HSTCC Society News

HSTCC Business Meeting & Panel at the 1998 AAS Washington DC Meeting

The Business meeting and the Panel were held in March, 1998 at the annual conference of the AAS. At the Business meeting, Presi- dent Levine pointed to some of the accom- plishments of the Society in the past year: the growth in membership, the success of the Coeur d=Alene Symposium on ACulture and Politics in 20th Century China,@ and the setting up of the HSTCC Web site which helps to link researchers and highlight their work for the scholarly and more general community. The meeting also discussed the issues of membership dues and the establishment of an endowment. As for future symposia, Professor Guido Samarani has invited HSTCC to hold the 1999 Symposium at the University of Venice in early or late June, and an excellent program was being planned. HSTCC will also hold a joint meeting with the Southwest Conference on Asian Studies in October 1999 in San Marcos, Texas. Finally, new officers and board members were elected for 1998-2000.

The HSTCC Panel, entitled AThe Female Ideal? Empresses and Foreign Women in China@ was chaired by Constance Orliski, (University of Southern California), with Zhang Xin (Indiana University, Indianapolis) as discussant. The papers examined gendered perspectives of models of womanhood at various points in Chinese history. Bao Hua Hsieh=s (Creighton University) study of the lives of various Ming empresses provided a new vision of empresses and a richer understanding of palace life. Hui-tzu Lu (University of Arizona) discussed women=s biographies in later Imperial China (1616-1820). Finally, Nanxiu Qian=s paper on the husband-wife team, Xue Shaohui and Chen Shoupeng focused on their respective contributions to the development of concepts of gender in the Republican era. Lively discussion followed the presentations.

HSTCC Roundtable and Meeting at the ICAS Conference, Leiden

HSTCC held a Roundtable entitled, AChanging Perceptions of the Sino-Japanese War, 1937-1945" at the ICAS Conference at Leiden on 26th June, 1998. The Roundtable discussed new interpretations of the war from Chinese, American, Italian, German and Soviet perspectives. The Roundtable included:

-Chair: Marilyn Levine, Lewis-Clark State College

-Roger B. Jeans (Washington & Lee), AAmericans and the Sino-Japanese War: The View from Peking, 1937-1941.@

-Yu Shen (Indiana University Southeast), APost-1980 US Views on China=s War Effort in WWII.@

-Richard Y. Chu (Rochester Institute of Technology), AAssessing China=s Contribution to Allied Victory in WWII.@

-Larry N. Shyu (University of New Brunswick), ATaiwan Scholars= Changing Views of the Sino-Japanese War.@

-David Barrett (McMaster University), A Soviet Perspectives on the Sino-Japanese War.@

-Guido Samarani (University of Venice), AItalian Perspectives on the Sino-Japanese War.@

-Discussant: Audience.

The Roundtable was well-attended and was indeed a great success.

HSTCC also held a meeting to discuss business and recruit China scholars who would like to join the Society.

Upcoming Events in 1999... Venice, Italy and San Marcos, Texas!!

UNIVERSITY of Ca Foscari, VENICE - June-July, 1999

An International Conference on AThe Role of the Republican Period in Twentieth Century China: Reflections and Reconsiderations@ will be held at the University of Venice, Italy, from 30th June to 2nd July, 1999. The conference is sponsored by the Department of East Asian Studies of the University of Venice, the Marco Polo Center for Asian Studies and the HSTCC. Professor Guido Samarani of the University of Venice is the organizer of the conference. Funding for the conference, which is being provided primarily by our hosts in Venice, limits the number of participants. Invitations have been sent to a number of scholars in Europe, North America, East Asia, and Australia. At the same time, scholars involved in the study of Republican China who are interested in submitting proposals should write to Professor Samarani although it will not be possible to offer them financial support because of funding constraints. According to our preliminary program, four broad themes in the Republican period will be examined: international relations, historiographical issues, the political world, and nationhood and citizenship.

