Call for Papers
Chinese Literature: Conversations between Tradition and Modernity
The 2005 Association of Chinese and Comparative Literature (ACCL) Biennial
Conference
In order to promote dialogue between scholars of traditional and
modern Chinese literature, and to strengthen exchange within the
international scholarly community, the Department of Chinese at Nanjing
University and the Association of Chinese and Comparative Literature (ACCL)
propose to hold the 2005 ACCL Biennial Conference at Nanjing University on
June 23-26th. This project has received kind support from the Chiang Ching-
kuo Center at Columbia University, and is expecting matching funding from
the Higher Education Ministry of China and Nanjing University.
I. Statement of Significance and Impact
Studies of Chinese literature have long been divided
into "traditional" and "modern." Although there are some good reasons for
this division, it has to some extent adversely influenced our understanding
of Chinese literature as a continual entity and reinforced the May Fourth
paradigm that has denigrated Chinese tradition in the name of "modernity."
The result has been a general lack of communication (as well as some
miscommunication) between both sides of this rather artificial divide.
Traditionalists (with some exceptions) tend to consider their interests to
be real scholarship, involving "solid" research, while regarding the study
of modern literature as mere literary criticism. They criticize modernists
for being influenced too much by "the West" (Western theory in particular)
while neglecting the traditional Chinese values that are embedded in modern
literature. Modernists, for their part, tend to criticize traditionalists
for being focused too much on textual studies and for lacking sophisticated
analytical and theoretical methodologies.
Meanwhile, there has been insufficient communication between scholars in
and outside China. For instance, after postmodernism extended its influence
into China during the 1990s, Chinese scholars welcomed its value in
deconstructing Euro-centrism and Orientalism, but nonetheless found it
ironic and somewhat unsettling to acknowledge that this critical tool came
from Western scholars themselves. An exploration of this irony and its
implications must involve greater dialogue between scholars within China
and beyond China's various borders
The field of women and gender studies offers another example of the need
for more substantial communication between scholars in China and elsewhere,
as well as between specialists in "modern" and "premodern" literature.
Fundamental differences seem to exist between prevailing notions of
feminism in these two academic environments, and there are also debates
about the appropriateness of gender analysis in the evaluation of ancient
Chinese texts. Although generalizations about scholarly trends are always
somewhat misleading, on the whole it appears that feminist scholars in the
West are more radical, more vocal and proportionally more numerous than
their counterparts in China. Moreover, they have somewhat different
political and social agendas. Yet it is our conviction that there would be
much more room for productive cross-cultural conversations if more
opportunities existed for scholars interested in women and gender issues to
meet.
To be sure, scholars in various disciplines have tried periodically
to dismantle or at least interrogate artificial dichotomies
between "tradition" and "modernity," or between "China" and "the West." As
early as the 1970s, Paul A. Cohen and John E. Schrecker, both historians,
edited Reform in Nineteenth-century China (Harvard, 1976), with a conscious
effort to "avoid a Western baseline," and to "clarify as much as possible
how nineteenth-century reform related to what came before" (p. 5). More
recently, the literary historian David Wang, in his Fin-de-siècle Splendor
(Stanford, 1997), has pushed the beginning of the "modern" stage of Chinese
literature from the May Fourth period back to include the second half of
the nineteenth century. He argues that signs of reform and innovation that
existed long before the May Fourth revolution "were part of Chinese
contribution to global modernity," although they were "subsequently denied
and repressed" (p. 1). In China, the famed scholar of traditional Chinese
literature, Zhang Peiheng 章培恆 has just published Zhongguo wenxue gujin
yanbian yanjiu lunji 中國文學古今演變研究論文集 (Anthology of Articles on the
Evolution of Chinese Literature from the Past to the Present; Shanghai,
2004). This work consists of path-breaking papers from a series of
conferences he organized to explore the complex connection between
tradition and modernity.
We believe that the time is now ripe for a large-scale
international conference to bring together scholars of both classical and
modern Chinese literature for direct conversations. The 2005 Biennial
Conference of the Association of Chinese and Comparative Literature will
offer an ideal opportunity to achieve this end. Established in the early
1980s in the United States, the ACCL initially focused on the study of
modern Chinese literature, but it has later attracted classicists as well.
Now it has three hundred members in America, Europe, Australia, China, Hong
Kong, and Taiwan.
