Title: Cross-cultural Understanding and Dialogic History
Lecturer: Madeleine Yue Dong (Professor of History, University of Washington)
Chairperson: JIANG Jin (Professor, Department of History, East China Normal University)
Date: 3 pm, October 15th, 2015 (Thursday)
Venue: Room 5303, Building of School of Humanities, Minhang Campus, ECNU
Sponsor: Si-mian Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities, ECNU
Abstract of the Lecture:
Historians of modern China are often troubled by two problems: judging one culture with the values of another, on the one hand, and stopping atunbridgeable gaps between two value systems and societies, on the other. In other words,as Western scholars, can we think about China without being imperialists, culturalessentialist, or Orientalists? Joseph Levenson’s historiographical practices might be of help here. In contrast to the criticism that his work represents a Euro-centric view of China, Joseph Levenson’s understanding of China involves a third dimension -- Judaism -- at the level of his historical perspective and methodology. His understanding of Jewish tradition plays a crucial role in his analysis of the history of modern China. What Levenson practiced was a historical methodology that could be considered “dialogic history.”Dialogic history provides us a potential answer to the challenging question raised above, and it is also history in action because when this kind of dialogue is conducted, a new space can be created in which history is no longer a one-sided monologue.
Brief Introduction of the Lecturer:
Madeleine Yue Dong, Professor of History, University of Washington; Chair, China Studies Program. Author of Republican Beijing: The City and Its Histories (University of California Press, 2003), co-editor of Everyday Modernity in China (University of Washington Press, 2006), The Modern Girl around the World (Duke University Press, 2008); editor of Beyond Area Studies: An Anthology of Western Scholarship on Modern Chinese History (CASS Press, 2013), and Republican Beijing: History and Nostalgia.