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Speaker: Professor Edmund Fung, University of Western Sydney
This paper departs from previous Western scholarship on China’s ‘new nationalism’ of the 1990s, which has paid much attention to state nationalism, international politics, and foreign and defence policy-making, and from the nation/state, tradition/modernity, and cultural nationalism/political nationalism dichotomies in earlier works to provide a nuanced understanding and multilayered analysis of Chinese cultural nationalism of the 1990s and beyond. The paper argues that what began as an intellectual critique of the ‘culture craze’ of the 1980s develops into a positive response to the challenges of modernity and globalization that is significantly linked to the rise of China and to the ‘China threat’ and ‘containing China’ theories propagated in the West. The intellectual pluralism of the 1990s and beyond underscores visions of a nation that is in competition with the West led by the United States in the new world order. The article further argues that cultural and political nationalisms, nation and state, rather than opposing each other, converge at particular points. Even as the CCP regime’s narrative of the nation is contested, cultural nationalists are capable of supporting it and help to strengthen the conservative, political mainstream. None would seek a revival of traditional authoritarianism, though. Instead, they see a positive relationship of cultural nationalism to political reform. In return, the regime accommodates their views, acknowledging their ‘patriotism’ and deploying culture as an important part of China’s ‘comprehensive competitiveness.’ The culture–politics nexus in contemporary China is more complicated and more nuanced than is previously thought.

Speaker: Professor Wendy Larson, University of Oregon
Some early 20th century Chinese intellectuals imagined that the new Freudian psychology, with its radical theories of the mind, could transform traditional concepts, at the time perceived as negative and typified by Lu Xun’s fictional character Ah Q. Others criticized Freud for his pan-sexualism and developed competing theories of a mentality crafted through relationships, understood as social position, and motivated by passionate emotional engagement. This quality, later called ‘revolutionary spirit’, was embodied in the worker-icon Lei Feng. Over the course of the 20th century, from Ah Q to Lei Feng, the qualities of the ideal modern mind were a topic of fervent debate, active policy formation, and intense investigation through art, literature, and film.

Speaker: Dr. Adelyn Lim
This paper examines the challenges in organizing South Asian women to advocate for their rights and welfare in Hong Kong. South Asian women, the majority of whom are Indian, Nepalese, and Pakistani, are an “invisible” community of women both within the Hong Kong women’s movement and Hong Kong society itself. I discuss the Hong Kong women’s movement in the context of global feminism and transnational activism, and how class, ethnicity, gender, and religion are constructed in ways that have created divisions between South Asian women and the Hong Kong women’s movement. I question how activists, both Chinese and South Asian women, can overcome language, cultural, and religious differences to act with solidarity and create an alternative form of women’s transnational organizing.

Speaker: Dr. Mina Roces, The University of New South Wales
Filipino organizations argued that activism must be global. They participated in the international women’s movements (through international conferences or in meetings with the United Nations), and were proactive in hosting international conferences in the Philippines. Two important priority feminist issues-trafficking and migration-required networking or lobbying across national boundaries. Activists lobbied several governments from the United States, to Spain, Italy, Greece, Hong Kong, Singapore and the Middle East to name a few, and international organizations such as the United Nations. Women’s organizations relied on a huge international network in their advocacy work and engaged with the world as transnational subjects.

Speaker: Dr. Devaki Monani, The University of Technology Sydney
Dr Monani will present an over view of the findings of her PhD thesis that examined the viability of developing countries adopting best practice approaches from developed countries in a social work setting. Her work argues that developing countries are less likely to benefit from the knowledge exchange that is likely to occur between developed countries (for instance OECD nations). Theoretically she drew from the women's human rights frameworks and the international program transfer approaches. Her research exemplifies that cultural values and country contexts play a vital role in the way in which services are developed by nations for its peoples. India and Australia were the two case study countries where field work was conducted for the purpose of the study. Findings of this study establish an ongoing research agenda that is aligned with bridging the gap between knowledge transfer from developed to developing countries.

