YCH Workshop Programme


Youth in Chinese History
Education and Representations of Young People
in Chinese Sources between Tradition and Modernity

September 14-15, 2023
University of Oxford, China Centre, Lucina Ho room


THURSDAY, September 14th

9.30 REGISTRATION

10.00 OPENING REMARKS

10.30-12.30 PANEL 1

Morality and religion across China and Europe
1. Jingyi Jenny Zhao (Needham Research Institute/University of Cambridge), Learning from the cradle: Philosophical perspectives on children in early China and ancient Greece
2. Li Hao (Ludwig Maximilians University), Xu Heng 许衡 and his theories of Elementary Learning (Xiaoxue) in practice during the early period of Yuan dynasty
3. Elisa Frei (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt/Boston College), Converting children, converting China: Jesuit sources from the early modern period
4. Linda Chu (Academia Sinica/National Taiwan Normal University), Literary forms of knowledge: Exploring Classical rhetoric as an educational and epistemic genre in Late Imperial China

12.30-14.00 LUNCH BREAK

14.00-16.00 PANEL 2

Representations of childhood across literature and the afterlife
1. Kerstin Storm (University of Münster), Youth as depicted in Tang poetry
2. Yang Qin (University of Nottingham), Representations of young people in Chinese religion: Evidence from the Southern Song Yijian zhi (Record of the Listener)
3. Elisabetta Colla (Lisbon University), Memento mori? Mortality and Youth an analysis of the Skeleton Fantasy 骷髏幻戲圖 by Li Song 李嵩 (ca. 1190–1230) 
4. Arianna Magnani (“Kore” University of Enna), Frighting and enlightening images: Explaining death and afterlife to children in Premodern China

16.00-16.30 COFFEE BREAK

16.30-18.00 PANEL 3

(Re)discovering Han heritage through the relations with the Other
1. Cui Wendong (The Chinese University of Hong Kong), Children’s biographies between tradition and modernity: A cross-cultural examination of Books for the Youth published by the Commercial Press
2. Kuo Mei-Yi (University of Leeds), Shaping the child in colonial Taiwan
3. Jennifer Y. Chang (Academia Sinica/National Chengchi University), Creating citizens of the world: The Bibliothèque Sino-Internationale and the École Internationale of Geneva and Shanghai, 1933-1949


FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 15th

9.30-10.30 KEYNOTE SPEECH

Bai Limin (Senior Lecturer in Chinese Studies Victoria University, Wellington)
Children and youth in Chinese history: A multifaceted perspective

10.30-11.00 COFFEE BREAK

11.00-12.30 PANEL 4

Women’s education and  student/teacher relationship at the beginning of the XX century
1. Alexandra Magdalena Mironesko (University of Granada), A journey through women’s education: From tradition to modernity in the period of the Republic of China (1912–1949)
2. Daniele Beltrame (University for Foreigners of Perugia), Advertising Confucianism. Bao Tianxiao as a sentimental educator
3. Giuseppe Rizzuto (University of Florence), Ye Shengtao’s point of view on students and teachers from his writings on education

12.30-14.00 LUNCH BREAK

14.00-15.30 PANEL 5

Reinventing youth through texts and images
1. Shui Xinyi (Heidelberg University), Replicating, rewriting, and reinventing: The transcultural analysis of the first modern primary textbooks in China.
2. Xu Huixuan (Education University of Hong Kong), Changing images of children in Ertong huabao 兒童畫報 (1922-1937)
3. Cai Danni (Hangzhou Normal University), Models of manners: Epistolary knowledge for young readers in republican China
4. Henan Tang (University of Edinburgh), Photographing healthy bodies: Model child citizens under the rule of Nanjing Government

16.00-16.30 COFFEE BREAK 

16.30-17.30 ROUNDTABLE