Yale and Tsinghua University in Beijing, both traditionally associated with the discipline of comparative literature, will cosponsor an international symposium on the subject in China in August.
Scholars from Europe and Australia will join colleagues in Beijing from Yale, Tsinghua and other Chinese universities for the four-day conference, "The International Symposium on Globalizing Literature: Toward a New Millennium."
The Yale delegation to the conference will be led by J. Michael Holquist, professor and chair of comparative literature, and Kang-I Sun Chang, professor of East Asian languages and literature. It will also include Yale College Dean Richard H. Brodhead, the A. Bartlett Giamatti Professor of English; Dudley Andrew, professor of comparative literature; Dr. Elise Snyder, associate clinical professor of psychiatry; and Kenji Yoshino, professor of law, among others.
Yale has been a center for the study of world literature as well as a leader in 20th-century literary theory. In fact, the University was strongly identified with the New Criticism approach to literature and later with Deconstructionism, which dominated critical thought during the 20th century. René Wellek, Paul De Man and J. Hillis Miller are a few of the foremost innovators in the field of literary criticism who have taught at Yale.
For many years Tsinghua University was a thriving center for the study of philology, with a reputation for the humanities in China equivalent to that of Yale in America, according to Holquist. After the Chinese Revolution, the university was transformed into a center for scientific and technical research. Now, says Holquist, Tsinghua is trying to recapture its standing in the liberal arts while retaining its status as a world-class scientific institution.
"As part of this campaign," Holquist notes, "comparative literature has emerged as a shaping presence at Tsinghua, and we therefore feel that our conference represents both a tribute to the shared past of both our great universities, as well as to the promise of our joint future."
In addition to honoring the joint future of the two universities, the symposium will celebrate two anniversaries: Yale's Tercentennial and Tsinghua's 90th year.
The symposium, which will take place Aug. 10-14, follows an official visit to China by President Richard C. Levin in May. Both occasions mark a renewed effort by Yale to strengthen the bonds that have historically united it with the people and academic institutions of China.
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