This working group is a forum for those engaged in China studies, from a variety of disciplines, at both the tri-campus University of Toronto and other local universities, to come together as a community of scholars after years of relative isolation, and at a time of political and academic urgency affecting the field. This urgency arises out of a shift in global public discourses and imaginaries about “China,” be it as surveillance state and aspiring hegemon, as a space embodying and provoking health and climate crises, or as a site for new forms of cultural, political and social movements; and from new urgent questions of how to study China as a subject – historically and in the contemporary moment. The question of what, where, and how to locate studies of China has been compelled by new restrictions on accessing national and local archives in China. Scholars are engaged in reassessing the dominant narratives, sites and meanings of China’s revolutionary century, while state violence and rising voices from the peripheries of the political community (for e.g. Xinjiang, Tibet, Hong Kong, new feminist and LGBTQ+ voices), and an emerging environmental consciousness have further opened up definitions of who and what we study as scholars of China. We are exploring conflicting processes of centring and decentering China, as both an object and site of research.
Leads
- Anup Grewal, UTSC Historical & Cultural Studies
Members
Faculty, University of Toronto
- Ruoyun Bai, UTSC Arts, Culture & Media
- Li Chen, UTSC Historical & Cultural Studies
- Diana Fu, A&S Political Science
- Chris Song, UTSC Language Studies
- Yvon Wang, A&S History
- Yiching Wu, A&S East Asian Studies
- Shana Ye, UTSC Historical & Cultural Studies
Graduate Students, University of Toronto
- Lanya Feng, History
- Zichuan Gan, Comparative Literature
- Qi Hong, East Asian Studies
- Qieyi Liu, East Asian Studies
- Shasha Liu, East Asian Studies
- Zixian Liu, History
- Mark Lush, East Asian Studies
- Koby Song Nicols, History
- Yujia Shi, Political Science