Giorgio Strafella

I don't think the "Einstein" or other AI replacing the important steps of learning, esp in higher ed, would be posing quite the challenge it is right now if students hadn't been sent the message their entire lives that the point of college is to get good grades and a high paying job, not to learn.

ANU Press Coming Soon. Cover image of 'Reshaping the State'.

‘Based on extensive fieldwork and impressive analytic skills, Wen-Hsuan Tsai has produced the most detailed and informative account of the evolving political system in Xi Jinping’s China that I have ever read.’ – Kjeld Erik Brødsgaard

Learn more and register your interest: doi.org/10.22459/RTS...

Congrats to @coralinglingxu.bsky.social on winning the 2026 Best Book Award from the Higher Education SIG of the Comparative and International Education Society for THE TIME INHERITORS!

A powerful study on time inheritance & inequality #HigherEd.

#WinnerWednesday #ReadUP tinyurl.com/yc7k864x

Cover of The Minjung Art Movement: Decolonization and Democracy in South Korea by Sohl Lee. The cover is a duotone of teal green and a berry red. A crowd is gathered with their arms wrapped around each other. In the background hung on a building is an art piece showing two figures and text in Korean. The title is in a bold white sans serif font aligned left. The subtitle is directly below in yellow. The author's name appears in the upper right corner.

In "The Minjung Art Movement," Sohl Lee traces how the South Korean movement of the 1970s and 1980s forged decolonial protest aesthetics that helped galvanize democratization and why its practices continue to resonate today. Read the intro for free now: buff.ly/LkDZnlQ

Three major research universities opt out of new Elsevier deal Complaints over ‘price increases’ and open access models spur UK institutions to walk away from offer from publishing giant, despite nationally negotiated agreement

And so it begins... 3 UK universities (Essex, Sussex & Kent) have just gone public about walking away from their Elsevier Read & Publish deals, despite Jisc's recently announced agreement. Expect to see more of these over the coming months. www.timeshighereducation.com/news/three-m... #OpenAccess

Very honoured to have contributed a chapter on constitutional interpretations of History in China to the monumental Handbook of Intepreting Chinese History edited by Kristin Stapleton, @xinfan.bsky.social, & Els van Dongen. It's in the best company of 31 more utterly fascinating chapters!🤩

From the description by Li Xianting in "Reinterpretation: A Decade of Experimental Chinese Art" (Wu Hung ed, 2002): "The works imitate crystal and thus raise the value of cabbage. It is like the difference between Tai Lake and ordinary lakes, the first magical, the others ordinary."

Hu Xiangdong, Cabbage/Dream Plant, 1998. www.mplus.org.hk/tc/collectio...

23rd China Internet Conference, June 22-23, 2026 @ China Institute, Univ of Alberta. Cara Wallis & I'll give keynotes. My topic is “Of earthy flavor and AI flavor: On distinguishing flavors in an age of cyber artificiality and uncertainty." Nice funding for students
www.ualberta.ca/en/china-ins...

🔔 New #OpenAccess Research Article in #JCCA Journal of Current Chinese Affairs

@giga-hamburg.de @sagepub.com

Marcin Jacoby & Piotr Machajek analyze the critical responses to CCP narratives of scientific progress and social harmony in CN visual arts and literary texts

doi.org/10.1177/1868...

Excavating a History Already Found A carved stone discovered in Qinghai Province in 2020 drew wide attention in June 2025 when a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences proposed that it was an inscription from the reign of...

From imperial ritual through Maoist dialectics to Xi-era heritage politics, in this essay @tristangbrown.bsky.social explores how China’s heritage bureaucracy has turned archaeology into a language of governance, transforming artefacts into symbols of civilisational continuity and state authority.

Cover of sarah dauncey's 2020 book, disability in contemporary china: citizenship identity and culture (cambridge up)

On a fan of Volapük in Xiamen: www.sohu.com/a/676613870_...

Invisible Ink What does it mean to be a woman artist – or a feminist artist – in China today? Analyzing how Chinese women artists have reinvented traditional forms of ink and…

Invisible Ink will be out in January 2026 as a hardback and ebook:

Xi Zhongxun, an early communist revolutionary, tried to balance reformist instincts with loyalty to the Party. His failure left an indelible mark on his son, Xi Jinping.

