In 2019, I defended my PhD on 'It's not X, it's Y' and similar constructions, which I call contrastive negation constructions. Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought that 'It's not X, it's Y' would become the topic of comment pieces in newspapers.
🧵
Thank you for coming! Lovely to meet you in person.
I talk with my hands, exhibit A 😂
Jokes aside, many thanks to colleagues in Leiden for the invitation -- I had such a great time + super in-depth questions and helpful comments from Leiden students and beyond
Ah yes the good old classic longue durée lighter – as used at every Annales School barbeque 🙃 🗃️
Speaking of things that need bringing back: does anyone still have the 'Republican-era Chinese intellectuals sporting handsome mustaches' thread from old Twitter?
What in the... ? My brain was so unready for the kawaiification of Lu Xun 😵💫
I mean, if we're making wildly inaccurate cartoonish mascots, can we please bring this one back? At least lives up to the vibe a little bit.
Aussi, pour un étranger, le fait qu'il y ait plusieurs montants différents de net mais seulement un correct à déclarer = 🤯
Très très utile, en fait ! D'autant que la 1e année, il faut parfois rendre une déclaration papier : tout est plus complexe, le délai de rigueur est plus tôt, les agents doivent nous créer et nous attribuer un numéro fiscal, la situation du conjoint peut être complexe... J'y ai passé 5j temps plein
I'll be back @unileiden.bsky.social tomorrow to talk about Chinese feminists and the language reform committee of the 1924 Congress for the Advancement of Education in Nanjing, if anyone is around!
(so much to unpack re: gender & language!)
www.student.universiteitleiden.nl/en/events/20...
New book alert from a stellar gender historian - we had the privilege to hear Shi Xia give a talk on the last chapter last June in Paris and her analysis of the politics of exclusion at stake in 1920s Chinese feminism was just ✨💫
www.cambridge.org/core/books/c...
Oh, Xia's book is out! Fabulous, I had entirely missed that. Also massive congratulations on the Guggenheim - your first book was really well received here in Paris!
Nerd alert: 10 000 bandes pirates de concert - enregistrées sur plus de 30 ans - rendues disponibles à tout le monde
www.dexerto.com/entertainmen...
📣 Assistez à la journée d’étude "Le mandchou, langue des empereurs Qing (1644-1911) : nouvelles recherches historiques, linguistiques et en humanités numériques"
Jeudi 16 avril 2026, à partir de 9h.
À l'#EFEO et en ligne.
En savoir plus : https://swll.to/j2PSBmt
With massive thanks to @emilybaum.bsky.social and @albertmwu.bsky.social for stellar editing and shepherding us the many rounds of online/in-person workshops & revisions that made this book whole. I don't think I've ever been part of an edited volume that felt this much like a *collective* endeavour
Tonight!
Haha thanks! Reasons why I'm on Bluesky and not on Instagram and all 🙈
Je découvre au hasard d'un passage en librairie que les Belles Lettres ont réédité l'excellente traduction de Pierre Ryckmans de 1975 de La Mauvaise herbe de Lu Xun ✨💫
(superbe nouvelle car épuisée depuis de nombreuses années et pas facile à trouver (et chère) en deuxième main 🎉)
Book on a table, reading "Uncanny beliefs: superstition in modern Chinese history"
Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Conventions Introduction / EMILY BAUM I. Discourses on Good and Bad Religion in China, 1850-1911 / VINCENT GOOSSAERT 2. "Superstitious Beyond All Expression": Superstition, China, and the Age of Empire, 1860-1900 / ALBERT Wo 3. Disembodied Spirits or Mental Suggestion? Psychical Research and the Redefinition of Superstition in Republican China / LUIs FERNANDO BERNARDI JUNQUEIRA 4. Shifting Boundaries: Spirit Writing and Superstition in Republican China / MATTHIAS SCHUMANN 5. The Affective Ties of Religion and Enlightenment: Tales of Medicine and Superstition / REBECCA NEDOSTUP 6. Women, Nation, and Superstition in Sinophone Muslims Reform Discourses During the Republican Era / VINCENT MU-CHIEN CHEN 7. Superstition in Translation? Vamps, Vampire Capitalists, and Vocabularies of Class and Gender in Republican China / CORALINE JORTAY 8. Fate, Fatalism, and Superstition in the Early Peoples Republic of China / EMILY BAUM 9. Household Religion and the Attack on "Superstitious Goods" in the Peoples Republic of China, 1949-1976 / S. A. SMITH vii ix xi 31 51 73 99 124 149 169 189
