Workshop: Translating Disease between 19th & 20th century East Asia

China Studies Centre, the University of Sydney

Time: 3:00pm – 5:00pm, Wednesday, 26 June 2019
Location: Room 708, Jane Foss Russell building, The University of Sydney

Registration: https://bit.ly/2KwuaKi

This workshop aims to discuss the ways the history of disease was constructed between the late 19th and early 20th centuries in East Asia, and the visible/invisible roles of translation in this process. It will focus on two aspects: one, is how writing the paradigmatic history of diseases expanded to Asia along with the modern bio-medical entities of diseases. How did these paradigms break their spacio-temporal envelope and travel to Asia? The other aspect regards those historians’ identities, and how these are reflected in their writing.

Participants will receive a list of recommended reading, and are encouraged to read the texts prior to the gathering.

Speaker

Dr Hao Chen, Assistant Professor, School of History, Renmin University of China

Hao Chen was educated at Peking University (AB, 2005. PhD, 2011), and has taught in the Department of History at Renmin University of China, since 2011. His research and teaching is centred on the medical and cultural history of ancient China, especially 6th-13th century, with special interest in medical expertise and identity figuration, healing and belief, divination and astrology, bodily sensations and expressions, materiality, textuality and reading practices of Chinese manuscript culture and early printed books, emotions, memory and trauma narratives. In the last five years, Hao has started to work on the “modern” historiography of ancient or “traditional” medicine and related knowledge in Republican China, from a trans-national or global perspective.