Please see message below regarding a panel at the 2014 EACS conference
Julian Ward
Treasurer British Association for Chinese Studies
Panel proposal:
*More than Madmen and Vermillion Birds: The Role of the “Hinterland” in
Chinese Visions of Empire.*
The “Hinterland” (outback) has always been a part of the figurative
inventory of Chinese literature and thought: As a place where demoted
officials mingle with barbarians (or crocodiles); where the proverbial
Madman of Chu challenges the wisdom of the sage from the Chinese
heartlands; or as a source of strange plants, animals, or men (eunuchs) to
reach capital and court. As a transitional or liminal zone, the Hinterland
exerted a formative influence on the imagined communities of scholars,
officials, and generals, be it even as a negative foil: Émigrés from the
North preserved their vision of Chinese culture by keeping aloof of the
Southern Hinterland during the first period of division (220/ 317–589 AD).
Some scholars argue that, well into the imperial era, “Chinese” culture
only existed as pockets of urban and lowland sedentary economy, leaving the
slopes and hilltops to not yet or semi-sinicised groups. Following the
centuries-old biases of Chinese literature and historiography, which
favoured the Central Plain and its capitals in Shaanxi and Henan, scholars
focused on exiled officials yearning for a triumphant return to the
capital, to fall again under the gaze of the emperor as the universe’s
centre of gravity. Was the idea of the Hinterland informed solely by
notions of isolation and remoteness or did it, even by its sheer
elusiveness, spark off positive influxes on the Chinese “Reichsidee” during
the Middle Ages (approximately from the end of the Han to the end of the
Tang and Five Dynasties, 220–960)?
Paper contributions are welcome from all sub-fields of Sinology/ Chinese
Studies and neighbouring disciplines (e.g., history, archaeology,
philosophy) that address the ideological role of the rural periphery in
state formation in the “Middle Ages” in its broadest sense.
Please send your abstract (not more than 250 words), with a short
introduction
of yourself and your academic background, to one of the panel convenors:
Michael Hoeckelmann 何彌夏
King’s College London
Department of History
Strand, London, WC2R 2LS
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Joerg Henning Huesmann 徐約和
Universitat Leipzig
Ostasiatisches Institut, Fachbereich Sinologie
Schillerstrase 6, 04109 Leipzig
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We look forward to receiving your proposals!
Many thanks and very best wishes,
Michael
--
The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
Scotland, with registration number SC005336.
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