Talk by Mimi Pi 皮迷迷, associate professor at Capital Normal University in Beijing, China.
She is a visiting scholar at Harvard Fairbank center for 2025-26 academic year.
Thursday, October 23, 2025
11:00 AM - 12:15 PM
Haines 118
This talk will be a part of course 11A - History of China.
Chinese history was dominated and shaped by Confucianism for over two thousand years. The Five Classics held in reverence by Confucian scholars were believed to contain the complete and ultimate truth about the cosmos and the human world. Paradoxically, while human society constantly evolves, the content of the Five Classics remains unchanged. Is it possible to address a changing world with unchanging canonical texts? This lecture will take Kang Youwei—a influential yet highly controversial figure in late Qing dynasty—as an example, to illustrate how Confucian scholars creatively interpreted Confucian classics, thereby establishing an effective linkage between the canonical texts and the changing world.
Pi Mimi is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy of Capital Normal University. She received her bachelor and master degrees from the School of Classics at Renmin University and achieved her Ph.D. degree in philosophy at Peking University. She is now a visiting scholar at Harvard Fairbank center for 2025-26 academic year. Her research interests include Confucianism and modern Chinese philosophy. She has recently published a monograph Reconstructing Classical Studies: Kang Youwei’s Classical Studies Revolution and has published more than twenty papers in Journals including History of Chinese Philosophy, Philosophical Trends, Philosophical Research, Religions and so on. She is currently conducting research on how the understanding of the legend of "abdication" has changed in Chinese intellectual history.
Sponsor(s): Center for Chinese Studies