Date: March 24, 2025 (Monday)
Time: 16:00-18:00
Venue: CRT-4.36, 4/F., Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus, HKU
Speaker: Prof. Ling Zhang, The University of Cambridge
Chair: Prof. Ji Li, The University of Hong Kong
Discussant: Prof. Devika Shankar, The University of Hong Kong
Synopsis:
This talk is a methodological discussion on how to approach environmental history through what I call ‘the Consumptive Mode of Analysis’, opposite to the prevalent approach, the Productive Mode of Analysis. I demonstrate the methodological difference between the two modes and the theoretical underpinning of that difference. I do so by comparing two case studies, one regarding flood control in middle-period China and the other regarding dam construction in mid-20th-century China. Both cases feature grass, the seemingly insignificant thing that played important roles in historical environmental processes.
Speaker's Bio:
Ling Zhang is a University Associate Professor in Classical Chinese and Middle-Period China in the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Cambridge University and a Fellow and College Lecturer of Gonville and Caius College. She is a historian of Chinese economy, environment, political ecology, and history of science and technology. She is the author of The River, the Plain, and the State: An Environmental Drama in Northern Song China (Cambridge 2016), recipient of the 2017 George Perkins Marsh Prize for the Best Book in Environmental History from the American Society for Environmental History. With John McNeill, she co-edits the book series "Studies in Environment and History" published by Cambridge University Press.
All are welcome and no registration is required. For enquries, please contact Prof. Ji Li at liji66@hku.hk
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