Past Awards

Graduate students and early-career scholars will attend an in-person, workshop-style conference to foster discussion about border-crossing over the longue durée history of late imperial China. Scholars across academic ranks in Asia and North America will circulate their papers in advance for in-depth discussion, and research will be shared as an open-source publication. The conference will be held in two parts, with meetings in New York and Teipei.

This interdisciplinary, workshop-style conference aims to develop a deeper understanding of, and foster discussion and debate about, Ming history, global experience with empire in the early modern period, and the role of historical precedents in Chinese governance today. Papers will be presented on four panels, each built around the pre-circulation of papers and designated commentators. The conference will bring together scholars from around the world, and the best papers will be published as an edited volume or one or more special issues of recognized scholarly journals. GHF funds support travel, per diem, and accommodation for graduate student and early-career academics, and cover the costs of the keynote session.

Place has emerged as a major focus and concept in recent scholarship on Chinese art, architecture, and material culture, and has been redefining approaches to landscape and its representation, to cities and the built environment, and to objects and their materiality. This conference connects scholars from Canada, the US, and the UK whose work foregrounds place as a critical term across different media and time periods, with a focus on the Ming-Qing period. It will result in greater awareness of how related questions are examined by colleagues and graduate students working from adjacent fields, and articulate how current research centered on “place” is changing the field of Chinese art, visual, and material culture. A selection of conference papers will be published in a thematic issue of a peer-reviewed journal.

This conference of the Southeast US Scholars and Friends of Late Imperial China will serve as an open space in which Ming and late imperial scholars, students, researchers, and friends can share work with engaged colleagues in a welcoming and supportive environment. Wai-yee Li, 1879 Professor of Chinese Literature at Harvard University, will give a keynote address titled “Gender and Friendship in Ming and Qing Literature.”

The Southeast US Scholars and Friends of Late Imperial China (SEUSS-FLIC) held an in-person conference at Vanderbilt University in conjunction with a slate of virtual panels organized by the University of Tennessee Knoxville. Panels explored the ways in which China’s late imperial period created the foundation for China’s identity today, and addressed issues in Chinese history, literature, and culture in the context of global connections and comparisons. The conference aimed to forge connections between scholars from institutions within driving distance of Nashville, Tennessee, who may encounter barriers to attending other regional and national conferences.

This international conference seeks to foster dialogue between specialists of Korean and Vietnamese humanities. It will consist of eight panels, each featuring a pair of specialists, one working on Vietnam, the other working on Korea, who will give thematically-linked presentations on a common area of study: Pedagogy and Learning; Book History; Literacy and Poetic Culture; Political Legacies; Vernacular Culture; Popular Fiction; Environmental History; and Frontiers and Borders. It will also include a round-table on rare materials collections and digital source material. Several projects will be selected for publication in a special issue of a journal.

This two-day conference aimed to be the inaugural meeting of a regional forum to promote scholarly interaction and to support emerging scholars of late imperial China working in the Southeastern United States. By establishing these formal gatherings, the organizers hoped to provide intellectual benefits to the scholars and graduate students in the region, to enrich their own scholarship and teaching, and to engage broader interest in studies of the Ming.

Complementing the British Museum’s exhibition, Ming: 50 Years that Changed China, this major conference brought together more than 30 Ming scholars from across the globe, who presented new perspectives and research papers about the Ming spanning 1400–1450. Focusing on the aftermath of the Zhu Yuanzhang’s overthrow of the Mongol Yuan dynasty, the conference examined the role of China’s imperial and provincial princely courts, and discussed China’s relations and exchanges with other parts of the world.