Date: 17 September 2025 (Wednesday)
Time: 4-5:30pm
Venue: LAU 5-205, 5/F, Lau Ming Wai Academic Building, City University of Hong Kong
Speaker: Ms. Susan Chan Egan 
Language: Putonghua

Limited seats available on a first-come first served basis. Please complete the online registration form on or before 13 September 2025. Successful registrants will receive a confirmation email not later than 16 September 2025.

Registration 

Abstract
Before the United States entered WWII in 1941, there were only nine universities in America offering courses in Chinese Studies: Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Cornell, University of Pennsylvania, University of Chicago, University of Washington in Seattle, University of California in Berkeley, and University of Hawaii. Only the last three were state-funded, and all three were located in cities with large Chinese populations. The focus was on understanding Chinese civilization, its origin and nature. 
After World War II, Chinese Studies expanded to many state-run universities. The focus switched to modern China, although the study of ancient China continued at some institutions. The switch was part of a larger academic movement toward “area studies”— an attempt to understand different parts of the world through the application of economics, sociology, anthropology, and other social sciences. In the case of China, there was an additional urgency to better understanding because the country had turned from an ally in war to a hostile enemy in the space of less than five years. More than any other individuals, the Harvard historian John King Fairbank spearheaded this new focus in Chinse Studies. An examination of his career goes far in explaining the success of this approach.

Biography
Susan Chan Egan is an independent scholar who, after a career in finance, returned to her first love of history and literature. She is the author of A Latterday Confucian: Reminiscences of William Hung (1987); a Chinese version (2013) of which was selected as one of the “Best Books of the Year” by CCTV. She also wrote A Primer to the Securities Market (1997), Writing on the Margins of Sinology (2016), and People Whose Memories I Treasure (2017).  She is the co-translator, with Michael Berry, of one of Wang Anyi’s novels. Entitled The Song of Everlasting Sorrow: A Novel of Shanghai (2008), the book received an honorable mention for the translation of a literary work by the Modern Language Association. She is also the co-author, with Chih-ping Chou, of A Pragmatist and His Free Spirit: The Half-Century Romance of Hu Shi and Edith Clifford Williams (2009); as well as the co-author, with Pai Hsien-yung, of A Companion to The Story of the Stone: A Chapter-by-Chapter Guide (2021).

All are welcome!