10. Cadres, Superstition, and the Making of Authority in North China Before and During the Socialist Education Movement, 1961-1966 / LoNG YANG II. Superstition and the "Religion Sphere" / ADAM YUET CHAU 12. Reimagining Superstition in the Digital Age: Fantasy Novels, Media Corporations, and the Chinese State / ZHANGE NI Epilogue: From Superstition to Cultural Heritage: Is Anything Left of the Campaigns Against Superstition? / IAN JOHNSON Bibliography List of Contributors Index 229 252 270 292 299 343 347
Superstition in Translation? Vamps, Vampire Capitalists, and Vocabularies of Class and Gender in Republican China CORALINE JORTAY o vocabularies of superstition translate? To what extent are they reshaped through local imaginaries or transferred onto existing categories in the receiving society? How are they then reconfigured as they leave the realm of discourse on superstition to enter other discursive realms? In her 1934 essay The Park, the feminist writer Xiao Hong (Ai4. 1911-1942) conjures up the figure of the woman vampire to parody a form of superstition afflicting left-wing male writers of her time who express disgust and horror in the face of lipstick-wearing, "blood-drinking," modern girls: The first thing I read in the newspaper every morning was the literary sup-plement. On this particular day, I noted an editorial: When I see lipstick on modern women, it reminds me of "blood." How do young ladies of the capitalist classes survive? Don't they survive by drinking blood? This is a clear and undeniable sign. Any mouth on which human blood has been smeared is a foul mouth. A mouth with a smell and color of blood is a sign of foulness.' 1. The Park (Gongyuan) was first published in periodical form in 1934 before being collected in Market Street (Shang shi jie) in 1936 as part of Ba Jin's literature series, edited by the Culture and Life Publishing Company. The except quoted here in English translation is from Xiao Hong, Market Street: A Chinese Woman in Harbin, trans. Howard Goldbatt (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2015), 90.
With apologies for the bad pics (will do a proper thread later on), lovely surprise in the mail this morning -- Uncanny Beliefs is now out in the world with a chapter that was extraordinarily fun to write on vamps and vampire-capitalists in Republican China 🧛🏻♀️🧛🏻
Retrouvez @chitawei.bsky.social et @qiaoj.bsky.social le 10 avril à la librairie Le Phénix, à Paris, autour du sujet "Littérature queer et féministe de Taiwan".
Writing a book is having—and forgetting—the same epiphany over and over until you die or finish the book, whichever comes first.
French history folks: I haven't done work at ANOM in Aix in a very long time. Where do you all stay in town these days? 🗃️
Funded PhD Studentship on Women, Nature, and Early Modernity in Japan
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona – the Consuming Nature Project #skystorians 🗃️www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DQZ754/f...
Een mooi lijstje van de beste Chinese verhalenbundels van het afgelopen jaar, met een vurig pleidooi voor het lezen van Chinese korte verhalen want die zijn enorm de moeite waard. Lezen dus, of eerst (laten) vertalen.
#China #literatuur
Oh, the rift valley is stunning, we topped it off hiking Walami last time from Yuli. Haven't tried the industry road, ty! I might come back to you for suggestions if I'm properly back on the saddle on my next long stay in Taiwan (switched from triathlon to marathons in 2025, so cycling less sadly)
Cycling in Taiwan is dreamy but also quite tough, especially inland -- I might need a version of this website for "riders who don't mind climbs but can't handle technical descents"
Thank you to @wwborders.bsky.social & the guest editors for featuring my translation of the prologue to Gigi Leung's 梁莉姿 novel in progress for their post-2019 fiction from HK series. Stay tuned for more pieces in the series coming next week!
So nice to have an audio track of Gigi Leung reading her original text along your translation and being able to get at the musicality and rhythm. Congrats also on the prize for your translation of Wong Yi, which I had totally missed! Love that piece, prob my favourite of the anthology we did in 2022
