PhD Candidate, History
“European Vernaculars in Late Imperial China: Texts and Contexts before the Treaty Ports”
Time: Friday, October 30th, 3-5 pm
Zoom Registration: https://uchicago.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJIvduGrqjoiHNONWLZEQF_K9VEyZAiOXI7T
Discussant: Yin Cai, Ph.D. Candidate, EALC
The Art and Politics of East Asia (APEA) workshop is proud to host Carl Kubler (Ph.D. Candidate, History), who will present his dissertation chapter “European Vernaculars in Late Imperial China: Texts and Contexts before the Treaty Ports” this Friday. He summarizes his chapter as follows:
Although many scholars of late imperial China have analyzed in detail the economic and political dimensions of Chinese trade with the West in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, fewer have considered the routine linguistic mechanisms and practices that facilitated commercial and cross-cultural interactions on the ground level. This chapter examines European language learning among Chinese commoners in the decades leading up to the first Opium War (1839-1842) and shows how a better understanding of translingual interaction can deepen our understanding of everyday exchanges and relationships.