2025 Asian History Workshop: Legal Humanities in Global Asia
Keynote Speech: “Rethinking the Confucian-Legalist Ideology of Late Imperial Chinese Law and Society”
Date: April 12th, 2025
Time: 3:00 pm – 5:00 pm
Location: 1080 Lucy Ellis Lounge – Literatures, Cultures, and Linguistics Building
Professor Chen will reflect on how we might reconsider the ideological foundations of Chinese legal culture by reexamining the interlocking and dialectical relationships between Confucian and Legalist discursive formations. His talk engages with recent—and still ongoing—debates over the nature of civil justice and the legal system in late imperial China. Drawing on over two decades of archival research and several book projects on the juridical field, criminal justice, and legal knowledge production, Professor Chen presents a range of archival examples to offer new perspectives on how Confucian-Legalist ideological formations shaped law, governance, and society—and to suggest new lines of inquiry into their broader significance for understanding late imperial Chinese legal culture.