4. Dec. (Monday), 17:15 – 18:45

Theologicum (Theol) 0.135

Abstract:
The rise of the history of emotions has been a recent development in historiography. In the field of Chinese studies, scholars such as Eugenia Lean, Haiyan Lee, Chen Li, and Zuo Ya have been writing about how emotions, feelings, and sentiments contributed to the formation and transformation of Chinese identities. In this presentation, I attempt to bridge the gap between tradition and modernity to rethink the theoretical implications when we historicize emotions beyond the Eurocentric paradigm of the rationality regime. By critically examining the existing scholarship on Chinese nationalism through the lens of the history of emotions, I argue that emotions are a significant aspect of affecting the decision-making process in nationalist politics, and Chinese nationalism is not just political, cultural, and ethnic, but also emotional.

Speaker:

Dr. Xin Fan is a Teaching Associate of Modern Chinese History and a Fellow at Lucy Cavendish College at the University of Cambridge. He is the author of World History and National Identity in China: The Twentieth Century (Cambridge UP, 2021) and the second editor of Receptions of Greek and Roman in East Asia (Brill, 2018). As a historian of modern China with a strong interest in global history, he is currently working on two book projects, “Global History in China” and “The Right to Talk about China: The Rise of Emotional Politics, 1900–1949.” In addition, he has written on global conceptual history, the history of international relations, and the rise of historical geography in China. He is also the book review editor of China and Asia: A Journal in Historical Studies. He has studied and worked in China, Germany, the United States, and the United Kingdom.