Upcoming Workshop: Letters & Epistolary Culture in China

CAS is pleased to announce an upcoming workshop, Letters & Epistolary Culture in China, taking place across campus on August 17th and 18th. Epistolary communication, literature, and culture have been crucial elements of Chinese social life for more than two thousand years. This workshop will bring together twenty scholars working in fields as diverse as literature, history, archaeology, and art history, and ranging from ca. 200BC to the 20th century and provide an opportunity for them to present and discuss their research in order to arrive at a deeper understanding of the Chinese culture of written communication.

Below is an abbreviated schedule, highlighting just a few of the many presentations in the two-day workshop. See event flyer for a full schedule.

Friday, Aug. 17

11:30 AM –12:10 PM | Tian Xiaofei (Harvard Univ.): “Material & Symbolic Economies: Early Medieval Chinese Letters about the Transfer of Objects”

3:00–3:40 PM | Antje Richter (Univ. of Colorado): “Letters of Familial Admonition in the Han & Six Dynasties Periods”

3:40–4:20 PM | Zeb Raft (Univ. of Alberta): “Poetry of Exchange & Response: An Early Medieval Tradition of Epistolary Verse”

Saturday, Aug. 18

10:50–11:30 AM | Ronald Egan (Stanford Univ.): “Su Shi’s Informal Letters in Literature & Life”

3:00–3:40 PM | Son Suyoung (Univ. of Colorado): “Epistolary Space for Book Proprietorship in Late Imperial China”

4:40–5:20 PM | Tsai Weipin (Univ. of London, Royal Holloway): “A Delicate Matter: Mailing Practices in Late Qing & Early Republican China”

5:20–6:00 PM | Bonnie McDougall (Univ. of Sydney): “Love-letters: Universal & Infinite Variations of Writing & Desire”

For additional information, please contact Antje Ritcher  antje.richter@colorado.edu.