Yale and Tsinghua Universities Co-sponsor International Symposium

Yale Univesity and Tsinghua University in Beijing, both traditionally associated with the discipline of comparative literature, will co-sponsor an international symposium on the subject in China next month.

Scholars from Europe and Australia will join colleagues in Beijing from Yale, Tsinghua and other Chinese universities for the four-day conference, “The International Symposium on Globalizing Literature: Toward a New Millennium.”

Led by J. Michael Holquist, chair of Yale’s department of comparative literature, and Kang-I Sun Chang, professor of Chinese literature, the Yale delegation to the conference will also include, among others, Yale College Dean Richard H. Brodhead, the A. Bartlett Giamatti Professor of English; Dudley Andrew, co-chair of the film studies program; psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Elise Snyder, M.D.; and Kenji Yoshino of the Yale Law School.

Yale has been a center for the study of world literature as well as a leader in 20th-century literary theory. The university was strongly identified with the New Criticism and later with Deconstructionism, which dominated critical thought during the 20th century. Rene Wellek, Paul De Man and J. Hillis Miller are a few of the foremost innovators in the field of literary criticism who have taught at Yale.

For many years a thriving center for the study of philology, with a reputation for the humanities in China equivalent to that of Yale in America, Tsinghua University was transformed following the Chinese revolution into a center for scientific and technical research. Now, according to Holquist, Tsinghua is trying to recapture its standing in the liberal arts while retaining its status as a world-class scientific institution.

“As part of this campaign,” Holquist noted, “Comparative Literature has emerged as a shaping presence at Tsinghua, and we therefore feel that our conference represents both a tribute to the shared past of both our great universities, as well as to the promise of our joint future.”

In addition to honoring the joint future of the two universities, the symposium will celebrate two anniversaries: Yale’s Tercentennial and Tsinghua’s 90th.

The symposium, which will take place August 10-14, follows an official visit to China by Yale President Richard C. Levin in May. Both occasions mark a renewed effort by Yale to strengthen the bonds that have historically united it with the people and academic institutions of China.