Local Gazetteers (difangzhi 地方志) have been important sources for studying China’s local history, since they were the major recordkeeping places for local history and knowledge including landscape, flora and fauna, local products, temples and schools, officials and celebrities, local culture and customs, and much more. More importantly, the large quantity of extant local gazetteers and the consistency of topics that each of them covers make the gazetteers perfect sources to compile a global database of local records for historical China. The Local Gazetteers Project at MPIWG provides a set of digital tools that help historians to transform textual sources into a scholarly enhanced database as a means to support new forms of digital historical analysis especially for large scaled analysis and comparison.

This workshop invites nine scholars who work on the histories of science, technology, medicine, environment and deal with issues of local materiality to explore these rich research materials in their digital forms. The scholars will bring their individual research projects and will use the digital tools provided at MPIWG to collect and analyze data across the local gazetteers. The tools include a data extraction interface to quickly collect data from textual sources, a GIS mapping service to visualize data on historical maps, and a scholarly enhanced data repository to share and integrate individually collected data. Together the scholars and researchers at MPIWG will jointly develop innovative digital research methodologies through the use of digital sources and tools.

Participants

• Aurelia Campbell, Boston College, Department of Fine Arts
• Desmond Cheung, Portland State University, Department of History
• Fei Huang, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Institute for Sinology and Korean Studies
• Gregory Adam Scott, The University of Edinburgh, Asian Studies
• He Bian, Princeton University, History and East Asian Studies
• Hongsu Wang, Harvard University, the Insititute for Quantitative Social Science
• Ian M. Miller, St. John's University, Department of History
• Kathlene Baldanza, Pennsylvania State University, History and Asian Studies
• Wu Huiyi, Needham Research Institute, Cambridge

Open Sessions

On August 1st, the organisers Dagmar Schaefer and Shih-Pei Chen will introduce the digital tools built at Department III for the Chinese Local Gazetteers. The nine invited scholars will also present the research projects that they will work on during the workshop. On August 19th they will present results of using the provided digital tools in pursue of their research.

Monday, August 1

Opening Presentations

• (Open to the public, please register here.)
• 10:00-11:30 Welcome and Introduction
•                    Welcome By Dagmar Schäfer
•                    A Glimpse to the Tools By Shih-Pei Chen
• 11:30-12:30 Sericulture, Silk and Expert Languages: Large Corpora and Changes Over Time - By Li Fuqiang & Dagmar Schäfer
• 12:30-13:30 Lunch
• 13:30-13:45 History of Wood Rights and Forestry in South China in the Ming and Qing Periods - By Ian M. Miller
• 13:45-14:00 Tracing the Sources of Nan Wood for Imperial Construction in the Yongle Reign - By Aurelia Campbell
• 14:00-14:15 Miasmic Disease in Late Imperial China - By Kathlene Baldanza
• 14:15-14:30 Expelling Locusts: Statecraft and Environmental Governance in Late Imperial China - By Desmong Cheung
• 14:30-14:45 From Travelogues and Local Gazetteers: Chinese Literati Knowledge on the Natural History of Manchuria and Mongolia in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries - By Huiyi Wu
• 14:45-15:00 Contesting Landscape in Periphery: Society and Environment of Pre-Modern Southwest China - By Fei Huang
• 15:00-15:30 Coffee Break
• 15:30-15:45 Database of Chinese Buddhist Reconstruction, 1866-1966 - By Gregory Adam Scott
• 15:45-16:00 Buddhist Data Index in Local Gazetteers - By Hongsu Wang
• 16:00-16:15 Materia Medica as Local Product in Ming-Qing Gazetteers - By He Bian
• 16:15-17:00 Wrap-up and Q&A - By Shih-Pei Chen

Friday, August 19

Final Presentations

(Open to the public, please register here.)

• 10:00-10:15 Opening
• 10:15-10:45 Tracing the Sources of Nan Wood for Imperial Construction in the Yongle Reign - By Aurelia Campbell
• 10:45-11:15 History of Wood Rights and Forestry in South China in the Ming and Qing periods - By Ian M. Miller
• 11:15-11:30 Coffee Break
• 11:30-12:00 Miasmic Disease in Late Imperial China - By Kathlene Baldanza
• 12:00-12:30 Expelling Locusts: Statecraft and Environmental Governance in Late Imperial China - By Desmong Cheung
• 12:30-13:30 Lunch
• 13:30-14:00 Westerners and Western learning in local gazetteers: reality, legend, local identity - By Huiyi Wu
• 14:00-14:30 Materia Medica as Local Product in Ming-Qing Gazetteers -By He Bian
• 14:30-15:00 Water, Medicine and Environment in the Pre-Modern Southwest China - By Fei Huang
• 15:00-15:30 Coffee Break
• 15:30-16:00 Survey of Temple Reconstruction in Modern China - By Gregory Adam Scott
• 16:00-16:30 The Culture Interaction of Jingzhou 靖州, 1644-1800 - By Hongsu Wang
• 16:30-17:00 Discussion and Wrap-Up