UNSW Chinese Studies Seminar Series
Tuesday 29 May 2018 4:15-5:45
Room 309, Morven Brown Building, High St, Gate 8, UNSW Kensington campus
Zhou Zuoren (1885-1967) is one of the most controversial figures in modern China. A prolific essayist, comparativist, translator, poet, “enlightenment” thinker, and Professor at Peking University, he was tried by the Kuomintang government after WWII as a pro-Japanese traitor for affiliation with the collaborationist regimes in North China and Nanjing. Zhou Zuoren has captured the imagination of six generations of Chinese intellectuals since his rise to prominence in the vanguard of the New Culture Movement, which began in 1919. Released from prison as part of an amnesty in January 1949, he made his way through Shanghai back to Beijing, again taking up residence in part of the house his late brother, the prominent writer and social critic Lu Xun (1881-1936) had purchased for the family decades earlier.
Although he wrote voluminous reminiscences about his early years with Lu Xun, it is seldom noted that after Liberation (1949), while living under the Communist government, Zhou Zuoren also published under various pseudonyms, over 1000 essays, articles and short pieces in mainland China and Hong Kong, as well as translating numerous works from classical Greek and Japanese sources for Renmin Wenxue Chubanshe. This paper will argue that his post-1949 works were in fact a continuation of the “enlightenment” intellectual project Zhou Zuoren embarked on in the May Fourth Era and that his thought holds continuing relevance for China today.
The talk will be in Mandarin with power-point slides. Discussion will be bilingual.
About the Speaker
The speaker Dr Yan Hui, is Associate Professor of Chinese literature at Central China Normal University in Wuhan. She is currently a Visiting Scholar in the Chinese Studies Program at UNSW. Her other research includes projects on contemporary Chinese literature.
The series convenor Dr Jon Eugene von Kowallis, is Chair Professor of Chinese Studies in the School of Humanities and Languages, UNSW Sydney and President of the Oriental Society of Australia.
For further information, please contact the convenor:
Email: j.vonkowallis@unsw.edu.au
Tel. 9385-1020