About Us

The School of Chinese at The University of Hong Kong &

The Ricci Institute for Chinese-Western Cultural History at Boston College

Jointly Present the Following Public Lectures of International Workshop on

HISTORICAL LEGACIES OF CHRISTIANITY IN EAST ASIA

Publishing with a Purpose:

The Contribution of Chinese Women in the Church

Speaker: Prof. Cindy Yik-yi CHU 朱益宜, Ph.D.

Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong, China

Date: 11 December 2024 (Wed)

Time: 9:30–10:45am (HKT) 

Venue: CRT-4.36, Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus, HKU
Mode: In-person & Online (via Zoom)

Focused on The Chinese Sisters of the Precious Blood and the Evolution of the Catholic Church (2016), this seminar aims to talk about a minority of women very rarely written in the Chinese Church history, especially how they were influenced by indigenization, and how they worked closely with their local Chinese people. The focus is on the independence, perseverance, and Chineseness of the Precious Blood Sisters who are both Chinese and Catholic, which has not caused any problems in their one hundred years of history. Previous works focus on Chinese male intellectuals and their collaboration with foreign Catholic missionaries. This seminar is to highlight the contribution of Chinese sisters and their early relations with the Italian sisters in the Church in Hong Kong.

Cindy Yik-yi CHU is Professor at the Department of History, Hong Kong Baptist University, China. She earned her doctoral degree from University of Hawaii at Manoa, and specializes in modern and contemporary China, cross-cultural studies, history of the Catholic Church in China, Sino-Vatican relations, etc. As a prolific writer, she has published more than 17 books and many more articles in edited volumes and journals. Her recent publications are Cardinal John Tong and Handbook on the Catholic Church in East Asia, both are published by Palgrave Macmillan in late 2024.

The Book Thief:

A Micro-history of the Sino-Western Knowledge Exchanges

in the Global Renaissance

Speaker: Prof. Florin-Stefan MORAR, Ph.D.,

Lingnan University, Hong Kong, China

National University of Singapore, Singapore

Date: 11 December 2024 (Wed)

Time: 13:40–14:55pm (HKT)

Venue: CRT-4.36, Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus, HKU

Mode: In-person & Online (via Zoom)

Matteo Neroni might just be the most important unknown figure of the Renaissance—or at least one of the most fascinating. Neroni was born in Peccioli near Pisa, in the second half of the 16^th century. Having learned painting at a young age, he sought fortune and fame in Rome, working on the map gallery of the Vatican palace under the mentorship of Egnazo Danti, and later as an empolyee of Europe's first Orientalist Giambattista Raimondi. In 1594, Neroni's arrest for book theft resulted in a substantial criminal dossier, which, while centred on his offense, reveals a wealth of historical context. As this talk will show, this dossier is particularly valuable not for the crime itself but for the intricate details it contains, enabling a reconstruction of a remarkable network that connected Rome and China. This network played a crucial role in the bi-directional exchange of cartographic knowledge during this transformative period. 

Florin-Stefan MORAR is Assistant Professor in History at Lingnan University, and will join the Department of History, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the National University of Singapore in 2025. He received his doctoral degree from Harvard University in 2019. With his broad linguistic knowledge and training, he has been conducting research on the relations and cross-cultural exchanges between China and the West in the past and the present. Dr. Morar has published on the history of translation of scientific and technological knowledge. Currently, he is completing a monograph on the translation of cartographic knowledge between China and the West in the age of first contacts.

Notice:

1. The lectures are FREE to faculty, students and the public, thanks for the sponsorship by the Louis Cha Fund in the Faculty of Arts at The University of Hong Kong and the EDS-Stewart Endowment and the Ricci Scholarship Endowment, Ricci Institute at Boston College.
2. The seminar will be conducted primarily in a face-to-face mode; Those who cannot attend the seminar in-person could apply for online participation (via Zoom).
3. For participation either online or in-person, please register at: https://forms.gle/CvxnmWMm4VE2ACX56
4. Email of confirmation will be sent to the registered email addresses and participants are requested to show the screenshot or print-out version of the email for entry of the seminar venue.