Happy New Year! We are delighted to share the spring calendar of upcoming events at the Center for Chinese Studies. 

The semester kicks off on Wednesday, Jan 21 with a book talk from Professor You-tien Hsing co-sponsored with the department of Geography. You-tien, who chaired Center for Chinese Studies from 2014-2019, will discuss her most recent book, “Conserving China’s Northwest Frontier: Nature, Culture, and Future” which is the culmination of a decade of ethnographic research in Inner Mongolia and Gansu concerning the conservation of both environmental and cultural heritage.

On Friday, January 23, CCS hosts Berkeley alumnus Professor Max Woodworth of The Ohio State University presenting Narrating Taiwan’s “Difficult Heritage” in Cold War Military Enclaves. On Thursday, February 19, Professor Emma Teng of MIT will present Closing the Door on Chinese Students: The King Incident of 1905 and Chinese Exclusion. The month concludes with a book talk on Thursday, February 26 by Professor Xiaobo Lü from Berkeley’s department of Political Science, who will present his new book, Domination and Mobilization: the Rise and Fall of Political Parties in China’s Republican Era. March begins with a lecture by Professor Jacob Eyferth of the University of Chicago on Thursday, March 5, titled A World without Money: Demonetization and Everyday Life in Collective-Era Rural China. On April 3, Professor Michele Matteini of NYU will give a talk on “Aesthetics of Dysregulation: Broken Lines, Defective Bodies, Futures That Never Quite Were,” ca. 1740. 

On Thursday, February 12, we will hold a special memorial panel for Professor Janet Theiss, historian of China at the University of Utah, at 4pm in the Faculty Club. The panel, titled In Conversation with Janet Theiss: Studies of Gender, Women, Law, and Narrative Strategies in Late Imperial China, will celebrate Theiss’s contributions to the field. The panelists include Professor Andrea Goldman (UCLA), Professor Melissa Macauley (Northwestern University), Professor Eugenio Menegon (Boston University), Professor Matthew Sommer (Stanford University), Professor Yi-Li Wu (University of Michigan) and Paola Zamperini (Northwestern University). Professor Wen-hsin Yeh, Janet’s dissertation advisor, will offer closing remarks. RSVP is required for this event.

On Friday, March 20, we will host a festschrift workshop with IEAS in celebration of Professor Kevin O’Brien’s decades-long career at UC Berkeley. Kevin, the Jack M. Forcey Professor of Political Science, chaired the Center for Chinese Studies from 2005 to 2008, and later served as the IEAS director from 2013 to 2022. Over 20 international scholars will assemble for this workshop in Kevin’s honor, which Professor Rachel Stern has done much to organize.

The semester concludes with the 2026 Berkeley-Stanford Graduate Student Conference in Modern Chinese Humanities on Friday and Saturday, April 10 and 11. The keynote speaker is Professor Ying Qian of Columbia University, and the conference alumni speaker is Professor Julia Keblinska of the University of Cambridge. 

Last November, CCS hosted a conversation between Huang Ruo, the composer of The Monkey King, which premiered at San Francisco Opera on November 16, and Berkeley faculty member Mary Ann Smart. The recording is now available on the CCS YouTube channel. Please subscribe if you would like to receive automatic notifications about future event recordings.

We will continue our collaboration with Peking University on the Academic Explorers in China Program for Undergraduates for Summer 2026, made possible by the generous gift of Dr. Kenny and Maria C. Chin. This program is open to currently enrolled Berkeley undergraduates. Applications are due by January 30, 2026.

Our colleagues, both at Berkeley and in the China field, have been deeply affected by the premature deaths of two members of the extended Berkeley community, Janet Theiss and Laurence Coderre, each of whom died suddenly of illness in the past few months. Janet, who died on November 2, will be commemorated by the CCS panel on February 12. The author of Disgraceful Matters: The Politics of Chastity in Eighteenth-Century China (U.C. Press 2004), Janet was known for her scholarship on law and gender. Janet had an extraordinary career of service to Asian Studies: she served as Director of the University of Utah Asia Center, the Co-Director of the Society for Qing Studies, Co-Editor of the journal Late Imperial China, and a Fellow of the National Committee on US-China Relations.

Laurence Coderre, who was associate professor and Director of Graduate Studies at New York University, died on January 8 in New York City. She received her Ph.D. in 2015 under the direction of Professor Andrew Jones. Laurence was one of the most memorable students I have taught, a scholar of great vision and courage. Her book, Newborn Socialist Things: Materiality in Maoist China (Duke, 2021), written with passion and verve, is on its way to becoming a classic in its field. We will share news regarding a celebration of Laurence’s life when information is available.

We look forward to seeing you this spring.

Yours,

Sophie Volpp

Chair, Center for Chinese Studies

Professor, Comparative Literature and East Asian Languages and Cultures