From the 1790s until World War I, Western museums filled their shelves with art and antiquities from around the world. These objects are now widely regarded as stolen from their countries of origin, and demands for their repatriation grow louder by the day. In The Compensations of Plunder, Justin M. Jacobs brings to light the historical context of the exodus of cultural treasures from northwestern China. Based on a close analysis of previously neglected archives in English, French, and Chinese, Jacobs finds that many local elites in China acquiesced to the removal of art and antiquities abroad, understanding their trade as currency for a cosmopolitan elite. In the decades after the 1911 Revolution, however, these antiquities went from being “diplomatic capital†to disputed icons of the emerging nation-state. A new generation of Chinese scholars began to criminalize the prior activities of archaeologists, erasing all memory of the pragmatic barter relationship that once existed in China. Recovering the voices of those local officials, scholars, and laborers who shaped the global trade in antiquities, The Compensations of Plunder brings historical grounding to a highly contentious topic in modern Chinese history and informs heated debates over cultural restitution throughout the world.
In this talk, Paul Bevan will introduce his new book ‘Intoxicating Shanghai’ – An Urban Montage: Art and Literature in Pictorial Magazines during Shanghai’s Jazz Age. Loosely based around one year, 1934 – “The Year of the Magazine” – the book explores a montage of ideas, images and sounds that were current in the transcultural melting pot that was Shanghai during the Chinese Jazz Age. An introduction and discussion will be moderated by Andrew Field, author of Shanghai’s Dancing World: Cabaret Culture and Urban Politics, 1919–1954. Paul Bevan (@Sinobevan) has taught modern Chinese literature, history and visual culture at the University of Oxford, the University of Cambridge, and the School of Oriental and African Studies. His primary research interests concern the impact of Western art and literature on China during the Republican Period (1912–1949), particularly with regard to periodicals and magazines. His research on artists George Grosz, Frans Masereel, and Miguel Covarrubias, all of whom worked for Vanity Fair, has resulted in extensive research on both Chinese and Western pictorial magazines. Paul’s first book A Modern Miscellany – Shanghai Cartoon Artists, Shao Xunmei’s Circle and the Travels of Jack Chen, 1926–1938, (Leiden: Brill, 2015), was hailed as “a major contribution to modern Chinese studies.”
If you have any problems signing up online, just send the RAS an email at bookings@royalasiaticsociety.org.cn and they’ll will add you to the list.
If you have an hour to kill here’s my talk about City of Devils and underworld old Shanghai at the (this year sadly online) Felixstowe Book Festival 2020….click here
I’m live on facebook and the Felixstowe festival’s ite today at 2pm UK time for anyone interested – all free this year as all online…more details here…
A first review for my slim volume available this month and the |jewish refugees and resistance of Macao in WW2….from Blacksmith Books (here) – the review is on the Asian Review of Books site here.
RAS China is happy to announce its brand new focus group on architecture and urbanism that will cast a lens not only at various urbanisation phenomenon that shape cities as we know them today but also peripheral themes that are poised to become intrinsic to the future of urbanisation, both in China and around Asia.
Join us for a discussion with Anna Greenspan – philosopher, urbanist and author of Shanghai Future: Modernity Remade – as we revisit some of the main themes presented in her book on the making of modern Shanghai, and discuss what is relevant today and what has changed in the city in the last decade as it fast transforms, constantly recreating what it is to be a “modern” city. Like much of her work, which focuses on various forms of modernity in the Asian context, presenting it as irrefutablely rooted in a historical context that is fiercely its own, rejecting the narrative of “modernity” as something that originates in the West and spreads to or is aped by the East, Anna has mapped the transformation of Shanghai, framing the urban phenomenon leading up to the modernisation of this vast metropolis in its uniquely Chinese context. We discuss some of these urban phenomena and how these may be relevant for citymaking today. This will be a led discusssion, followed by a Q&A with the audience.
About the speaker: Anna Greenspan is Assistant Professor of Global Contemporary Media at NYU Shanghai. She teaches courses in media theory, philosophy of technology and digital humanities in the program for Interactive Media Arts. Anna holds a PhD in Continental philosophy from Warwick University, UK. While at Warwick, Anna was a founding member of the Cybernetic culture research unit(ccru). Her current research interests lies at the intersection of urban Asia and emerging media. Anna was the co-founder of the Shanghai Studies Society and helps run a digital humanities project on street food. Anna is also a founding member of the research hub Hacked Matter, which is dedicated to investigating the process of technological innovation in China. She is currently working on a project on China and the Wireless Wave. Anna’s latest book Shanghai Future: Modernity Remade was published by Oxford University Press in 2014. About the convener: Parul Rewal is an an architect and urbanist who has lived and worked in India, South Africa, Singapore and the UK. She holds a master’s degree in Urban Management from City University, Hong Kong. As an architect she has been involved in masterplanning and design of institutional and educational campuses, residential buildings and conservation and adaptive reuse of heritage buildings. She has been a city-based researcher for NYU Stern and UN Habitat’s Urban Expansion Project and the Global Municipal Database. Her research interests are related to urban governance, housing affordability, public space and the urban informal sector. She currently serves as Vice President of the Royal Asiatic Society China and is convener of its newly started Beyond City series.