Spearker: Miss Selena Dramlic
This talk explores the so called National Learning Craze (国学热) of the 1990s in the Chinese Mainland as an academic, cultural and popular phenomenon. Whether or not this phenomenon is actually a “craze/fever” remains questioned by some contemporary Chinese academics and scholars. But, I argue that questioning the craze’s actuality does not negate nor undermine the need for examination and research in this field, as national learning discourse is evolving into one of the most prominent cultural movements of the late 20th and early 21st century China. This claim simultaneously constitutes the reason behind my decision to indulge into the research of such a complex and multifaceted contemporary phenomenon. To support the argument above, I commence the presentation with an overview of the research conducted to date (especially identifying the places that shed light on the indispensability of this phenomenon to our understanding of contemporary China). I then move on to discuss the manifestations and reasoning behind contemporary Chinese interest in tradition (relying primarily on Chinese publications, since Western literature on this topic is still scarce), and conclude by presenting the anticipated thesis structure and organization.

Speaker: Dr. Nicole Huang, University of Wisconsin-Madison
In the 1970s, the cinematic soundtracks of a handful of films, including model opera films and feature films, were edited specifically for the purpose of radio broadcasting. Coined as “edited film recording,” this made‐for‐radio sonic compilation would retain much of the music and dialogues straight from the original track, complemented by a voice‐over narrator that explains backgrounds, settings, and connections between different scenes. Film literacy could be achieved without an actual access to the film products themselves. The hybridity of the genre created an illusion of more and equal access to the symbolic order of a socialist visual culture. Together with serialized radio novels and radio plays, these edited film recordings were among the most popular forms of mass entertainment throughout the 1970s. The talk will attempt to highlight the sounds behind the images and call into question the sensory predominance of the visual over the aural in our current scholarly paradigms.

Speaker: Susan Glosser, Lewis and Clark College
Throughout the War of Resistance, propagandists of all political stripes crafted an image of a unified Chinese people who placed the nation before all personal concerns. Of course, on the ground reality could look quite different. In this talk, Prof. Glosser draws on various sources to reconstruct the nitty-gritty details of housing for white-collar Chinese workers during the first stage of Japan's occupation of Shanghai (1937-1941). In these materials, we come face to face with the realities of life in occupied Shanghai. From this perspective, it is clear that most Shanghainese, and possibly the vast majority of Chinese in the rest of China, had neither the time nor the money to aid the resistance in any way. This possibility suggests that we need to reexamine our assumptions about the war and how it was won.

Speaker: Professor Louise Edwards
Edited volumes are a common feature of academic publishing but they are fraught with problems that can limit both their intellectual impact and anticipated benefits to career advancement. In this seminar Professor Edwards outlines common problems editors face in managing the editing process and provides a series of practical strategies to minimize their occurrence. She also addresses core issues about the 'value' of editing volumes in the current academic scene.

Su Tong’s most recent novel, "Boat to Redemption", translated by Howard Goldblatt, won the 2009 Man Asian Literary Prize. Su is a prolific and provocative author whose works have earned him a place at the centre of China's literary scene. He talks about gender issues, specifically, the place of women in his writing, focusing on his female characters.

Speaker: Professor Louise Edwards
Prostitution and spying are often wryly described as the world's oldest and second oldest professions. In wartime both functions are frequently combined into one role --"sexspionage"-- as military strategists expand their intelligence gathering networks. The wars that ravaged China between 1937 and 1949 provided ample scope for all sides in the combat to mobilize women as sex spies. In her talk, Professor Edwards examines the evolution of Chinese perspectives on the deployment of young women as sex spies before and after the cessation of hostilities. It addresses questions of chastity and sacrifice as well as memory-creation and the sexualized nature of post-war reconstruction.

Speaker: Professor Edmund Fung (UWS)
In the early part of the 20th century, China was on the brink of change. Different ideologies - those of radicalism, conservatism, liberalism and social democracy - were much debated in political and intellectual circles. While previous works have analysed these trends in isolation, this paper seeks to show how they related to each other and how intellectuals in China engaged according to their different cultural and political persuasions. Fung argues Republican thought is best understood as a triad of liberal, radical and conservative thought, which arose at about the same time and in similar circumstances within what Benjamin Schwartz calls ‘a framework of common concepts of the age’. Each was a modern response to the challenges of modernity. This interrelatedness is central to the understanding of the intellectual foundations of Chinese modernity, for many of the debates which began in the Republican era still resonate in China today. Fung provides an overview of the development of these different ideologies and explores the work and influence of such intellectuals as Hu Shi, Zhang Dongsun, Zhang Junmai, Liang Shuming, and some lesser-known figures that were associated with them.

This Academy Award-winning documentary short follows a year in the life of children in the Province of Anhui in China who have lost their parents to AIDS.