“Why Learn Tibetan:” The Legacy of Tibetan Buddhists and Translation in Qinghai Educational Reforms, 1910-1938

Date(s)： 2024/08/02

Time： 14:00~16:00

Venue： Archives 3rd Conference Hall

Host： Prof. Wu Zhe （Associate research fellow, IMH,AS）

Speaker：Mr. Zachary Clark ( PhD Candidate, Pennsylvania State University)

Organizer： State and Society Research Group

Abstract:
The May Fourth Movement saw newly formed social, political, and intellectual organizations put forward progressive educational policies that swept across China. In China’s Northwest Qinghai territory, one of the largest obstacles facing education reforms was there were no Tibetan language textbooks for students, the predominant language of the majority of the region’s inhabitants. The solution was a cooperative and proactive effort with local Tibetan Buddhists to translate, teach, and establish schools specially catered toward the local cultural and linguistic landscape. This talk traces from 1910 to 1938 the cooperative efforts made by Qinghai officials, Tibetan Buddhists, and an independent Tibetan language research organization to assert Tibetan as a language vital to the development and future of the region’s education reforms. Such an approach sheds new light on Chinese western regions’ roles in larger trends about modernity through educational reform, print culture, and religion.
 
***英文演講、中英問答
  
Zachary Clark is a PhD Candidate of History at Pennsylvania State University and current Fulbright-hays fellow at the Institute of Modern History in Academia Sinica. His current research examines early-twentieth century municipal development in western China through regional institutions such as monasteries, chieftains, and regional military governments.
 

Photos：