Panel V. Tradition as Resources for Revolution and Modernity (chair:
 
     Keren He)
10:15-11:30. Yiqun Zhou, “The Meeting of Classical Minds: Greek
     Antiquity, Chinese Modernity, and the Changing World Order”
     (discussant: Murthy)
 
11:45-1:00. Viren Murthy, “’All Under Heaven’ and Postwar Japanese
     Sinologists Vision of Revolution: The Cases of Nishi Junz? and
     Mizoguchi Yoz?” (discussant: Zhou)
 
Panel VI. Hegemony, Soft Power, and Geopolitical Culture (chair: Keren He)
 
2:00-3:30. Dai Jinhua, “In the Wake of the Post-Cold War: The
     Consciousness of “Chineseness” in a Changing World Pattern”
     (discussant: Lee)
 
3:45-5:00. Haiyan Lee, “The Soft Power of the Constant Soldier; Or, Why
     We Should Stop Worrying and Learn to Love the PLA” (discussant: Dai)
 
5:00-5:30. Concluding remarks: Pheng Cheah, Professor of Rhetoric,
     UC-Berkeley
 
Monday, May 9
12:00-1:30. Daniel Bell, CEAS Brown Bag Talk: “The Revival of
     Confucianism in China.”  (Philippines Rm, Encina Hall)
 
Tuesday, May 10
4:30-6:00. Kuan-hsing Chen, “Takeuchi Yoshimi’s 1960 Lecture on ‘Asia as
     Method’” (Philippines Rm, Encina Hall)
 
Wednesday, May 11
4:30-6:00. Dai Jinhua, “The Post-Post-Cold War Era: History, Memory, and
     Mass Culture” (Okimoto Rm, Encina Hall)
 
For more information, please visit: 
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/asianlang/cgi-bin/about/tianxia_workshop.php