To have Nanjing University serve as the host institute for this
conference would be of great symbolic and substantive importance, for its
Chinese Department boasts outstanding programs in both modern and classical
Chinese literature, and its School of Foreign Languages and Literatures has
a special interest in literary studies. We have already gained enthusiastic
support from the authorities at Nanjing University, but they need outside
financial support to bring this ambitious plan to fruition.
Both of us have had considerable experience in bridging the gap
between "traditional" and "modern" literature, and between scholars in and
outside of China. Professor Zhang Hongsheng, a scholar of classical Chinese
literature, covers a broad historical span ranging from medieval times to
late Qing China. After one year at the Harvard-Yenching Institute as a
visiting scholar in 1999, Zhang organized the first international
conference on traditional Chinese women's literature in the summer of 2000
at Nanda. The conference attracted over sixty scholars and resulted in a
special issue of the leading Chinese literary journal, Wenxue pinglun 文學評
論 (Literary Review) (Wenxue pinglun congkan文學評論叢刊4.1 [2001]), and a
conference anthology (2002). Professor Qian Nanxiu, the incoming president
of the ACCL, received her training in classical Chinese literature in Nanda
and later received her Ph.D. in Chinese and comparative literature in the
United States, at Yale University. She is currently co-organizing (with
Professors Grace Fong and Richard J. Smith) an NEH funded international
conference at Rice University, titled “Beyond Tradition and Modernity:
Gender, Genre, and the Negotiation of Knowledge in Late Qing China.”
The proposed ACCL conference at Nanjing University will be the
first international meeting of specialists in Chinese literature to
explicitly address the tradition/modernity binary. The two organizers will
be responsible for editing the conference papers into two volumes--one in
Chinese, and the other in English. We are quite confident that this
conference and its ensuing publications will take conversations about the
questions of "tradition" and "modernity" worldwide to new levels of
sophistication.
II. Theme and Topics:
Theme: As the title of this proposal indicates, our theme is the need to
provoke and sustain cross-cultural conversations about the relationship
between "tradition" and "modernity."
Topics:
1) The modern significance of traditional Chinese literature
2) Traditional elements in modern Chinese literature
3) Ming-Qing literature as a transition genre
4) Conceptualization of women’s space in Chinese literature, past and
present
5) Chinese literature and conceptions [or constructions] of “Chinese
culture”
6) Literary translation and the conceptualization of the nation-state
7) Asian Literature written in Chinese
8) Literary theory and classical Chinese literature
III. Conference arrangements
Co-sponsors: Department of Chinese, Nanjing University
Association of Chinese & Comparative Literature
Host: Department of Chinese, Nanjing University
Date: June 23-26, 2005; registration: June 22, 2005
Venue: Nanjing University
Program: Paper presentations and discussions, including a plenary session
consisting of a roundtable of 5 keynote speakers;
Day tour to Nanjing historical sites; a kunqu opera night.
Fee: USD$300, including: registration, hotel (one participant per room) for
four nights, all meals during the conference, etc. We might be able to come
to a lower rate for graduate students
Travel: Participants are responsible for roundtrip transportation.
Work Plan:
November 2004: Conference announcement and the call for papers to ACCL
members
January 15, 2004: Deadline for submitting paper proposals (to
[log in to unmask] )
January 31, 2005: Notice of acceptance of paper proposals by email. The
host institute, Nanjing University, will then extend you a formal
invitation.
May 15, 2005: Submission of papers, either by email or by regular mail for
hardcopies. Papers should be send directly to Nanjing University (address
will be specified in the invitation letter). Those who fail to meet the
deadline are responsible for making their own copies and bringing them to
the conference for distribution.
Working languages: Chinese and English. Please make every effort to present
your paper in Chinese. If you choose English, please send a Chinese
abstract along with your paper by May 15, 2005.
Publications: the conference is planning to publish an anthology of
selected papers. You are also encouraged to submit your papers to Modern
Chinese Literature and
Culture (MCLC) (for submission contact Professor Kirk A. Denton, the editor
of MCLC, at [log in to unmask]).
For submission of paper topics, contact:
QIAN Nanxiu
Associate Professor of Chinese Literature
Asian Studies/Linguistics--23
Rice University
Houston, TX 77251-1892
Tel. 713-794-0603 (H)
713-348-5945 (O)
Fax 713-348-4718
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
For conference arrangements, contact:
ZHANG Hongsheng
Professor of Chinese Literature
Department of Chinese
Nanjing University
Nanjing, China, 230091
Tel. 011-86-25-8627-1100 (O)
011-86-25-8627-6793 (H)
011-86-139-5185-8181 (cell)
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
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