Publications by EACS members

Call for Papers: Journal of the European Association for Chinese Studies (JEACS), Volume 5 (2024)

28th Oct 2023

Deadline: 17th Dec 2023

For its fifth volume, the Journal of the European Association for Chinese Studies (JEACS) invites scholars to submit papers on Exegesis and Commentary in the pre-modern, modern, and contemporary Chinese world. We welcome unpublished papers that consider commentary as textual material and analyse its linguistic, stylistic, and rhetorical dimensions. Topics may include, but are not limited to:

  • Margins, marginality, and page layout,
  • Commentaries, legitimacy, and canonization,
  • Gloss, elucidation, explanation, and translation,
  • Ways of rephrasing, relocating, illustrating, re-expressing,
  • Layers of exegetical texts: accumulation, digression, or dialogue,
  • Intellectual traditions and knowledge transmission,
  • Types of relations between base text and commentaries,
  • Commentaries as separate texts,
  • Genre-dependent commentaries,
  • Reading transformations and the performativity of commentary,
  • Self-commentary.

Deadline: December 17th 2023

Papers written in English (max. 10,000 words) should be supplemented with an abstract and 5 keywords in both English and Chinese, and should follow the Author Guidelines and Style Sheet provided on the submission webpage:
https://journals.univie.ac.at/index.php/jeacs/about/submissions… Read more ⤻

Members’ Publications: The ENP-China project

19th Oct 2023
The ENP-China project is pleased to announce the release of the Biographical Dictionary of Occupied China (BDOC) [https://bdoc.enpchina.eu/], an online resources created by historian David Serfass (Inalco). The BDOC seeks to address a significant lacuna in the scholarship surrounding the Japanese occupation of China (1937-1945). The current tally of entries stands at 170, but this number is anticipated to grow steadily, aspiring to emulate the breadth and depth of “the Boorman”. The vision for the BDOC is to evolve into a collaborative endeavor, uniting historians specializing in occupied China. Please check out the full presentation of the  Biographical Dictionary of Occupied China (BDOC) on the ENP-China reasearch blog [https://enepchina.hypotheses.org/5304].

… Read more ⤻

Members’ Publications: Helena F. S. Lopes

10th Aug 2023
Cambridge University Press, 2023

Helena F. S. Lopes, Cardiff University, Neutrality and Collaboration in South China: Macau during the Second World War
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023

The South China enclave of Macau was the first and last European colonial settlement in East Asia and a territory at the crossroads of different empires. In this highly original study, Helena F. S. Lopes analyses the layers of collaboration that developed from neutrality in Macau during the Second World War. Exploring the intersections of local, regional and global dynamics, she unpacks the connections between a plurality of actors with competing and collaborative interests, including Chinese Nationalists, Communists and collaborators with Japan, Portuguese colonial authorities and British and Japanese representatives. Lopes argues that neutrality eased the movement of refugees of different nationalities who sought shelter in Macau during the war and that it helped to guarantee the maintenance of two remnants of European colonialism – Macau and Hong Kong.… Read more ⤻

Member’s Publications: Thorben Pelzer

10th Aug 2023
Brill, 2023

Pelzer, Thorben, 2023. Engineering Trouble: US–Chinese Experiences of Professional Discontent, 1905–1945. China Studies, Volume 52. Boston: Brill, 2023.

In the early twentieth century, the first large batch of Chinese civil engineers had graduated from the USA, and together with their American senior colleagues returned to China. They were enthusiastic about reconstructing the young republic by building new railways, highways, and canals, but what the engineers experienced in China, including mismanaged railways, useless highways, and silted canals, did not always meet their expectations and ideals. In this book, Thorben Pelzer makes the stories of these Chinese and American engineers come to life through exploring previously unpublished letters, rare images, maps, and a rich biographical dataset. He argues that the experiences of these engineers include a myriad of contradictions, disillusionment, and discontent, keeping the engineering profession in a constant flux of searching for its meaning and its place in Republican China.

Download this announcement’s original PDF:

62246Download
… Read more ⤻

Members’ Publications: Nina Borevskaia

10th Aug 2023
Shans 2023, 2 Vols.

Nina Borevskaia, 2023. The translation of Luo Maodeng’s novel The Tale of Zheng He’s Voyage to the Western Ocean (San Bao taijian Xiyang ji, 1597). Moscow, Shans Publishing House. 2 Vols.

