Conceptualizing Court Literature with New Methodologies
Started: Thu 02 December 2021, 12:45
Ended: Sat 04 December 2021, 15:00
Conceptualizing Court Literature with New Methodologies

The TEXTCOURT Project is organising a conference on "Conceptualizing Court Literature with New Methodologies" on December 2-4 (Thursday-Saturday), 2021. Through this international forum, the TEXTCOURT project aims to contribute to the understanding of the court literature in China in the following aspects:

  • Historical developments of court literature
  • Critical concepts and theoretical frameworks for studying court literature
  • Genres and characteristics of a court literary text
  • Authorship and modes of literary production in the imperial court
  • Patronage and cultural activities of the Chinese court
  • Rhetoric and discourses of power in court literature
  • Relationship between the court and popular culture
  • Representation of the world at court
  • Digital approaches to court literature

The conference schedule is listed below:


2 December, 2021 (Thursday)



GMT 1245-1300: Opening Remarks

GMT 1300-1415: Panel I The Imagination of the Court and its Circulation


Jack W. Chen (University of Virginia), “The Court Imaginary, or the Literary Composition of the Court”

Olivia Milburn (Seoul National University), “Capturing the Shadows of Lovely Ladies: Empresses and Imperial Consorts in History and Fiction”

Tian Yuan Tan (University of Oxford), “Texts and Traditions: Tracing the Literary Worlds of Chinese Court Drama”


GMT 1415-1425: Break

GMT 1425-1605: Panel II Place and Power


Lu Kou (Bard College), “The Poetics and Politics of Space: Writing Royal Estates in Early Tang Court Poetry”

Huijun Mai (UCLA), “God's Earthly Abode: Reconsidering the Construction of Genyue at Emperor Huizong's (r. 1100-1125) Court”

葉曄 (浙江大學), “宮墻內外:地方書寫傳統中的《北京八景》及其禁苑景觀”

顏子楠 (北京師範大學), “酬對袞袞:乾隆朝地方志中的宮廷唱和”


3 December, 2021 (Friday)



GMT 1300-1415: Panel III New Approaches to the Royal Performances


蔡欣欣 (國立政治大學), “清宮廷演劇《獅吼記》研究”

Liana Chen (George Washington University), “Managing Failures in the Qing Court Theatre”

Ewan MacDonald (University of Oxford), “Analogue Texts, Digital Methods: Building a TEI Schema for Chinese (Court) Drama”


GMT 1415-1425: Break

GMT 1425-1540: Panel IV Courtly Style and its Reverberations


Nicholas Williams (Arizona State University), “Elm Trees Planted in Heaven: On the Evolution of Fu Poetry from Court Spectacle to Regulated Genre”

Xiaofei Tian (Harvard University), “Emotion, Centripetalism, Readership: Writing of Empress Wu's Court”

Ming Tak Ted Hui (University of Oxford), “The Illusion of a Unified Style: Poetry Composed by the Kuizhang Academicians in the Early 14th Century”


4 December, 2021 (Saturday)



GMT 1300-1415: Panel V Entering the Imperial House


Mei Yi Lau (University of Oxford), “From Single-tiered to Three-tiered: The Stage Performance of The Precious Raft of Ascending Peace”

Yuanyuan Su (University of Oxford), “Pride and Guilt: The Individual Voice and Multiple Roles of a Qing Imperial Clansman”

康琳悦 (北京師範大學), “從政典到文章:《左傳》在康熙宮廷語境中的再闡釋”


GMT 1415-1425: Break

GMT 1425-1500: Roundtable