Date: Friday, Nov 3: 9:00am-10:00am BJT

Location: AB 2103 & Zoom: 923 6214 4995; Passcode: 2023

Guest Speaker: Dr. Dandan Chen, Professor of History, Farmingdale State College, State University of New York

Abstract    

Taking “temporality” and “spatiality” as the core of its theoretical exploration of “Jiangnan”, this talk revisits the tradition of “Jiangnan” (as distinct from “the South”) in the Chinese context and then aims to address the notion of “global Jiangnan” (as distinct from the notion of “the global South”) theoretically, historically, and culturally. At the theoretical level, the talk proposes a global approach to Jiangnan in addition to investigating Jiangnan from the perspective of regional history. Historically, the paper examines the drift of “Jiangnan” in pre-modern and modern contexts. Hoping to break down the barrier between pre-modern and modern worlds, the talk traces “global Jiangnan” in several typical historical moments and places, including early Qing Beijing. Culturally, borrowing Deleuze’s concepts, the talk aims to examine the folds, deterritorialization and reterritorialization of Jiangnan across time and space globally. The talk proposes to understand Jiangnan as a kind of moving and foldable space that appears in a variety of forms in different historical-social structures.

Bio

Dandan Chen received her Ph.D. from Harvard University. She is currently Professor of History in the Department of History, Politics, and Geography at Farmingdale State College, State University of New York, and has been teaching in the Department of Science, Technology, and Society since 2013. She is an Associate in Research at Harvard’s Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, and the founder of the global scholarly platform “Global Studies Forum” (globalstudiesforum.com). Dr. Chen’s interdisciplinary areas of research and teaching include global and Asian history, Chinese history, politics, literature, and law in a global context. A bilingual writer, her articles have appeared in various journals. Her book Cultural Worlds of Late Ming-Early Qing and Late Qing-Early Republican China will be published in 2024. Dr. Chen has received awards including the SUNY Chancellor Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities (2022), the SUNY Nuala Drescher Award (2016), and the 2016 Academic Excellence Award from CHUS (Chinese Historians in the United States), an affiliate of the American Historical Association.