Envisioning Islands - Public Lecture Series on Maritime History and Literature - Islands in the Song Period
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Date
21 Oct 2026
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Organiser
Institute of Chinese Studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong; the French School of Asian Studies; the Research Centre for Chinese History and Culture, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University; and the Department of Chinese, Lingnan University
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Time
10:00 - 12:00
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Venue
Activities Room, 2/F, Art Museum East Wing, CUHK and online via Zoom
Speaker
Prof. Johannes L. Kurz
Enquiry
Ms Carmen LAW 34008979 rcchc@polyu.edu.hk
Remarks
This talk will be delivered in English
Summary
This talk will highlight some of the terms helpful to our understanding of islands in the Song dynasty by perusing relevant maps, and officially as well as privately compiled historical works. These may be a first step towards a more in-depth study of what scholars in the Song may have envisioned in regard to distant and not-so distant places surrounded or close by the ocean. Much of this in many cases – a few of which I will touch upon – was still inspired by knowledge written down in previous dynasties. Among the topics covered will be “islands” as markers of foreign countries in maps; physical islands as hiding places, of exile and punishment, and as locations cut off from “culture”; imagined and real islands in modern research.
Keynote Speaker
Prof. Johannes L. Kurz
Heidelberg University
Johannes Kurz received his Ph.D. in Classical Chinese Studies from the University of Heidelberg in 1993. From 1995 to 1998 he worked as an assistant professor at the Department of Chinese Studies at the University of Kiel, and from 1998 to 2022 he served as lecturer, senior lecturer, and senior assistant professor in the Historical Studies Program at Universiti Brunei Darussalam.
His research interests are the historiography in the early Song period 9960-1040); imperial libraries in Song (960-1279); history of the Five Dynasties and Ten States (907-960); history of the Southern Tang (937-976); and Chinese sources in the fabrication of modern Southeast Asian national histories. He has published widely on Southern Tang (937-976) history, Chinese imperial encyclopedias, and pre-modern Chinese texts on Borneo, Singapore, and Burma. Presently he continues work on the identification of Dashi 大食 in the Song dynasty.
His latest publications include: “Were There Really Cham Muslims in Hainan and Guangzhou in the Late Tenth Century: A Re-Examination of Relevant Chinese Sources”, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 175.2 (2025): 493-518; “Piaoyue, Piao, Pyu (?): Chinese Textual Evidence Concerning a Southeast Asian Region in Burma from the Tang to the Song Dynasties”, Journal of Asian History 58.1-2 (2024): 89-115; and “Philology Lost: Variable Interpretations of the Raid of Guangzhou in 758 from the 18th to 21st Centuries”, Journal of Asian History 57.1-2 (2023): 81-115.