The Russian translation of one of the classical Chinese novels Sanbao taijian xia Xiyang tongsu yanyi (Xiyangji, Author Luo Maodeng, 1597) was published in Moscow by Shanse publishing house in May 2023 (slightly abridged version, in two volumes with three appendixes, coloured illustratins and many comments), The translation was made by Nina Borevskaia, EACS member for almost 35 years. The book is in two volumes, each of about 440 pages. It has a welcome address by the famous modern writer Wang Meng and a long Preface in the format of the interview between the translator and the author called “Over the Abyss of Time and Space”. The translation is provided with several thousand comments (references).

English Abstract

Abstract: The translation of Luo Maodeng’s novel
The Tale of Zheng He’s Voyage to the Western Ocean
(San Bao taijian Xiyang ji, 1597)

According to the generally accepted Eurocentric ideas shared by many historians, the era of great geographical discoveries of the 15th — 16th centuries began with the expeditions of Vasco da Gama, Christopher Columbus, and Ferdinand Magellan.… Read more ⤻

ERCCS: Reviews of new academic books from China

14th Jun 2023

The European Research Centre for Chinese Studies (ERCCS) in Beijing, a joint centre of the École française d’Extrême-Orient and the Max Weber Stiftung, regularly publishes reviews of new academic books from China on its blog: https://erccs.hypotheses.org/category/publications/book-reviews
Here the latest reviews:
• 翁有为《近代中国之变轴：军阀话语建构、省制变革与国家》(Weng Youwei: The Axis of Change in Modern China. The Construction of the Discourse on Warlordism, the Reform of the Provincial System, and the State) reviewed by Clemens Büttner
• 吕庙军《清华简与文武周公史事研究》(Lü Miaojun: Research on Tsinghua Bamboo-Slip Manuscripts and Historical Events of King Wen, King Wu, and the Duke of Zhou) reviewed by Felix Bohlen
• 李小尉《新中国初期的中国人民救济总会研究》(Li Xiaowei: Research on the People’s Relief Association of China in the Early Period of the PRC) reviewed by Henrike Rudolph
• 陳少明《夢覺之間：〈莊子〉思想錄》(Chen Shaoming: Between Waking and Dreaming. Reflections on the Zhuangzi) reviewed by Dennis Schilling
• 李尹蒂《晚清农学的兴起与困境》(Li Yindi: The Rise and Dilemma of Agricultural Science in Late Qing Dynasty) reviewed by Jörg H. Hüsemann
• 张昌平《吉金类系：海外及港台地区收藏的中国青铜器研究》(Zhang Changping: Auspicious Metals’ Categories and System: A Study of Chinese Bronze Vessels Collected Overseas and in the Hong-Kong and Taiwan Region) reviewed by Maria Khayutina

See also the selective bibliography of books on Chinese history from China for 2022: https://erccs.hypotheses.org/1880… Read more ⤻

Members’ Publications: Stéphanie Homola

3rd Feb 2023
Berghahn Books, 2023

Homola, Stéphanie. 2023. The Art of Fate Calculation. Practicing Divination in Taipei, Beijing, and Kaifeng. New York: Berghahn Books (Asian Anthropologies Series). ISBN 978-1-80073-812-6

This book dives into Chinese fate calculation, a practice which enthralls the Chinese despite official condemnations which have disparaged this traditional knowledge as “superstitions” since the beginning of the 20th century. From housewives to students and high-ranking officials, people from all social backgrounds visit fate calculation masters to learn about and make the most of their destiny, be it to choose a career, get promoted, make an investment, or get married. How do clients experience fate calculation consultations? How do they choose a diviner and how do they assess his/her skills? How does one become a fortune-teller? What controversies structure the professional milieu? How is a person’s fate calculated? Through an investigation that takes us from Taiwan to China to meet the various actors of fate calculation, this work explores why so many people are interested in a form of knowledge which everyone admits to be highly complex and questionable.… Read more ⤻

Members’ Publications: Qing Cao

1st Feb 2023
Routledge Studies in Chinese Discourse Analysis

The Language of Nation-State Building in Late Qing China – A Case Study of the Xinmin Congbao and the Minbao, 1902-1910, Qing Cao, Routledge Studies in Chinese Discourse Analysis, January 2023: 148pp

The Language of Nation-State Building in Late Qing China investigates the linguistic and intellectual roots of China’s modern transformation by presenting a systematic study of the interplay between language innovation and socio-political upheavals in the final decade of the Qing Empire.
This book will be useful and relevant to academics, postgraduate students and final year undergraduate students in the field of Chinese Studies, and anyone
interested in the role of language in shaping modern intellectual history.… Read more ⤻