Aktuelle Informationen zum Wintersemester 2025-26

This course explores the concept of race in premodern China, focusing on how traditional Chinese writers grappled with what eventually came to be known as the Hua–Yi zhi bian 華夷之辯 (“the distinction between Hua and Yi/non-Hua people”). From the Zhou period onward, this distinction formed a central axis in political thought, ritual practice, and cultural self-definition. Yet views on where and why Hua and non-Hua people essentially differed were far from uniform. Different texts and authors offered competing explanations of what marked the boundary between the two: Was it descent and lineage, adherence to ritual norms, political loyalty, or patterns of livelihood? At times these criteria overlapped, but they could also conflict, revealing an ongoing debate about the sources of cultural identity and difference.

MA-1 State and Society: Time and Temporalities in Chinese State and Society

• Time:
  Friday 10:15 – 11:45 h
• Place:
  01.116 (seminar room 1st floor)
• Lecturer:
  Michael Höckelmann

In this course, students will examine the politics of time in Chinese history. Its principal focus is the revolution that occurred in the conception of historical time in China and East Asia during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Often claimed to be a shift from cyclical to linear time, students will learn to critically assess that claim by engaging with contemporary debates about the periodisation of history, accompanied by readings of recent theoretical literature on time, periodisation, regimes of historicity, historical temporalities, and the ‘temporal turn’. Students will learn to contextualise and situate those debates within broader philosophical and religious frameworks of time in premodern and modern China, and analyse how these affected and continue to affect state and society.

MA-1 Transcultural History: History of Modern Chinese Theatre

• Time:
  Monday 10:15 – 11:45 h
• Place:
  01.116 (seminar room 1st floor)
• Lecturer:
  Stefan Christ

This course provides an introduction to the history of modern Chinese theatre, spanning from its origins in the late 19th century to the experimental avant-garde of the 21st century. We will explore how theatre came to be seen as a powerful vehicle for social change and political revolution, as well as how the complex relationship between the arts and politics has evolved over the past 120 years. By focusing on the development of dramatic forms, performance practices, and social contexts, we will examine the influences of Western, Japanese, and Soviet cultures, along with the interaction between traditional and modernist forms. The readings will include original sources, cutting-edge research literature, and a selection of classics of modern Chinese dramatic literature.

MA-1 Language class 1

• Time:
  Monday 12:15 – 13:45 and Wednesday 14:15 – 15:45 h
• Place:
  Monday: 01.116 (seminar room 1st floor); Wednesday: 00.111 (seminar room 1, ground floor)
• Lecturer:
  Meng Dehong

MA-1 [Sinology focus] Language & Sources (seminar): Pop Culture in Contemporary China

• Time:
  Tuesday 16:15 – 17:45 h
• Place:
  00.111 (seminar room 1, ground floor)
• Lecturer:
  Zhou Tianyue

This course explores emerging forms of popular culture in contemporary China, particularly those that reflect youth trends and generate international resonance. Topics include video games, anime, podcasts, stand-up comedy, theater, and contemporary art exhibitions. Representative case studies – such as Black Myth: Wukong (黑神话·悟空) for gaming and Theatre 9 (话剧九人) for theater – will guide the discussions. In the seminar, students will read and interpret Chinese-language primary sources, ranging from media reports and critical reviews to state policy documents, alongside selected secondary literature in both English and Chinese. These materials will be situated within broader socio-historical and political frameworks, with particular attention to state-market dynamics and the role of cultural production in shaping national identity and soft power.

MA-1 [Sinology focus] Language & Sources (exercise): Introduction to the Categorization Logics of Premodern Chinese Collection Catalogues

• Time:
  Tuesday 10:15 – 11:45 h
• Place:
  online seminar
• Lecturer:
  Philipp Grimberg

This seminar introduces students to the structure, language, and organizing principles of premodern Chinese collection catalogues spanning the 12th to 18th centuries. Through the study of key catalogues such as the Bogutu, Shiqu baoji xubian, and Xiqing gujian, students will explore major classification systems, object categories, and indexing methods used in early Chinese material culture documentation. The course aims to develop a foundational understanding of how objects were textually recorded, ordered, and presented in these catalogues, and to foster analytical skills for engaging with premodern Chinese texts. Topics covered include categorization by material, format, storage location, and provenance, as well as the use of measurements, condition reports, and positional annotations. Particular emphasis will be placed on the specialized terminology of catalogue entries and their historical and cultural contexts. Readings will draw from selected original sources from the Song and Qing dynasties.

