Negotiating Foreignness: "Western Ideas" and the Building of Indigenous Identities in 20th-Century China

Session Submission Type: Organized Panel Proposal Application

Abstract

This panel is an interdisciplinary attempt to bring together scholars from classical studies, political science, history, and religious studies to explore the multi-faceted impact of European ideas on the development of Chinese identities in the long 20th century. The papers diverge on the approaches and observations regarding the ways in which contemporaneous agendas shaped the patterns of curiosity in foreign ideas, the nature of negotiation between external stimuli and internal history, and the interplay between critical examinations of European culture and transformation of indigenous identities. First, Fan analyzes how the contested discourses on the 1902 translation of Rousseau’s The Social Contract facilitated new identity of "public-minded citizenry" at the turn of the century. Wei discusses the European notion of "public opinion" in late-Qing/Republican officialdom and intelligentsia, tracing its deep roots in the native idea of "gonglun" and traditional political identity. In her study of Chinese historiography of Roman empire in 1920s-1940s Liu investigates the literary construction of Roman culture by intellectuals concerned with reevaluating China’s past and present. Finally, Song's paper returns to the themes broached by Fan and Wei by assessing the flourishing Jewish Studies beginning in the 1990s and relating this zeal to the efforts to redefine Chinese identities in a new era of commercial entrepreneurship characterized by ideological and value diversity. Taiwanese scholars Sher-Shiueh Li (chair) and Pei-lin Wu (discussant) will provide comparative perspectives on the papers. Taken as a whole, the scholarship represented on this panel marks a new trend in rethinking the critical nexus of modern China's engagement in foreign ideas, identity building, and cultural change.

Area of Study

• China and Inner Asia

Session Organizer

• Yang Wei, University of Colorado

Chair

• Sher-Shiueh Li, Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy, Academia Sinica

Individual Presentations

• Educating “the Public”: The First Complete Chinese Translation of the Social Contract - Guangxin Fan, Hong Kong Baptist University

• From "Gonglun" to "Public opinion": Negotiating Foreign Ideas and Traditional Political Identity - Yang Wei, University of Colorado

• Writing Roman Empire in Republican China (1920s-1940s) - Jinyu Liu, Shanghai Normal University and DePauw University