Faculty Working Groups
- Call for Proposals, 2013-14
- Former Faculty Working Group, Fall 2011
- Former Faculty Working Group, Spring 2011
Former Faculty Working Group
Institute of East Asian Studies
Funded for the fall semester 2011
China and Global Technological Exchange
Conveners: Professors Sophie Volpp (East Asian Languages) and Pat Berger (Art History)
One of the deepest shifts in the study of the Humanities and Social Sciences over the last years has been a trend towards research on the confluence of different cultures within a single site. This IEAS faculty working group for Fall 2011 will consider the subject of the global exchange of new technologies between China and other parts of Asia (Taiwan, Japan, Inner Asia, and Southeast Asia), as well as China and the West, from the early modern period through the present day. The question of how to define "technology" will be central to our discussions, as will the question of what "exchange" or "transfer" means in the Chinese and global contexts. We hope to work with a broad conceptualization to consider material, immaterial and spiritual technologies, examining systems and methods of organization as well as scientific and technical developments. A further area of investigation will be the transformation that technologies undergo as they enter or leave China. Here, possible areas of focus would extend from eighteenth-century visual and medical technologies to contemporary digital technologies, urban design and environmentalism. This topic is at heart inter-disciplinary; the research of the conveners has necessitated inter-disciplinary investigation, not only in other disciplines of the humanities and social sciences, but also in the sciences.
Click here to download a PDF file of the full project description.