EVENTS

The 20th and 21st centuries, especially the post World War II era, have been defined by geopolitical tensions and misunderstandings between the West and Asia, and between different countries within Asia. These geopolitical frictions, coupled with the significant challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic, have inhibited the movement of scholars and students. Operating on the premise that people are not equivalent to their governments, institutions of higher education around the world have played an important role in fostering mutual understanding through cross-cultural academic exchange. Higher education plays a pivotal role in training future leaders of countries, but as trust in academic institutions has eroded in recent years, many countries have adopted increasingly isolationist policies, higher education has come to the forefront in playing a significant role in opening up networks of connections and collaboration. This special lecture will explore the history of engagement between institutions of higher education in the West and Asia, examining the role that these institutions have played in the development of Asian Studies, and what role they might play in the future of Asian Studies. The lecture will focus on a selection of institutions in the US and Europe that y were instrumental in the development of Asian Studies during the 19th century, such as the Institute of Oriental Studies in St. Petersburg (founded in 1818), the Royal Asiatic Society (founded 1823), École française d'Extrême-Orient (EFEO) — or the French School of Asian Studies — (founded in 1898), and the Harvard-Yenching Institute (founded in 1928), as well as representative universities such as Yale, Harvard, and Princeton. While the Cold War undoubtedly left an indelible mark on the structure of Asian Studies in the West — creating artificial divisions and leaving particularly significant blind spots — the history of that legacy is nonetheless still important today. Recently, many of the funding agencies that have traditionally supported cross-cultural exchanges have had their budgets cut, threatening future investment in precisely the types of interconnectivity that have helped to foster the connections that have historically played an important role in cross-cultural exchanges and mutual understanding. This lecture shall delve into how the future of Asian Studies could be re-envisioned.

Speaker

James Robson 羅柏松 is the James C. Kralik and Yunli Lou Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University and the Director of the Harvard-Yenching Institute. He served as the Director of the Harvard Asia Center for six years. Robson received his Ph.D. from Stanford University, after spending many years doing research in China, Taiwan, and Japan. He previously taught at Williams College, the University of Michigan, and was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. He specializes in the history of East Asian religions and Chinese local history. His book the Power of Place: The Religious Landscape of the Southern Sacred Peak [Nanyue 南嶽] in Medieval China received the Stanislas Julien Prize and the Toshihide Numata Prize in Buddhist Studies. He is also the editor of the Norton Anthology of World Religions: Daoism.

Chair

Sabaree Mitra is Professor of Chinese in Jawaharlal Nehru University and an Honorary Fellow at the Institute of Chinese Studies, New Delhi. Her teaching and research have spanned the fields of contemporary Chinese literature and criticism, Chinese cultural history, gender issues, India-China cultural relations and regional interaction. Her latest publication is, an edited volume titled China’s May Fourth Movement: New Narratives and Perspectives, published by Routledge in 2023. She is also the Editor of the ICS quarterly journal, China Report, published by Sage.