Urban Cultural Institutions in Early Twentieth Century China

April 13, 2002
The Ohio State University

This symposium seeks to explore the many ways Chinese intellectuals, writers, artists, and journalists in the first half of the past century joined together to form what could be loosely labeled "cultural institutions." Although there were of course cultural groups in premodern China, it would seem that this tendency to organize collectively was reinforced in the modern period and can be said to be one of the defining characteristics of the modern cultural field. The symposium is an out growth of the collaboration of Julia F. Andrews (History of Art) and Kirk A. Denton (East Asian Languages and Literatures). With Kuiyi Shen (Ohio University), Andrews has been engaged in a study of traditional painting societies of Republican China. Denton, in collaboration with Michel Hockx (School of Oriental and Africa Studies, University of London), has been working on an edited collection of essays on the literary societies of the same period. Both studies are motivated, at least in part, by a desire to supplement the dominant "textual" approach to art and literary history with an often overlooked social or institutional dimension. Behind these projects lies the notion that art history and literary history should be much more than "texts" and the "authors" who produced them; texts and authors should not be looked at in isolation from such things as the publishing industry, editors, commercial demands, educational institutions, journals and literary supplements, literary critics, the economic situation of the writer, political censorship, literary societies, and a host of other networks. This symposium was initiated as a forum to present this research, but more importantly to bring together scholars with similar interests in the role of organizations in the formation of the cultural field of late Qing and Republican China. Papers in the symposium will treat literary societies, painting societies, drama societies, journalists, publishers, advertising departments, and more. Some will address formally-structured cultural institutions, others look at more subtle forms of cultural networking.

Saturday, April 13, 2002; 9:00AM to 6:30PM

Mershon Center (NOT the Mershon Auditorium Wexner Center for the Arts)
1501 Neil Avenue (at 8th Avenue)
Columbus, Ohio 43210

Parking is available in the Pennsylvania Ave. lot immediately behind Mershon Center

Catherine Yeh (Heidelberg University), The Rise of the Actor to National Stardom: The Qing Court's Management of Peking Opera and the Shanghai Challenge (1870-1912)

Wen-hsin Yeh (University of California, Berkeley), Urban Cultural Institutions and Discourses of Dissent in Post-Imperial China

Kirk A. Denton (OSU). Hu Feng and the July Writers: Genealogy of a Literary Group

Julia F. Andrews (OSU), Nationalism and Painting Societies of the 1930s

Panel Two: 12:45-3:15

Christopher Reed (OSU), Conflict in Cultural Commerce: Shanghai Publishers and the Textbook Wars, 1912-28

Timothy Weston (U of Colorado, Boulder), Scholar-Journalists of the May Fourth Era: Forging a New Sensibility and a New Professional Identity

Kuiyi Shen (Ohio University), Modernist Painting Societies in Pre-War China

Xiaomei Chen (OSU), Tian Han and the Southern Society (Nanguo) Phenomenon: Negotiating the Personal, the Communal, and the Cultural

Panel Three: 3:30-6:00

Michel Hockx (SOAS, University of London), Creation by Association and Dissociation: Literary Societies in Republican China

Bryna Goodman (U of Oregon), The Transnational (and Subnational) Worlds of Shanghai Newspaper Culture

Ellen Laing (University of Michigan), The British American Tobacco Company Advertising Department and Four of Its Calendar Poster Artists

Chuan-ying Yen (Academic Sinica and National Central University), The Demise of Japanese Painting (Nihonga) in Taiwan

For Participants

Non-OSU participants will be staying at the Harrison House, a victorian bed and breakfast located within easy walking distance of the conference site.

Harrison House
313 West Fifth Avenue
Columbus, Ohio 43201
Phone: (614) 421-2202
Toll Free: (800) 827-4203
website

Directions to Mershon Center: To get to the Mershon Center from Harrison House, go out the front door of Harrison House, walk to your right along Fifth Avenue. The first street you will come to is Neil Avenue. Turn left (heading north). Walk 4 blocks to 8th Avenue. The main entrance to the Mershon Center is at the corner of Neil Ave. and Eighth Ave. (on the left hand side, the west side, of Neil).

Sponsors

Sponsored by the Ohio State University Institute for Collaborative Research in the Public Humanities, Office of International Affairs, the Institute for Chinese Studies, the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures, and Modern Chinese Literature and Culture.