Shanghai Jiao Tong University- Heidelberg University Short-term Faculty Exchange Program Successfully Held

      To further enhance academic exchanges and promote collaboration in humanities, the School of Humanities at Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU), Centre for Asian and Transcultural Studies (CATS) and the Confucius Institute at Heidelberg University have jointly hosted a short-term faculty exchange program. This September, Dr. Lennart Riedel, Assistant Professor of CATS, became the first visiting scholar of this program and attended academic events in the School of Humanities at SJTU.

      On September 20, “Cross-boundary Perspectives and Contemporary China Workshop” was successfully held in the School of Humanities at SJTU. Together with Lennart Riedel, a group of young scholars from SJTU and New York University Shanghai conducted lively discussions on different cultural phenomena and literary texts.

      The first session of the workshop was moderated by Prof. Cai Wenjing, Vice Dean of the School of Humanities. Associate Prof. Shi Donglai from the School of Humanities made a speech entitled “How (Not) to Translate Blackness in Chinese”, and Assistant Prof. Zhao Mengdie from NYU Shanghai delivered a speech entitled “Forbidden Romance: Love and the Law in Early Chinese Detective Fiction”. Associate Prof. Wang Yuping and Assistant Prof. Han Xintong from the School of Humanities made comments respectively. The second session of the workshop was moderated by Associate Prof. Wang Yuping. Assistant Prof. Lennart Riedel from Heidelberg University delivered a speech entitled “China’s Anti-Obscenity Legislation and the Gradual Unbanning of the Jin Ping Mei cihua”, and Associate Prof. Han Lei from the School of Humanities gave a speech entitled “The Central Protagonist Issue of Thunderstorm as a Dynamic System”. Associate Prof. Xia Wei and Prof. Long Qilin made comments respectively.

      On September 25, Lennart Riedel gave a lecture entitled “Law, Literature, and Popular Morality in Contemporary China: On Mo Yan’s The Garlic Ballads and Other Narratives of Justice”.

Associate Prof. Bin Kai and Associate Prof. Yu Jiajia from KoGuan School of Law at SJTU, Associate Prof. Yue Lin from the Law School of Shanghai University, and Associate Prof. Xia Wei from the School of Humanities were invited to provide comments on the lecture. They shared their understanding of the relationship between law and literature and conducted an in-depth discussion with the audience.

Written by Li Juan

Photo by Cai Wenjing, Li Juan and Zhang Yihan