Apr 8-12, 2024
“Common Knowledge and Its Sources in the Sinosphere” Working Group Meeting
- 10:00 to 18:00
- Meeting
- Dept. III
This is the first in-person meeting of the Common Knowledge and Its Sources in the Sinosphere working group. During April and December 2023, the group meets once per month remotely for reading primary sources in late imperial Chinese/Sinographic household encyclopedia (riyong leishu 日用類書) to understand how common knowledge was presented and conceived for use. This group traces the sources of common knowledge genres in late Imperial and Republican China, starting with the household encyclopedias, to see where such cheap commercial productions took their contents from and what the criterias for publishers were to select contents from and to represent literati knowledge for commoners, in order to understand the characteristics of this newly emerged readership and of “common knowledge” of this period.
With this week-long in-person workshop, the group members present their individual research projects that tackle on the central theme of common knowledge in historical China from different perspectives and discuss how different types of knowledge were presented in these encyclopedic texts. On April 10, 2024, we invite three MPIWG scholars who are external to the group to show similar sources in historical Islamic world, Brazil, and England. By bringing scholars who work on common knowledge in different regions and cultural contexts, we hope to create a joint point for discussion and to learn from each other.
Since digital methodology is a core component for this Working Group, we have dedicated sessions on creating a prototype database of encyclopedia texts and related technologies.
Program
Contact and Registration
This event is organized by Shih-Pei Chen from Dept. III.