Part of the Chinese Studies Thursday Lecture Series 2025-2026
Time: October 16th, 2025
Speaker: Shirley Chan (Macquarie University)
Title: “Crisis and Disorder in Early China: From the Great Yu to the Lüshi Chunqiu”
Abstract:
What do we mean when we call something a crisis? A flood, a sick body, a failing state? Drawing on transmitted texts and newly recovered manuscripts, this study reveals diverse vocabularies for diagnosing disruption. From the mythic story of Great Yu’s flood control, remembered as the archetype of ecological calamity, to bamboo manuscripts that employed metaphors of illness and culinary balance, and finally to the Lüshi Chunqiu’s vision of the body during the late Warring States period as an organic system, these sources trace a distinctive trajectory of crisis-thinking in which crisis was understood less as a singular event than as a recurring condition.
Speaker bio:
Shirley Chan is Associate Professor of Chinese Thought and Culture in the School of International Studies at Macquarie University, Sydney. She received her PhD from the University of Sydney, where she studied Chinese history, classical Chinese, and early Chinese thought under Pierre Ryckmans (Simon Leys) and Derek Herforth.
Her research focuses on Chinese philosophy, the history of ideas, and newly excavated manuscript materials, with particular attention to the development of ethical, political, and philosophical traditions in early China. Her publications include Dao Companion to the Excavated Guodian Bamboo Manuscripts (2019) and Reading Through Recovered Ancient Chinese Manuscripts (2020).
Her current project, crisis and leadership in the Chinese tradition, examines approaches to governance, strategic complexity, and societal resilience in early China, and places these in dialogue with wider discussions of political thought and crisis response. She has held visiting appointments at the University of Bern, Tsinghua University, National Taiwan University, and the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and will hold a Visiting Fellowship at the Tang Center for Early China, Columbia University (2025–26).
The Suigong Xu (遂公盨) bronze vessel, dating to the mid–Western Zhou period