The pandemic, travel restrictions, and political ossification in China have all disrupted communications between Chinese scholars in the humanities and social sciences and their counterparts overseas. For this reason, there is a need to reengage with academic and intellectual trends in contemporary China. Taking inspiration from new methods in intellectual history and sociology of knowledge, we propose to focus specifically on the question of public knowledge. The conference will bring together a groups of scholars, including historians, social scientists and independent critics who, from a variety of geographical and disciplinary vantage points, are all engaged in observing and studying academic and intellectual trends in contemporary China.

Program

Discussants at Large

• Antoine Lilti (Collège de France)
• Gisèle Sapiro (CNRS-EHESS)

Thursday 13 June (BS1_08)

9 :00-13 :00  - Introduction

• Sebastian Veg (EHESS)Public interventions and public scholarship in contemporary China : some methodological considerations
• Geremie R. Barmé (China Heritage)From the Dustheap of History — a further rumination on thinking in and about Xi Jinping’s China (by video link)

Scholars and their publics in historical perspective

• Joan Judge (York University). The Evolving Lexicon of “the people” in modern and contemporary China
• Timothy Cheek (UBC). Rectifying the People in Xi’s China : Public Discourse on Party, People, and Pariahs
• Yao LIN 林垚 (NYU Shanghai). Doing Public Scholarship Amid the Autocratic Turn

14 :30-18 :00 - Transnational platforms

• Ya-Wen Lei (Harvard University)Beyond Borders : How Overseas Chinese-Language Podcasts Shape Narratives and Knowledge about China
• Els Van Dongen (Nanyang Technological University)Knowledge, Ideology, and Chinese Intellectuals Outside the PRC

Conceptual circulations

• Huang Kuan-Min 黃冠閔 (Academia Sinica ICLP)The critique of Tianxia System as New World Order
• Daniel Leese (University of Freiburg)The Hermes Translation Series and the Politics of Studying Western Classics in China

Friday 14 June 9 :30-13 :00 (BS1_08)

Historians in the public forum

• Max Ko-Wu Huang 黃克武 (Academia Sinica IMH)Combating “Historical Nihilism” : The Relationship between Historical Knowledge and Political Control in Contemporary China
• Michel Bonnin (EHESS)Minjian historians : What do they do and what does it mean socially, politically and historically ?

Vernacular Knowledge

• Eugenia Lean (Columbia University)Vernacular Ways of Knowing : Rogue Production, Markets and a Historical Perspective
• Isabelle Thireau (EHESS)Tianjin Remembered 天津記憶 (2008-2012) : Connecting with academic knowledge from the grassroots

14 :30-17 :30 (Le Comptoir de la FMSH, 1^st floor)

Creative interventions and strategies

• Chan Koonchung 陳冠中 (writer and critic)Producing Public Knowledge with the Elephant in the Room : Public Intellectuals’ Plastic Public Sphere and Critical Creatives’ Shifting Public Sites in China Now
• Barbara Mittler (University of Heidelberg)Creative Butterflies ? Wild histories ? Artistic Traditions of Protest in China
• Wu Qi 吳琦 (writer and editor)Struggles of culture workers in contemporary China : a practical and personal perspective

Wrap-up discussion

Pratical information

• Each speaker will have 30 minutes followed by 15 minutes Q&A/discussion
• The conference is organized by EHESS & the Centre de Recherches Historiques, in collaboration with Academia sinica & the Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme. It is supported by a conference grant from the Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation