Envisioning an Ideal Christian Family in Republican China

Amid debates and discussions on the institution of the family in Republican China, foreign missionaries and Chinese Christians played an active role in promoting an ideal Christian family. This article investigates the three waves of prominent theological thinking that underpinned changing ideals of the Christian family throughout the Republican period: Chinese society’s encounter with the gendered ethics of the Christian community in the early Republican period, discussions of domesticity by Chinese Christians amid the social gospel movements of the 1920s, and discussions of domesticity during the National Christianizing the Home Movement. An exploration of Christian publications on domesticity points to a gendered perspective on women’s domestic roles as well as a male-dominated theological construct that attempted to reconfigure the notion of the Chinese Christian family. The discourse on the ideal Chinese Christian family had both secular and spiritual dimensions, shaped by the dynamic transnational flow of ideas and the development of local theological thinking.

Language Politics

This chapter discusses linguistic practice, governance, and power. Topics covered include rights and freedoms, law and policy, research evaluation and gendered pronouns. Chapter contents: 6.0 Introduction (by Séagh Kehoe) 6.1 China’s Minority Language Rights: No Bulwark Against Upcoming Change (by Alexandra Grey) 6.2 Linguistic Hierarchies and Mandarin Promulgation: An Excerpt from Dialect and Nationalism in China, 1860–1960 (by Gina Anne Tam) 6.3 The Hidden Language Policy of China’s Research Evaluation Reform (by Race MoChridhe) 6.4 War of Words and Gender: Pronominal Feuds of the Republican Period and the Early PRC (by Coraline Jortay)

THE IMPORTANCE OF “COMMUNİTY CENTERS” AS A CULTURAL INSTITUTION IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF REPUBLIC PERIOD MUSEUM

The development of museology in Turkey corresponds to the last period of the Ottoman Empire (westernization period). One of the main reasons why the idea of museology developed in a late period in Turkey was that the protection of cultural heritage did not gain importance. In this direction, the importance of protecting ancient artifacts in a building and being a museum has been understood late. However, thanks to the museum examples that Ahmet Fethi Pasha, one of the important statesmen of the period, saw during his European travels, the lack of a museum in Turkey was constantly mentioned. European museums, which influenced the Pasha, strengthened the idea of establishing a museum in Istanbul day by day. Thus, museology activities were started with the transformation of Hagia Eirene Church into a museum. Hagia Iri Church was the first example in Turkey in terms of forming the core of the idea of museology. Ottoman period museology, after the foreign directors, Osman Hamdi Bey was appointed as the museum director, and Turkish Museology was brought to life in a real sense. Osman Hamdi has spent a lot of effort to advance museology in accordance with the contemporary understanding of museology. Considering in this context, it has been a preparatory stage in the museum of the Republic Period. When we look at the museums of the Republic Period, museum activities were carried out with a rapid breakthrough under the leadership of Atatürk. Community Centers, were established in order to adopt the reforms made in this period to the public. In time, a “museum branch” was added to the Community Centers. With the museology branch, it was aimed to explain the importance of museology to the public and to be sensitive about it. In the community centers, ethnographic materials reflecting the culture of the people were collected in the first place. Thus, preliminary preparations were made for the museums to be established. The main purpose of the study is to emphasize the importance of the Community Centers established in the Republican Period in Turkish Museology. Thanks to the community centers and cultural institutions established under the leadership of Atatürk, the adoption of museology to the public and its contributions to museology will be expressed. In the study, the historical background of the community centers will be included and the connection of these institutions with museology will be tried to be expressed.

Neurological and Neuropsychiatric Diseases through the Lens of Roman Sculpture

Roman sculpture has often given the impression that it provides such a precise simulacrum of the bodies of ancient Romans that their statues can be studied autoptically as if they were a patient. Specialists in medicine and art-history have studied Roman sculptures to the point of producing real medical diagnoses, generating a research niche which, while controversial, has led to some interesting discoveries. However, scholars had sometimes misunderstand certain elements of ancient sculptures, interpreting aesthetic choices as clinical signs. In the article several works of art from the Republican period to the Tetrarchic age will be observed, to assess if the diagnoses made on them are due to actual physical features of the individuals portrayed or not. This article analyses the strengths and weaknesses of the study of ancient pathologies through Roman sculpture to delineate the limits and the possibilities of such approach.

Notaries and Basic-Level Society: A Study of the Itinerant Notary System during the Republican Period

The itinerant notary system was an important measure taken by the Nationalist government in Nanjing to enhance its control of grassroots society in rural China. There was no intent to challenge the central government’s wishes of “enlarging government revenues for the benefit of the state treasury” and safeguarding the integrity of the central government’s jurisdiction, which made smooth implementation of the itinerant notary system possible. It was against this background that the court of Linxia, Gansu province, expanded its reach to local business centers, selected superintendents of public notaries from among local gentry elites, and offered awards for notary services. The itinerant notary system thus combined a “modern” legal institution transplanted from the West with endogenous resources, and turned out to be an experiment conducive to overcoming the either/or binary of Western vs. Chinese, exploring a pluralistic and less disruptive path of institutional development.

A Cradle of Chinese Physics Researchers

This chapter explores the development of the department of physics at Yenching University, an American-funded missionary institution in Beijing, China during the Republican period. It shows how the department evolved from a primitive premedical teaching program to a major center of physics education and research. It also reveals the significant role of the Rockefeller Foundation in this development, partly as the sponsor of the Premedical School of Peking Union Medical College. Founded in 1917, the Premedical School shared with Yenching’s science departments its advanced facilities and in 1926 became part of the university. In 1927, the department created a Master of Science program in physics, the first of its kind in China, promoting original research among its faculty and students. Before the Japanese army shut down the university in December 1941, more than ninety Chinese young men and women had completed their study in this department with a research thesis. A considerable number of Yenching graduates went on to earn their doctorates in America or Europe and subsequently returned home, becoming leading physicists in China in the twentieth century. Among them, Kun Huang (黃昆‎, Class 1941) and Chia-Lin Hsieh (謝家麟‎, Class 1943) even won the State Preeminent Science and Technology Awards, the highest scientific honor in China, in 2001 and 2011 respectively.