Date: 19 September 2025 (Friday)
Time: 10-11:30am
Venue: LAU 5-205, 5/F, Lau Ming Wai Academic Building, City University of Hong Kong 
                Due to the large number of participants, the venue has now been changed to:
               R6143, 6 /F， Bank of China (Hong Kong) Complex , City University of Hong Kong
Speaker: Prof. Ronald 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   Due to an enthusiastic response, registration is now closed

Abstract
Foreign scholars who live outside of China, many of whom are not native speakers of Chinese (although that is changing), obviously face many disadvantages in their efforts to contribute to knowledge about China’s past. Do they have anything to offer, to offset those disadvantages? This talk considers that question and attempts some answers. The target audience of foreign scholarship on China is not always the same: it may be divided into at least three kinds, corresponding to different aims and intentions of the authors. 
In addition, some prize-winning recent English-language publications (in the subfields of China’s imperial history, manuscript studies, and women’s/gender studies) will be discussed as examples of approaches are distinctive and innovative.

Biography
Ronald Egan is Stanford W. Ascherman, M.D. Professor of Sinology at Stanford University. His academic research and publications are in premodern Chinese literature of the middle historical period (Tang-Song dynasties) and related fields, including aesthetics, the relation of poetry and painting, calligraphy, and cultural history. He has published literary studies of major writers (e.g., Ouyang Xiu, Su Dongpu, Li Qingzhao) that attempt to link their life experience to their literary work and their thinking about literature. His teaching at Stanford includes surveys of premodern Chinese literature, graduate seminars on Song poetry and literary culture, literary translation (Chinese to English), and the history of Sinology in the West.
 

All are welcome!