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The New Asia College of The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) is honoured to have Prof. Benjamin A. Elman, Gordon Wu ’58 Professor of Chinese Studies at Princeton University deliver three lectures during his stay in Hong Kong, which will be held on 3, 4 and 8 March. The lectures are held under the auspices of the 30^th Ch’ien Mu Lecture in History and Culture of the New Asia College and will be conducted in English.  Members of the public are welcome to attend. 

Prof. Benjamin A. Elman is Gordon Wu ’58 Professor of Chinese Studies and Professor of East Asian Studies and History at Princeton University.  His teaching and research fields include Chinese intellectual and cultural history, the history of science in China, the history of education in late imperial China, and Sino-Japanese cultural history.  He has written widely and his major publications include: From Philosophy To Philology (1984, 1990, 2001), A Cultural History of Civil Examinations in Late Imperial China (2000), On Their Own Terms: Science in China (2005), and A Cultural History of Modern Science in China (2006).  Professor Elman has also been effective in building relationships between Princeton University and institutions in East Asia, and has taught extensively at Fudan University in Shanghai and the University of Tokyo. 

Professor Elman received his Ph.D. in Oriental Studies from the University of Pennsylvania in 1980, and has served on the Faculty of Princeton University since 2002.  He has received many awards for his work, including the 2011–16 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Distinguished Academic Achievement Award. Earlier, he served as the Mellon Foundation’s Visiting Professor in the School of Historical Studies at the Institute from 1999 to 2001. 

Details of the 30^th Ch’ien Mu Lecture in History and Culture are as follows: 

1st Lecture: A Late Chosŏn Korean Polymath — Kim Chŏng-hŭi (1786-1856) and Qing Dynasty Qianlong – Jiaqing Era Scholarship 

We normally read the voluminous diaries and travelogues by the Chosŏn dynasty (1392-1910) Korean translators and emissaries who traveled to Beijing (called ‘Yanjing’ by the Koreans) in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries for what they can tell us about Qing China (1644-1911) and its capital region extending from Beijing and Rehe, the Manchu summer capital, to the Yalu River border. From the writings and discourses of Kim Chŏng-hŭi, an influential Korean scholar in the 19^th century, we can better understand the political consciousness as well as intellectual and cultural development among Chinese and Korean literati in the post-Qianlong period. 

Moderator: Prof. Henry N.C. Wong, Head of New Asia College,
                  CUHK
Date:         3 March 2017 (Friday)
Time:         11:30 a.m.
Venue:       Sir Run Run Shaw Hall, CUHK

2nd Lecture: The Great Reversal: China, Korea, and Japan in the Early Modern World, 1590s to 1890s 

The ‘rise of Japan’ and the ‘fall of China’ in the late 19th century are story lines that dominated Sinology and Japanology in the 20th century. In this lecture, a 2006 website controversy concerning Japan’s victory in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95 will be used to indicate that in the 21st century we are entering new historical terrain vis-à-vis ‘modern’ China and Japan. Wars and cultural history are inseparable. The Meiji ‘rise of Japan’ as event and narrative empowered uniquely ‘modernist’ critiques of the ‘decadence’ of Chinese art, traditional Chinese history, and conveniently provided Chinese revolutionaries with a ‘failed China’ in a post-war East Asian world. 

Moderator: Prof. Leung Yuen Sang, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and
                  Professor of History, CUHK
Date:         4 March 2017 (Saturday)
Time:         3:00 p.m.
Venue:       Lecture Theatre , G/F, Hong Kong Central Library,
                  66 Causeway Road, Causeway Bay, Hong Kong 

3rd Lecture: The Restoration of Huang Kan’s Lunyu yishu in Eighteenth Century Japan and China 

In the 1740s, Japanese Confucians discovered a long lost sub-commentary of Confucius’s Analects. After publication in 1750, an imprint was also sent to China, where it had disappeared circa 1200-1250. The commentary provided important information about medieval Chinese classical learning. Its preface recommended a medieval approach to the study of texts, which was surprisingly compatible with the contemporary research movement known as ‘evidential studies’ in both China and Japan. We will discuss whether this precocious philological insight was more than just adventitious. 

Moderator: Prof. Cheung Hiu Yu, Department of History, CUHK
Date:         8 March 2017 (Wednesday)
Time:         4:00 p.m.
Venue:       Lecture Theatre 2, Yasumoto International Academic
                  Park, CUHK

All lectures will be conducted in English.  All are welcome.  For enquiries, please contact Ms. Angela Chan of the College Office of New Asia College (Tel: 3943-7601; Email: angelac@cuhk.edu.hk) 

About Ch’ien Mu Lecture in History and Culture 

To enhance academic and cultural exchanges, CUHK New Asia College has been organizing the ‘Ch’ien Mu Lecture in History and Culture’ since 1978. Every year, a distinguished scholar will be invited to deliver a series of public lectures exploring topics on Chinese history and culture.