Fw: H-ASIA: Texts for discussion at AAS

----- Original Message -----
From: "Andrew Field" <shanghaidrew@GMAIL.COM>
To: <H-ASIA@H-NET.MSU.EDU>
Sent: Sunday, March 20, 2011 4:26 AM
Subject: H-ASIA: Texts for discussion at AAS

> H-ASIA
> Mar 20 2011
>
> Texts for discussion at AAS
> ******************************
> From: Yue Dong <yuedong@u.washington.edu>
>
> Dear colleagues:
>
> SESSION 466 (Saturday, April 2, 9:45AM-11:45AM Room 313B) at the coming
> AAS is organized as a text-reading workshop. The texts to be read are
> two articles from Shen Bao in 1875 and 1878 on the changing concepts and
> practices of etiquette. This session is open to everyone. If you are
> interested in joining the reading and discussion, please visit the
> following websites for the texts. Hardcopies of the texts will also be
> provided at the session.
>
> https://catalyst.uw.edu/workspace/yuedong/20274/
>
> SESSION 466
> Saturday, April 2, 9:45AM-11:45AM Room 313B
>
> Roundtable:
> Making Texts Strange: On Deriving Meanings from Texts
>
> Chaired by Madeleine Dong, University of Washington
>
> Discussants:
> Dorothy Ko, Barnard College, Columbia University
> Hsiao-wen Cheng, University of Washington
> Cecily McCaffrey, Willamette University
> Dandan Chen, Wells College
>
> For historians, literary scholars and anthropologists, encountering a
> text resembles meeting a stranger. Even when the context is familiar, a
> written source conceals a wide range of meanings, interpretations, and
> signs. How do we approach a text which defies easy categorization?
> Alternately, how do we retain a sense of "the strange" when reading a
> familiar source? In this panel, we seek to problematize the reading of
> historical texts through an examination of written sources which do not
> easily conform to the analytic categories of modern academic disciplines.
> We bring together five historians who work with a variety of written
> sources in different time periods to discuss two texts from Shen Bao,
> both on the changing concepts and practices of etiquette. Our discussion
> will focus on the following questions: How do different genres of texts
> produce meanings? What strategies do we employ to draw meanings out of
> texts? What kind of relationship do we establish with texts and their
> authors -- do we assume a position of authority, or do we read as the
> audience that the authors intended to address? How do we establish
> dialogues with the authors, the texts, and their intended audience? In
> posing these questions, we seek to promote dialogue among scholars who
> engage in textual analysis with the aim of envisioning new modes of
> interpretation and historical understanding.
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> Madeleine Y. Dong
> Chair, China Studies Program, Jackson School of International Studies
> Associate Professor of History and International Studies
> University of Washington
> Box 353650 Phone: 206-543-4999
> Seattle, WA 98195 Fax: 206-685-0668
> http://depts.washington.edu/history/directory/index.php?facultyname=D-34Dong
>
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