Institute of East Asian Studies

Initiated in 2014, the annual Stanford-Berkeley Graduate Student Conference on Pre-modern Chinese Humanities brings together graduate students from around the country and around the world who specialize in the pre-modern period to discuss innovative research on China.

The conference, alternating sites each year between Stanford and Berkeley, features up to fourteen competitively-selected graduate student presentations of original research on any aspect of pre-modern (technically, beginnings to 1911) Chinese humanistic culture, drawing on but not limited to the traditional disciplines of history, literature, religion, art, social sciences, and thought. We encourage proposals that explore new methodologies and critical perspectives, utilize recent developments in digital technology, or either reconfigure or cross disciplinary boundaries.

Conference registration is free. Presenters will be provided with shared lodging, dinner on Friday, and—because the conference will last two full days—lunch both Friday and Saturday. There is limited partial funding assistance for those who cannot find their own funding.

Each conference has benefited from the presence of international students, as well as domestic.

Faculty Organizers

Paula Varsano, Professor of Chinese Literature, UC Berkeley 
(pvarsano@berkeley.edu)

Mark Csikszentmihalyi, Professor and Eliaser Chair of International Studies, UC Berkeley 
(mark.cs@berkeley.edu)

Ron Egan, Professor, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Stanford 
(ronegan@stanford.edu)

Yiqun Zhou, Associate Professor, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Stanford
(yzhou1@stanford.edu)

Student Organizers

• Yifan Zheng (yifan_zheng@berkeley.edu)
• Andrew Hardy (andrew_hardy@berkeley.edu)
• Bingxiao Liu (bingxiao@stanford.edu)
• Julian Butterfield (butterf@stanford.edu)