Read Rana Mitter's review essay on The Party's Interests Come First by Joseph Torigian: chinabooksreview.com/2025/11/13/x...

Ink Studies: Everyday Practices of Calligraphy in Contemporary China Just published! Laura Vermeeren Ink Studies explores contemporary practices of calligraphy in China, situating them in both a precarious and dynamic position. While people are increasingly writing les...

This looks good nuspress.nus.edu.sg/products/ink...

Zhenwu, the Perfected Warrior, vp 141, ngp

Label of Zhenwu, the Perfected Warrior

Label of Six Lamenting Officials, vp 1092-vp 1097, ngp

Six Lamenting Officials, vp 1092-vp 1097, ngp

Yes the last one is marble but enjoy it anyway :)

If you need help with the Czech romanisation system, you can use this: www.cinsky.com/transkripce/... or this www.lib.cas.cz/space.40/PCH...

If you want to learn more about Chinese painting in the NGP collection, you can read the work of Dr Michaela Pejčochová, former curator at NGP who also collaborated with NGP for this exhibition: knihobot.cz/a/15277 Esp. knihobot.cz/g/3473176/b/...

And that's all, at the moment. If you want to see Qi Baishi, Zhang Daqian etc, you can (1) wait (2) go to the Trade Fair Palace bldg of NGP and ask for on-site viewing or (3) consult the online database ng.bach.cz/ng_vade/

Photo of The Immortal Lü Dongbin with Sword, Vm 146

Landscape with Kingfisher Clouds [山光水色翠連雲], Vu 3129

Detail (inscription) of Landscape with Kingfisher Clouds

The Immortal Lü Dongbin with Sword, Vm 146 ng.bach.cz/ng_vade/perm...

Landscape with Kingfisher Clouds [山光水色翠連雲], Vu 3129
ng.bach.cz/ng_vade/perm...

My bad photo of (Qiu Ying, attr.), Concert in the Palace Garden, Vm 1532

My photo of Yu Fei'an, Two peonies and Two Bumblebees, Vm 640

(Qiu Ying, attr.), Concert in the Palace Garden,
Vm 1532
ng.bach.cz/ng_vade/perm...

Yu Fei'an, Two peonies and Two Bumblebees, Vm 640
ng.bach.cz/ng_vade/perm...

[*I put in brackets details e.g. "attr." that are in the exhibition but not in the online NGP database: ng.bach.cz/ng_vade ]

These are the Chinese paintings currently on view at Salm Palace. I am told there will be changes in 3 and again in 6 months. Wen Zhengming (attr.), Baoshan Island, Vm 5950 ng.bach.cz/ng_vade/perm...

My latest publication is now online. "Literary Virtue: A Moral Cornerstone of Chinese Literary Theory." In this essay, Zhou Xinglu 周興陸 of Peking University and I explore the history of the concept of literary virtue (wende 文德) across 2000 years.
#Sinology🀄️📚

read.dukeupress.edu/jclc/article...
1/3

Today opens the new permanent collection of Asian art at the Salm Palace of the National Gallery in Prague.

Genre borrowing in Chinese digital culture: Narrative imagination and grassroots storytelling on social media - Guobin Yang, 2025 A notable feature in Chinese digital culture is its playful style. Memes, jokes, parodies, and coded language of all sorts abound on social media. While researc...

This is fascinating! Sima Qian is surely making a comeback! People wrote Shiji-style biographies of Li Wenliang during Wuhan lockdown - my piece on this is just out, open-access journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Dr Sijie Ren, who was supervised by @robertbickers and Adrian Howkins, was awarded the British Association for Chinese Studies 'Best Doctoral Thesis Prize' for their PhD “Science and Politics in Maoist China: The Synthetic Insulin Project and its Legacy."

US judge preliminarily approves $1.5 billion Anthropic copyright settlement A federal judge in California on Thursday preliminarily approved a landmark $1.5 billion settlement of a copyright class action brought by a group of authors against artificial intelligence company Anthropic, according to the authors' representatives.

📣We're delighted with the Court’s decision yesterday.
It's a win for authors and rightsholders, and a step in the right direction towards compensation for the unlawful use of copyright-protected works. Big Tech is not above the law and creators’ rights cannot be ignored. ✊
tinyurl.com/4db9u2fn