CCS brings together three rising scholars whose research opens new windows into China’s global, literary, and social transformations. Peiyu Yang traces how Arab intellectuals of the late 19th and early 20th centuries imagined China during the Nahda, revealing surprising cross-cultural engagements with China’s anti-colonial struggles, constitutional reform, and debates over women’s rights. Sandy Zhang examines the vibrant literary experimentation that unfolded within China’s state-run publishing system in the 1980s. Focusing on the journal Shanghai Literature and editor Li Ziyun, she shows how insiders navigated censorship and institutional constraints to champion modernist and avant-garde writing, helping reshape the literary landscape during Reform and Opening. Thomas Chan explores how early twentieth-century China redefined the very meaning of drug addiction. Highlighting the work of Dr. Wu Liande and other medical reformers, he demonstrates how Chinese physicians advanced individual-based models of addiction that influenced global addiction science and drug-control regimes. Together, these talks illuminate China’s interconnected cultural, intellectual, and medical histories while showcasing innovative new scholarship on the twentieth century.
Speaker: Peiyu Yang
Peiyu Yang is currently a term assistant professor of Arabic at George Mason University. Her monograph Triangular Translation: Gender, Politics, and the Making of the Postcolonial World between China, Europe, and the Middle East, 1880-1940 (2023, Legenda Press) investigates how intellectuals during the Nahda (the period known as the Arab cultural renaissance) turned their attention to Chinese culture and its own anti-colonial struggle, constitutional revolution, and women’s rights.
Speaker: Sandy Zhang
Sandy Zhang is a scholar of contemporary Chinese literature and visual arts, with a special focus on Chinese Avant-garde literature and art of the 1980s. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Chinese at Southern Utah University. Her recent articles, published in Humanities, Chinese Literature and Thought Today, Third Text, Prism, etc, examine the intellectual, literary and artistic reforms of China’s 1980s.
Speaker: Thomas Chan
Thomas Chan is an interdisciplinary historian of modern China specializing in the intertwined histories of medicine, cultural production, political violence, and state formation. I have special interests in drugs, violence, and popular culture. My current book project, From Users to Criminals: Creating, Pathologizing, and Killing ‘Drug Criminals’ in Twentieth Century China, analyzes how from 1906 to 1953 both governments dehumanized drug users and traffickers to encourage collective identity formation and promote state-building.
Moderator: Jonathan Pettit
Jonathan Pettit is an Associate Professor in the Department of Religions & Ancient Civilizations
CCS brings together three rising scholars whose research opens new windows into China’s global, literary, and social transformations. Peiyu Yang traces how Arab intellectuals of the late 19th and early 20th centuries imagined China during the Nahda, revealing surprising cross-cultural engagements with China’s anti-colonial struggles, constitutional reform, and debates over women’s rights. Sandy Zhang examines the vibrant literary experimentation that unfolded within China’s state-run publishing system in the 1980s. Focusing on the journal Shanghai Literature and editor Li Ziyun, she shows how insiders navigated censorship and institutional constraints to champion modernist and avant-garde writing, helping reshape the literary landscape during Reform and Opening. Thomas Chan explores how early twentieth-century China redefined the very meaning of drug addiction. Highlighting the work of Dr. Wu Liande and other medical reformers, he demonstrates how Chinese physicians advanced individual-based models of addiction that influenced global addiction science and drug-control regimes. Together, these talks illuminate China’s interconnected cultural, intellectual, and medical histories while showcasing innovative new scholarship on the twentieth century.
Speaker: Peiyu Yang
Peiyu Yang is currently a term assistant professor of Arabic at George Mason University. Her monograph Triangular Translation: Gender, Politics, and the Making of the Postcolonial World between China, Europe, and the Middle East, 1880-1940 (2023, Legenda Press) investigates how intellectuals during the Nahda (the period known as the Arab cultural renaissance) turned their attention to Chinese culture and its own anti-colonial struggle, constitutional revolution, and women’s rights.
Speaker: Sandy Zhang
Sandy Zhang is a scholar of contemporary Chinese literature and visual arts, with a special focus on Chinese Avant-garde literature and art of the 1980s. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Chinese at Southern Utah University. Her recent articles, published in Humanities, Chinese Literature and Thought Today, Third Text, Prism, etc, examine the intellectual, literary and artistic reforms of China’s 1980s.
Speaker: Thomas Chan
Thomas Chan is an interdisciplinary historian of modern China specializing in the intertwined histories of medicine, cultural production, political violence, and state formation. I have special interests in drugs, violence, and popular culture. My current book project, From Users to Criminals: Creating, Pathologizing, and Killing ‘Drug Criminals’ in Twentieth Century China, analyzes how from 1906 to 1953 both governments dehumanized drug users and traffickers to encourage collective identity formation and promote state-building.
Moderator: Jonathan Pettit
Jonathan Pettit is an Associate Professor in the Department of Religions & Ancient Civilizations
