PLEASE NOTE: For non-Columbia guests, registration is required to access the Morningside campus 24 hours prior to the event. After registering you will receive an email with a QR code that must be presented along with a government-issued ID (your name must match exactly the name registered for the event) at either the 116th Street & Broadway or 116th Street & Amsterdam gates. Please register using a unique email address (one email address per registrant) by 1:00 PM on Thursday, April 16 for campus access.
This one-day conference, “Ghosts of the Present: Nationalism and Sinitic Cosmopolitanism in the Medieval Far South,” scheduled for April 17, 2026, brings together an interdisciplinary group of archaeologists, linguists, historians, and literary specialists to investigate the “vernacular realities” of the medieval far south, a region traditionally known as Lingnan/Lĩnh Nam (嶺南) that spans present-day Southern China and Northern Vietnam. By moving beyond modern nationalist historiographies that often categorize this period as strictly “Chinese” or “Vietnamese,” the symposium explores the cultural, linguistic, and political integrity and connectivity of a region that historically defied these modern borders. Through a keynote address, three panels, and a concluding roundtable, participants will examine how local practices in situ engaged with, appropriated, or resisted Sinitic imperial values. Ultimately, the conference seeks to historicize local experiences and critique the nationalist interventions that have shaped our understanding of East and Southeast Asian histories, offering new methodological insights into the medieval past and its modern afterlives.
Moderators: Lu Kou, Director Of Undergraduate Studies, Assistant Professor, East Asian Langs & Cultures; John D. Phan, Associate Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures, East Asian Langs & Cultures
Speakers:
- Francis Allard, Indiana University of Pennsylvania
- Mark Alves, Montgomery College
- Erica Brindley, Pennsylvania State University
- Andrew Chittick, Eckerd College
- Hugh Clark, Ursinus College
- Robert Hymes, Columbia University
- NGUYỄN Tuấn-Cường, Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences
- Anna Shields, Princeton University
- Nicolas Tackett, UC Berkeley
- Keith Taylor, Cornell University
- Yang Shao-yun, Denison University
- Yin Shoufu, University of British Columbia
This event is sponsored by the Critical Chinese Humanities, the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Medieval and Renaissance Studies, the Department of History, the Linguistics Program, the Tang Center for Early China, and The Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities.
