Join us on Thursday 15 February to hear from Professor Joan Judge of York University, Canada. Central to the political, literary and social revolutions of the 20th century was the figure of the masses: a collective that was urgently addressed, repeatedly invoked, and broadly understood to be in need of uplift and education in the service of the "New China." What was most actively occluded in these imaginings was the actual lifeworld of the individuals who would make up the masses: their beliefs, texts and modes of thinking which were systematically relegated to the dustbin of superstitious and backward "Old China."

In her lecture entitled In Search of the Chinese Common Reader: Usable Knowledge and Wondrous Ignorance in the Age of Global Science our speaker will consider questions such as:
- "How did late Qing and Republican Chinese common readers understand science, illness, and the natural world?"
- "To what extent did new concepts introduced into China from the mid-to late-19th century become integrated into the everyday lives of poorer urbanites and lower-level local elites?"
- "What can an investigation of these questions tell us about the ways knowledge was transmitted, and the degree of epistemological, social, and cultural integration in this period?"

Joan Judge is Professor in the Department of History at York University in Toronto, Canada. She is the author of Republican Lens: Gender, Visuality, and Experience in the Early Chinese Periodical Press (2015), and many other well known publications. She is currently engaged in a project with the working title of this lecture covering the period 1870-1955.

Join us in Seminar Room LG.09, lower ground floor, David Hume Tower at 6pm on Thursday 15 February for this lecture and Q&A.
We hope you will also stay on for a short drinks reception to meet our speaker and toast the start of Chinese New Year!

All Welcome! Booking is requested: http://edin.ac/2DKiaPO

For full details about the talk and speaker's biography please visit our website:
http://www.confuciusinstitute.ac.uk/ 

We look forward to seeing you on Thursday 15 February in Seminar Room LG.09, lower ground floor, David Hume Tower, EH8 9JX.

Best wishes,
The Confucius Institute for Scotland
E: info@confuciusinstitute.ac.uk
T: 0131 662 2180