MA-3 Advanced Readings (seminar) 

• Time:
  Tuesday 14:15 – 15:45 h
• Place:
  00.111 (seminar room 1, ground floor)
• Lecturer:
  Marc Matten

This seminar provides an overview of the development of global and transnational history as a new discipline in contemporary China and Taiwan, its research foci, and its institutional development since the 2000s. We will read key texts from both China and Taiwan and discuss some of those with the guest professor Chiang Chu-Shan of National Central University (Taiwan). Texts include current research literature as well as archival resources and visual sources. While the sessions in the first half of the semester are determined, students can make proposals for readings in the second half of the term according to their research interests.

MA-3 Advanced Readings (exercise) 

• Time:
  Wednesday 12:15 – 13:45 h
• Place:
  01.116 (seminar room 1st floor)
• Lecturer:
  Qiu Ziwei

MA-3 China in a Global Context: Thinking China into World History

• Time:
  Tuesday 16:15 – 17:45 h
• Place:
  01.116 (seminar room 1st floor)
• Lecturer:
  Sebastiaan Rümke

This course explores the various ways in which both Chinese and Western authors have conceptualized “China” as an entity in world history. In a diachronic survey from around the nineteenth to the twenty-first century, the formation of different concepts of China are understood in the socio-political context of the times. We will study – inter alia – how the idea of China as a “nation” was first expressed in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, the different notions of what constituted a Chinese “civilization”, the claims that China constituted an “empire” in both the ancient and the contemporary era, and the relatively recent ideas of China as a nod in a network of intercultural exchange. The course discusses the different frameworks of historical analyses in which these various notions were formed: including comparative analyses, the focus on intercultural connections, and the framework of global integration. Doing so, the course aims to equip students with the conceptual toolset to critically reflect on both historical and contemporary discourses on China’s position in, and relation to, the wider world. The in-class language is English. The prescribed literature and sources will be in both English and Chinese.

MA-3 Science and Knowledge Systems: Translation of Science and Technology in Late Qing China

• Time:
  Thursday 10:15 – 11:45 h
• Place:
  01.116 (seminar room 1st floor)
• Lecturer:
  Sabine Weber

Becoming growingly uneasy in his observance of European Imperialist activities in 1815, the scholar Zhen Fuguang lamented the lack for an awareness for connections between scientific principles and technical execution among his fellow Chinese with the words “This is why it is difficult to win against the west­erners in battle!” Scientific knowledge and technological potentials embody promises and means of power, and – in their intrinsic interrelation with social and political developments – are thus subject to dynamics of governance, dominance and – especially in the cases of empires – influence. Their transmission is therefore also always a transfer of means (or promises) of power, but also an execution of these very means.

In this course, we examine the developments of the transfer and reception of post-Baconian scientific knowledge and industrialized technology from Europe and America to Late Qing-China over the course of the 19^th to early 20^th century. In this, we pay special attention to their intrinsic relationship to the contemporary imperialist landscape – referring to both the colonialist forces as well as the state of the Late Qing. For it was the circumstance of a clash of empires that had immediate influence on the forms, content and means of transfer: natural science as means of domination marked the status of civilization, while industrialized technology promised supremacy in the context of colonialization.

Regarding the sources examined, we specifically look at processes and results of literary translation as the primary medium of transmission. While being framed by the contemporary socio-political situation, it was the local process of translation – in terms of linguistic solutions, chosen media and individual institution or engagement – that shaped the nature of the transmitted knowledge, sometimes down to its very roots. As such, the readings of this course mainly consist of primary sources of the long 19^th century but also include Chinese secondary literature.

MA-3 Methods & Approaches

• Time:
  Thursday 12:15 – 13:45 h
• Place:
  01.116 (seminar room 1st floor)
• Lecturer:
  Marc Matten

This course, concluding with a knowledge test, lays the groundwork for the MA thesis in the fourth semester. We will read some general introductions to academic writing and research methods, starting with literature reviews and formulation of research questions. Hands-on exercises, including the introduction to (digital) archives and libraries, complement the course and are adapted to the participants’ research interests.

MA-3 Subject Focused Language: The Evolution of Human Rights Discourses in the Chinese Party-state

• Time:
  Wednesday 10:15 – 11:45 h
• Place:
  01.116 (seminar room 1st floor)
• Lecturer:
  Alexandra Kaiser

This course explores human rights discourses within both the party-state apparatus and institutionalized academia in the People’s Republic of China. It examines how these discourses have evolved across different political periods, shaped by shifting levels of freedom and space for advocating political reform and human rights. To this end, participants will engage with UN documents, Chinese policy materials, and academic literature on human rights. The course aims to provide students with a solid understanding of the international human rights framework and the development of human rights discourses in the Chinese party-state. Chinese language skills are not required. However, students of Sinology will be expected to read selected Chinese-language sources and translate them into English as a mandatory assignment. Students from other disciplines will work with English-language sources and complete a written essay on a chosen topic related to the course themes.