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Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies

 
Venue: 
Online
Event date: 
Thursday, 3 March, 2022 - 14:00
Event organiser: 

China Research Seminar Series talk given by Prof. Nicolas Standaert, Katholieke Universiteit, Leuven

Registration Required

Joining the Global Public in the Early and Mid-Qing Dynasty

The Chinese Gazette as a publicly available government publication was distributed in a variety of formats since the twelfth century. Little is known, however, about its form and content before 1800. By looking at China from the periphery, this seminar explores how European sources offer a unique way of expanding the knowledge about the gazette of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Its interconnected history illustrates how the Chinese Gazette, as translated by European missionaries, became a major source for reflections on state and society by Enlightenment thinkers. It thus joined a global public much earlier than so far assumed.

Nicolas Standaert is Professor of Sinology at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium). His major research interest is the cultural contacts between China and Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In this field he has led multiple research projects on rituality, visual culture, materiality, historiography, print culture and organized several international workshops on these topics. Among his many monographs and edited volumes are The Interweaving of Rituals: Funerals in the Cultural Exchange between China and Europe (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2008), Chinese Voices in the Rites Controversy: Travelling Books, Community Networks, Intercultural Arguments (Rome: Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 2012); The Intercultural Weaving of Historical Texts: Chinese and European Stories about Emperor Ku and His Concubines (Leiden: Brill, 2016); and The Chinese Gazette in European Sources (Leiden: Brill, 2022). He is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Sciences and Arts of Belgium. More information can be found at: https://www.arts.kuleuven.be/english/our-staff/zap/nicolasstandaert

Contact
Professor Adam Yuet Chau: ayc25@cam.ac.uk