Events

CHAIRPERSON

Dr Michel Chambon, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore

PROGRAMME

ABSTRACT

This talk introduces a 2024 edited book – From Missionary Education to Confucius Institutes: Historical Reflections on Sino-American Cultural Exchanges (Routledge, 2024). Providing a fresh look at the role of non-state actors in advancing cross-cultural knowledge dialogue, the presentation revisits the impacts of Chinese Christian mission schools as well as the involvement of philanthropic and faith-based actors in modernizing China’s educational infrastructure. It draws on this enduring legacy to evaluate the trajectories of Beijing-supported Confucius Institutes today. The findings should appeal to anyone interested in the history of Chinese mission education, as well as the pursuit of global educational partnership with China.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Joseph Tse-Hei Lee is Professor of History and Director of the Global Asia Institute at Pace University. In spring this year, he is a Taiwan fellow and a visiting scholar at the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica. His research focuses on faith and politics in modern China. He has edited From Missionary Education to Confucius Institutes: Historical Reflections on Sino-American Cultural Exchange (2024), with Jeff Kyong-McClain; Empire Competition: Southeast Asia as a Site of Imperial Contestation (2021), with Amy Freedman; The Church as Safe Haven: Christian Governance in China (2019), with Lars Peter Laamann; and Christianizing South China: Mission, Development, and Identity in Modern Chaoshan (2018).

Masako Hattori is Assistant Professor of U.S. History at the National University of Singapore. Her academic interests include war and society, imperialism and nationalism, social policy, U.S. foreign relations, transnational history, as well as education, youth, and childhood. She received her PhD in History from Columbia University, where her dissertation was nominated for the Bancroft Dissertation Award from the university. Her first monograph, The Age of Youth: American Society and the Two World Wars, will be published by Cambridge University Press later this year. An article stemming from this project was published in Diplomatic History in November 2022 and received an honorary mention for the 2022 Fass-Sandin Article Prize in English from the Society for the History of Children and Youth.

Peidong Yang is Assistant Professor at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Peidong’s research focuses on the intersections of education and migration/mobility. He has conducted extensive research on international student mobility, teacher mobility, and immigrant parenting in various Asian settings including Singapore, China, and India. His scholarly interests also extend more broadly to immigration-related issues and social studies education topics such as diversity, identity, and globalization. Peidong is the author of International Mobility and Educational Desire: Chinese Foreign Talent Students in Singapore (Palgrave, 2016) and numerous peer-reviewed articles in leading education and migration journals such as Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, Journal of Studies in International Education, etc. He has also served as a consultant and expert advisor to the Singapore Ministry of Education on Social Studies curricular development. For more information, please visit https://peidongyang.com/.

REGISTRATION

Registration is closed. However, we welcome walk-ins to join us if there are available seats.