CALL FOR PAPERS
11th Annual Midwest Conference on Chinese Thought
North Central College, Naperville, IL
May 1-2, 2015
The Midwest Conference on Chinese Thought was created to foster dialogue and interaction between scholars and students working on Chinese thought across different disciplines and through a variety of approaches. Submissions are invited for papers on any aspect of Chinese thought, as well as papers dealing with comparative issues that engage Chinese perspectives.
This year’s conference will be held on Friday, May 1 and Saturday, May 2 at North Central College in Naperville, IL (30 miles west of Chicago). Our keynote speaker will be Donald Harper, Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago. Dr. Harper will discuss the three groups of ancient Laozi manuscripts—the bamboo-slip manuscripts from Guodian, the silk manuscripts from Mawangdui, and the looted bamboo-slip manuscripts acquired by Peking University—from the perspective of current manuscript culture studies and the New Philology in European and Anglo-American textual studies. All three groups of manuscripts predate the first century BCE imperial editorial project which was a defining moment in the formation of the ancient intellectual texts that survive today in printed editions. Ranging in date between 300 and 100 BCE, the three groups of Laozi manuscripts permit us to consider the earlier formation and circulation of the Laozi based on actual manuscripts, and can be the basis for a reassessment of the “original” Laozi.
Please submit a 1-page abstract to Brian Hoffert at bhoffert@noctrl.edu by January 31, 2015 for blind review. For more information about the conference, go to www.indiana.edu/~mcct/home.php or contact Brian Hoffert at bhoffert@noctrl.edu.