For more Information see the HSTCC 1999 Venice Web page

SOUTHWEST TEXAS STATE UNIVERSITY - SAN MARCOS, October 1999

On 14-16th October 1999, HSTCC will be holding a joint meeting with the Southwest Conference on Asian Studies at Southwest Texas State University, San Marcos, Texas, on the occasion of the university=s centennial celebration. This is the first time that a regional conference of the Association for Asian Studies has collaborated with an affiliated society in its annual meeting. We welcome the opportunity to strengthen ties with the regional conferences. Professor Ka-che Yip will be working with Professor Joseph Yick, of SWCAS on the program.

The next Annual Business Meeting of the Historical Society for Twentieth Century China will be held in March 1999 in Boston at the Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies.

HSTCC Membership News

Larry Shyu (University of New Brunswick), has retired but is still very active in developing exchange programs between Canadian and Chinese educational institutions. He has initiated a joint-venture between a middle school at Taizhou, Zhejiang, and the Arts Faculty of the University of New Brunswick. Four English language teachers from the university will begin an AEnglish emersion program@ in the middle school. After graduation, selected qualified students will be sponsored to enter University of New Brunswick=s degree programs on scholarships provided by the school. We wish Professor Shyu the best of health and fortune in his retirement.

Arthur Waldron (University of Pennsylvania) has been named Lauder Professor of International Relations.

Chia-lin Pao Tao (University of Arizona) is collaborating with Yu Chien-ming and Dorothy Ko on a three-year research project on women in modern China sponsored by the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica. The project is supported by the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation.

Caroline Hui-yu Tsai (Institute of Taiwan History, Academia Sinica) won the NSC Research Achievement Award of 1997-98 for her work, APandora=s Box: the War- Compensation Movement in Taiwan.@ She was awarded a 1998-99 NSC Research Fellowship to do research on AGaisho Administration in Taiwan under Japanese Rule, 1920-45.@ She is also involved in two major projects sponsored by Academia Sinica, one on Indonesia under Japanese rule, and the other on Taiwan elites in Taichu Prefecture, 1920-45. From October 1998 to March 1999, she will be conducting research in Japan as a Japan-Taiwan Foundation Fellow. She published two volumes of oral history: Township Governments in Taichung and Lives and Times of Taiwan Veterans in 1997.

Joseph K. Yick (Southwest Texas State University) is President of the Southwest Conference on Asian Studies. He delivered his university=s Thirty-First Presidential Seminar on 26th March, 1998. Professor Yick spoke on AThe Chinese Communist Urban Revolution in Beijing and Tianjin, 1945-1949.@

John Fitzgerald (La Trobe University) has been awarded the 1998 Joseph Levenson Book Prize >Twentieth Century Category= for his book Awakening China: Politics, Culture, and Class in the Nationalist Revolution (Stanford University Press, 1996). The citation praised the book as Aan interpretive tour de force which explains how a dynamic, if unstable, political China emerged in the early twentieth century from complex, fragmented social and cultural forces.@

Marilyn Levine (Lewis-Clark State College) had a busy sabbatical year, attending more than twenty conferences and symposia. She ended the academic year sitting on ten Executive Boards, including being elected to H-NET, the COC, and will be the incoming Executive Secretary of the WCAAS. Funded by a grant from the Idaho Board of Education, her Chinese Biographical Database Wesbsite was released in March 1998 and within twelve weeks over eighty sites created links to the CBD. The CBD includes over 22,000 records. Finally, her book, The European Guomindang: A Sourcebook of Translations, written with Chen San-Ching (Academia Sinica) will be published in 1999 at the Chinese Studies Center of the University of California Press..

Ka-che Yip (University of Maryland, Baltimore County) participated in the 4th International Symposium on Local Chinese Archives in Shanghai in May. In June, he also presented a paper in the International Symposium on Huizhou Historical Archives and Huizhou Culture in Huangshan. His article, @Antimalarial Work in China: A Historical Perspective,@ is forthcoming in Parassitologia, published in Italy.