As comparatists, we aim to identify connections while doing justice to national and regional particularities. When conducting comparative studies involving China and the West, the danger of doing an injustice to such vastly different histories and cultures increases. The most common frameworks adopted by comparatists do not always suit those pursuing China-West research: “influence studies” often carry a binary and hierarchal distinction between origin and host culture, while “parallel studies” threaten to erase the unique features of each cultural tradition in their pursuit of similarity. 

At the end of the first quarter of the twenty-first century, as globalization has made the world smaller, while the rise of nationalism and xenophobia has made it more divided, we ask: how might we reimagine the very grounds of comparison? This seminar seeks papers offering new comparative frameworks for China-West Scholarship. We welcome papers in English or French addressing China-West studies across media and from all historical periods. Papers may also consider how works emerging from the larger Sinosphere beyond Mainland China interact with the West. Some questions of interest include, but are not limited to:

-What kinds of intermedial China-West studies are possible (the relationship between a Western historical site and a Chinese book of poetry, or a Chinese film and a Western novel, and so on)?

- How might new approaches in literary and cultural studies (such as affect, the body, or the resurgence of psychoanalysis, and so on) offer new ways of thinking China–West relations? What other theoretical approaches are possible?

-How do the geopolitical relationships between China and the West influence the kinds of comparative work we undertake?