HUANG Jianli 黃坚立
Given my love for teaching and archival research, I have not regretted for a moment about joining the academia. This is especially so when I am privileged to be able to work within a department which has an excellent team of friendly and committed colleagues. Providing good intellectual and emotional mentorship to a diverse range of students is one of my priorities. The other is to be able to help students of Singapore, and perhaps the larger public, to understand the complex developments which are now taking place within China, particularly by putting events and issues in their broader historical context. For the present academic year, I will be involved in modules on "China's Imperial Past: History and Culture" and "Modern and Contemporary China: Search for Wealth, Power and Democracy". You are most welcome to drop by my office to seek advice or just for a chat, certainly a more personalized way to get to know each other, rather than just clicking the mouse and striking the keyboard.
TEACHING AREAS:
- China's Imperial Past: History and Culture
- Modern and Contemporary China: Search for Wealth, Power and Democracy
CURRENT RESEARCH:
- Governing China: Local Self-Government in Wartime Chongqing, 1937-1945
- State and Student Politics in Modern China, 1920s -1990s
- Chinese Entrepreneurial and Intellectual Elite in Postwar Singapore
Phone: (office) +65-65166054
TEACHING AREAS:
- China's Imperial Past: History and Culture
- Modern and Contemporary China: Search for Wealth, Power and Democracy
CURRENT RESEARCH:
- Governing China: Local Self-Government in Wartime Chongqing, 1937-1945
- State and Student Politics in Modern China, 1920s -1990s
- Chinese Entrepreneurial and Intellectual Elite in Postwar Singapore
Phone: (office) +65-65166054
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Books
The authors trace state discourses on Singapore history from the decision immediately after independence to recognise the nineteenth-century British acquisition of the island as its founding moment, to the 1980s and 1990s when an essentially Confucian heritage was recognized under the rubric of “Asian values’, and finally to an emphasis on the history of racial fragility and harmony in response to the threat of terrorism in the twenty-first century, embedded within these discourses is the story of the PAP as the heir of the economic dynamics of the pax Britannica, as an exponent of the morality and righteousness of the Chinese scholar-gentlemen, and as the firm hand that balances the interests of the majority Chinese against those of the minority populations, particularly the Malays.
The authors examine the underlying template of Singapore history, the negotiation with its immigrant past, and the popularization of history through conscription of national heroes. The chapters range from considering how political leaders claim to be historians by virtue of being the makers of history, to the vicissitudes undergone by two originally private homes turned into symbols of Singapore’s Chinese modernity.
The Scripting of a National History: Singapore and Its Pasts is highly relevant not only to academics but also for the Singapore general reader interested to see what are meant to be received wisdoms for the citizenry interrogated in a well-reasoned and engaging exercise, as well as for an international readership to whom Singapore has become a fascinating enigma. They may well be intrigued by the anxieties of being Singaporean.
This book is a celebration of the life, work, and impact of Professor Wang Gungwu over the past four decades. It commemorates his contribution to the study of Chinese history and the abiding influence he has exercised over later generations of historians, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region.
The book begins with a historiographical survey by Philip Kuhn (Francis Lee Higginson Professor of History at Harvard University) of Wang Gungwu’s enduring contribution to scholarship. It concludes with an engaging oral history of Professor Wang’s life, career, and research trajectory.
The intervening chapters explore many of the fields in which Wang Gungwu’s influence has been felt over the years, including questions of political authority, national identity, commercial life, and the history of the diaspora from imperial times to the present day. These chapters are authored by former students of Professor Wang, now working and teaching in Hong Kong, Southeast Asia, Australasia, Taiwan and Canada.
王赓武先生学贯东西,博古通今,致力中国史,海外华人史研究数十年,造诣极深,著作颇丰。
Papers
As a public figure who had lived through the tumultuous decades of high nationalism in China, Second World War, British decolonization, nation building and the Cold War, different images of Lee Kong Chian have invariably been produced and projected at different points in time and space. This paper begins with a critical review of the substantive pool of Chinese-language writings on him and then examines closely three major ways in which he has been portrayed amidst the changing circuits of power and shifting identity formation.
The authors trace state discourses on Singapore history from the decision immediately after independence to recognise the nineteenth-century British acquisition of the island as its founding moment, to the 1980s and 1990s when an essentially Confucian heritage was recognized under the rubric of “Asian values’, and finally to an emphasis on the history of racial fragility and harmony in response to the threat of terrorism in the twenty-first century, embedded within these discourses is the story of the PAP as the heir of the economic dynamics of the pax Britannica, as an exponent of the morality and righteousness of the Chinese scholar-gentlemen, and as the firm hand that balances the interests of the majority Chinese against those of the minority populations, particularly the Malays.
The authors examine the underlying template of Singapore history, the negotiation with its immigrant past, and the popularization of history through conscription of national heroes. The chapters range from considering how political leaders claim to be historians by virtue of being the makers of history, to the vicissitudes undergone by two originally private homes turned into symbols of Singapore’s Chinese modernity.
The Scripting of a National History: Singapore and Its Pasts is highly relevant not only to academics but also for the Singapore general reader interested to see what are meant to be received wisdoms for the citizenry interrogated in a well-reasoned and engaging exercise, as well as for an international readership to whom Singapore has become a fascinating enigma. They may well be intrigued by the anxieties of being Singaporean.
This book is a celebration of the life, work, and impact of Professor Wang Gungwu over the past four decades. It commemorates his contribution to the study of Chinese history and the abiding influence he has exercised over later generations of historians, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region.
The book begins with a historiographical survey by Philip Kuhn (Francis Lee Higginson Professor of History at Harvard University) of Wang Gungwu’s enduring contribution to scholarship. It concludes with an engaging oral history of Professor Wang’s life, career, and research trajectory.
The intervening chapters explore many of the fields in which Wang Gungwu’s influence has been felt over the years, including questions of political authority, national identity, commercial life, and the history of the diaspora from imperial times to the present day. These chapters are authored by former students of Professor Wang, now working and teaching in Hong Kong, Southeast Asia, Australasia, Taiwan and Canada.
王赓武先生学贯东西,博古通今,致力中国史,海外华人史研究数十年,造诣极深,著作颇丰。
As a public figure who had lived through the tumultuous decades of high nationalism in China, Second World War, British decolonization, nation building and the Cold War, different images of Lee Kong Chian have invariably been produced and projected at different points in time and space. This paper begins with a critical review of the substantive pool of Chinese-language writings on him and then examines closely three major ways in which he has been portrayed amidst the changing circuits of power and shifting identity formation.
This wartime experience of Aw brings into sharp relief the sort of political entanglement which prominent Chinese overseas business people can be entrapped in. Suspicions about his wartime patriotism initially hounded him and he had to issue denials. However, in the midst of confusion over the outbreak of the Chinese Civil War and the American reversal of occupation policy in Japan, there was an absence of formal governmental or public actions, allowing the issue to fade away and Aw’s business and charity to return to normalcy. It was more than 30 years later, at the height of the economic reopening of Communist mainland China and the renewed importance of Chinese overseas capital in the 1980s and 1990s, that Aw’s wartime patriotism was re-examined, this time calculated to pass a new and presumably last verdict that Aw had been most unfairly judged and that he was actually an iconic true overseas Chinese patriot. This posthumous honor was conferred on him despite the fact that the supposedly new empirical evidence was far from conclusive. It was an act of political restoration in semiacademic garb and enacted with an eye to facilitating further business ties between a resurgent China and the Chinese diaspora.