Prof. Eugenio Menegon (Boston University): 

Master Class for students: 11 June 2015, 2pm (Old Combination Room, St Catharine's College, University of Cambridge): Prior to his lecture, Prof Menegon will offer a Master Class for students. In the Master Class a small group of students will have the chance to read and discuss some of his work with Professor Menegon. If you wish to join the class please email Ghassan Moazzin ([log in to unmask]).

Lecture: “A Micro-Historical Approach to Global China: The Daily Life of Europeans in Beijing in the Long 18th Century”, 11 June 2015, 4 pm (Ramsden Room, St Catharine's College, University of Cambridge)
Abstract:
One of the challenges of the new global history is to bridge the particularities of individual lives and trajectories with the macro-historical patterns developing over space and time. Sino-Western interactions offer a particularly fruitful field of investigation of phenomena that are traceable in economic and statistical series, thanks to the survival of detailed records of East India Companies and missionary agencies regarding their activities in China. In my contribution I plan to focus on the economic and socio-religious activities of the Roman Catholic mission in Beijing in the long 18th century (1670s – 1820s), in an attempt to reconstruct local and global networks supporting the mission, and their workings. By maintaining a balance between analysis and narration, I aim to uncover unexplored facets of Chinese life in global contexts from the point of view of the ‘end users’ of the global networks of commerce and religion bridging


Prof Shu-mei Shih (University of California, Los Angeles)
Lecture: “From World History to World Literature: China, the South, and the Global 1960s”, 12 June 2015, 4pm (Rooms 8&9, Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cambridge)
Abstract:
This lecture explores the concept of world literature from world historical perspectives and asks whether we can think about world literature from the vantage point of the South. While China is often considered as the site of alternative modernity or literature to the West, Southeast Asia, as the South to both the West and to China, is seldom brought into the conversation within this ‘China versus the West’ binarism. Taking select literary representations of the Global 60s across Asia (China, Southeast Asia, and Hong Kong) as examples, this lecture will explore the possibility of a conception of world literature as a network of texts without a predetermined center and a preordained future.

Bursaries are available for student attendance of the lectures. Please contact Shirley Ye at [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> for further details.

For more information on the lecture series and video-recordings of previous lectures, please visit: http://globalchinalectures.wordpress.com