International Symposium on Western Primary Sources and China Studies

May 22-23, 2010
Fudan University, Shanghai

Organizer

National Institute for Advanced Humanistic Studies, Fudan University

Aim

Since the 16th century, western primary sources related to China have been accumulated to a large amount. Their value in Chinese studies has aroused extensive attention among academics. However, these precious sources, written in a variety of languages hence difficult to sort and do research on, had never been fully used, and their use in the past has mainly been focused on the history of Sino-foreign relations, while were rather inadequate in pure China studies. For this reason, this symposium aims to bring together scholars versed in various languages to discuss ways to better use western primary sources and promote Chinese studies.

Topics

The themes of this symposium include:
(1)Importance of western primary sources to China studies.
(2)Methods of using western primary sources in China studies.
(3)Images of China and their changes in western documents.
(4)General introduction of western primary sources on China, including Latin, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, French, German, etc.