New Asia College The Chinese University of Hong Kong eNewsletter

Prof. Peter K. Bol, Charles H. Carswell Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University, will visit the College in early April to chair the 27^th Ch'ien Mu Lecture in History and Culture.

Prof. Bol's research is centered on the history of China's cultural elites from the 7^th to the 17^th century. He led Harvard's university-wide effort to establish support for geospatial analysis in teaching and research and in 2005 he was named the first director of the Centre for Geographic Analysis. He also directs the China Historical Geographic Information Systems project, a collaboration between Harvard and Fudan University in Shanghai, to create a GIS for 200 years of Chinese history. Concurrently he directs the China Biographical Database project, an online relational database currently of 70,000 historical figures that is being expanded to cover the Chinese political elite over the last 2000 years. This project is a collaboration between Harvard, Academia Sinica, and Peking University. He is author of This Culture of Ours: Intellectual Transitions in Tang and Sung China and Neo-Confucianism in History.

Prof. Bol will deliver three lectures during his stay in Hong Kong:

1^st Lecture: Moral Philosophy and Social Movement: Neo-Confucianism in Later Imperial China

Can we combine the history of philosophy with the history of society? Some would argue that we cannot, and should not. Neo-Confucianism (Song-Ming Lixue 宋明理學or Daoxue 道學) first took shape as a moral philosophy in the late 11^th century, as a rather marginal current in the many streams of literati culture. By the thirteenth century it had also become, despite opposition from the court, a social and ideological movement that was quickly spreading through literati communities in the southeast, and by the end of the thirteenth century was established in the Mongol-ruled north as well. How can we be fair to both its social history and its philosophy?

(Details of this lecture will be announced later.)

2^nd Lecture: Paths Taken, Paths Avoided: Assessing Neo-Confucianism's Role in China's History

The texts of Neo-Confucianism (Song-Ming Lixue 宋明理學or Daoxue 道學) were required reading for China's educated elite for the last 700 years of the imperial era. It must have made some difference, but how do we assess the consequences of Neo-Confucianism as the nominal ideology of the political and cultural elite? Was this why China fell behind the West? Was this why China remained unified? Can we learn something of importance for China today from the roles Neo-Confucians played in the past?

Date: April 6, Sunday
Time: 3pm
Venue: Lecture Theatre, G/F, Hong Kong Museum of History, 100 Chatham Road South, Tsim Sha Tsui

3^rd Lecture: The Methodologies of Intellectual History

Having been declared dead in favor of social history and cultural history, intellectual history is now resurgent in leading History Departments in the US. However, its methodologies are rooted in the study of Mediterranean civilization, not China. Does this mean its methodologies are not relevant to the study of China's history? Can the study of Chinese thought change the methodologies of intellectual history as a transnational discipline?

(Details of this lecture will be announced later.)

Lectures will be conducted in English. All are welcome.

Further details of the 1^st and 3^rd lectures will be announced shortly. Please visit the College Homepage for updates. For enquiries, please contact Ms. Edith Tsang of the College Office (Tel: 3943-7944; Email: edithtsang@cuhk.edu.hk).