This talk reflects upon China as a contested concept in the European humanities and their surrounding environments. In the first part, Professor Sachsenmaier will address the place of China in European scholarship, both as a subject of intellectual inquiry and as an institutionalized field. Drawing on contemporary and historical examples, he will consider and compare the specific academic traditions and institutional patterns in different parts of Europe. The second part of his talk will develop some ideas on the broader social and political framing of China as an embattled object of thought. In this context, he will focus on how political transformations in various European countries (and shifting geopolitical conditions) have impacted the perceptions of China. His talk will also take into consideration the sociology of knowledge, patterns of ignorance, and the shifting politics of the self.

Speaker

Dominic Sachsenmaier is a chair professor of “Modern China with a Special Emphasis on Global Historical Perspectives.” Before coming to Göttingen in 2015, he held faculty positions at Jacobs University, Duke University, and UC Santa Barbara; he is currently a fellow at the Harvard Global History Initiative. Dominic Sachsenmaier is an elected member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts and co-heads a joint center of advanced studies in Germany (“Worldmaking from Global Perspectives: A Dialogue with China”). He is also one of the three editors of the book series "Columbia Studies in International and Global History" (Columbia University Press). His main research interests include China’s transnational and global connections in the past and present. For instance, he authored the monographs Global Perspectives on Global History (Cambridge University Press, 2011) and Global Entanglements of a Man Who Never Traveled (Columbia University Press, 2018). His current book project is tentatively entitled Twentieth-Century China - A Global History and under contract with Cambridge University Press.