“New Sinology” before the “New Sinology”: Four Case Studies

Session Submission Type: Organized Panel Proposal Application

Abstract

Emanating from within the borders of the PRC and beyond, recent proposals for a “New Sinology” – referred to variously as xin Hanxue or hou Hanxue (Geremie Barmé’s term) – invite reflection on the so-called “Old Sinology,” its history, its accomplishments, and its failings. Just as competing definitions of “Chineseness” animate contemporary debates, so too concerns with how to define, study, and represent “China” to a global audience give shape to the Sinological tradition as a whole. Focusing on topics that span a two-hundred-year period from the beginning of the eighteenth to the early twentieth century, our papers broaden understanding of the intellectual endeavors that contributed to the development of traditional Sinology. In particular, we are interested in reevaluating earlier Sinological scholarship that engaged cultural phenomena – e.g. vernacular literature, woodblock prints, popular religion, and paintings of urban life – normally considered to fall beyond the “great tradition” of classical texts and sources. Significantly, three of our four papers also expand conventional Western European-dominated accounts of the history of Sinology to include careful consideration of the Russian tradition of Oriental Studies. Finally, all of our papers demonstrate that Sinological scholarship was never just an academic pursuit; indeed, long before the advent of the “New Sinology,” Sinological scholarship was, through networks of trade, diplomacy, and politics, regularly premised on a “robust engagement with contemporary China” (Barmé’s words, again). Our research, therefore, stresses interpretation of the human interactions, between foreign Sinologists and Chinese scholars, artists, and assistants, as essential to the interpretation of the Sinological record.

Area of Study

• China and Inner Asia

Session Organizer

• Daniel M. Youd, Beloit College

Individual Presentations

• Late Qing Paintings of Beijing Life and Customs in Russian Collections: Provenance and Key Characteristics. - Polina Rud, Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, RAS

• Interpretation and Misinterpretation of Vasily M. Alexeev’s Woodblock Prints Collection. - Yujun Yang, National Chung Cheng University

• Fiction, Drama, and Missionaries: A Preliminary Study of Joseph Henri Marie de Prémare's (1666-1736) Understanding of the Rhetoric of the Mandarin Language. - Daniel M. Youd, Beloit College

• Local Tradition in Focus: Field Observations of Popular Religion in North and North-East China Made by Russian Travelers in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries. - Ekaterina Zavidovskaia, National Tsing Hua University