Literate Community in Early Imperial China

Thursday, May 11, 2017
4:00 PM - 5:30 PM
Bunche Hall 10383

Talk by Charles Sanft, University of Tennessee, Knoxville

In this talk, Prof. Sanft argues that soldiers in the northwest border region during the Han dynasty constituted a literate community of commoners linked to the broader textual culture of the empire. He offers a new interpretive framework and consider（and reconsider）excavated documents to challenge common assumptions about text in early China. Paleographic materials give us good reason to think that people at various social levels had meaningful interactions with writing. The implications of this argument undermine received understandings of text in early society. For while scholars have often viewed text as the exclusive province of elites, he proposes that its capabilities functioned throughout society.

Charles Sanft completed the Ph.D. in 2005 and the Habilitation in Chinese Studies in 2011, both at the University of Münster. His articles have appeared in Early China, Environmental History, and other journals and his monograph, Communication and Cooperation in Early Imperial China：Publicizing the Qin Dynasty was published by the State University of New York Press in 2014. He is Associate Professor in the Department of History at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Zuozhuan in the Context of Warring States Texts

Friday, May 12, 2017
9:30 AM - 7:30 PM
Saturday, May 13, 2017
9:00 AM - 12:00 PM
314 Royce Hall

Taiwan Studies Lectureship Annual Conference

On the occasion of the publication of a new translation of the Zuozhuan（Zuo Tradition：Commentary on the Spring and Autumn Annals）in the Classics of Chinese Thought series of the University of Washington Press, UCLA is hosting a conference with leading scholars to consider the work in relation to other texts thought to have been composed or compiled during the Warring States period. Even as recent archaeological discoveries have shed new light on the origins of the Zuozhuan, ongoing scholarship in the several historical and philological fields of Early China studies has continued to underline the central importance of this definitive text. Conference participants will reflect on Zuozhuan’s origins, on its links with other texts of the time（e.g., philosophical, historical, legal, ritual）, or more generally on its status as a product of and reflection of its era.

RSVP

Friday, May 12

9:30-9:40 Welcome Remarks

9:40-10:00 Introduction to the Translation

10:00-12:00 Panel I：Zuozhuan as Text

12:00-1:30 Lunch

1:30-3:00 Panel II：Zuozhuan and Warring States Culture

3:00-3:15 Break

3:15-5:30 Panel III：Zuozhuan in the Context of Other Warring States Texts

5:30 Reception

7:00 Conclusion

Saturday, May 13

9:30-12:00 Teaching the Zuozhuan to Students and Colleagues

The UCLA Taiwan Studies Lectureship is a joint program of the UCLA Asia Pacific Center and the Dean of Humanities and is made possible with funding from the Department of International and Cross-Strait Education, Ministry of Education, Taiwan, represented by the Education Division, Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Los Angeles.