Event Details
Date & Time
Monday, Dec 02, 2024 4:00 PM - 5:30 PM
Event Link
Department
91³Ô¹ÏÍø Socratic Club / 91³Ô¹ÏÍø Philosophy Department
Cost
FREE
Location
Wolff Auditorium (Jepson 114)
Contact/Registration
David H. Calhoun, Philosophy
Event Type & Tags
About This Event
Anthony E. Clark, Professor of Chinese History, Whitworth University
“Jesuit Theater and Canonization: China, Saints, and the Western Enlightenment”
The word “China” is a sixteenth-century Western neologism derived from the name of China’s first imperial dynasty – the Qin ÇØ, which was commonly Latinized in Jesuit epistolary exchange as “China.” Chinese refer to their own nation as Öйú, transliterated as Zhongguo, or the “Middle Kingdom,” and thus the division between how China and the West view the “Middle Kingdom” begins with the fundamental nomenclature self-identification. The Jesuit enterprise during the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties (re)presented China to the West in contours that engendered a romanticized “China” exalted by Enlightenment literati who helped inaugurate the Chinoiserie movement and new modes of intellectual discourse. By the mid-nineteenth century the West’s intellectual and aesthetic admiration for China transmuted into an arrogant disdain, and after the Opium War (1839-1842) Jesuits set themselves once again to (re)presenting China in a fashion that would “redeem” it from the pejorative assessment then dominant in the West. This work-in-progress seminar considers how the Society of Jesus served to manufacture the West’s imagination of “China” from popularizing the Western neologism for Zhonguo in the sixteenth century to the production of Jesuit drama in China that wished to refashion, indeed canonize, Chinese culture both within and beyond the Great Wall.
Anthony Clark (¿Âѧ±ó) is Professor of Chinese history and was appointed the Edward B. Lindaman Endowed Chair in 2015. His research centers on the history of China-West (Sino-Western) cultural exchange, conflict and confluence in China, especially the intellectual, scientific, and religious missionary activities during the Qing through Republican eras (1644-1940s). His work considers Chinese historiography, religious interaction between China and the West, and confronts the history of East-West cultural re-presentation during China’s transition from empire to modern nation state. He has published a number of scholarly books on the encounter between Asia and the west, focusing particularly on Christian evangelism in China by Catholic religious orders including the Jesuits. He is also author of the book Catholicism and Buddhism: The Contrasting Lives and Teachings of Jesus and Buddha (Wipf and Stock, 2018).