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Utopias and Their Pursuit: Schedule

Saturday, December 20, 2025

4:00 pm Keynote Talks

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Yuri Pines, The Renmin University of China, and Michael W. Lipson Professor in Chinese Studies, Hebrew University of Jerusalem — “Between Utopianism and Realism: Early Chinese Political Thought”



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Keith Knapp, Professor of History, The Citadel — “Confucian Utopian Egalitarianism: The Equalization of Fields System (Juntian zhi 均田制) and Its Ideological Origins”



Dinner: 6:30 pm

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Sunday, December 21, 2025

Breakfast: Kunlun Hotel

9:00 am - 10:20 am
Panel 1 - From Utopia Models to Early History
Chair: Jinyu Liu

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Liang Cai, Ruth and Paul Idzik Associate Professor in Digital Scholarship, University of Notre Dame — “Utopia, Paranoia, and Collective Lies: The Perils of the Mandate of Heaven in Early Chinese Empires”



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Chloe Balla, Professor of Ancient Philosophy, University of Crete — “From Utopias to Models: Early Greek Reflections”



Coffee Break (20 minutes)

10:40 am - 12:00pm
Panel 2 - Imagined Land in Antiquity and Early Medieval China
Chair:

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Jinyu Liu, Betty Gage Holland Professor of Roman History, Emory University — “The Gendered Aspects of the Locus Amoenus and Utopia”



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Zhao Lu, Associate Professor of Global China Studies, NYU Shanghai — “Peace, Drugs, and Yellow Turbans: How an Eschatological Pathology Came into Being in 3rd Century CE China”



Lunch Break (12:00 pm -2:00pm)

2:00 pm - 3:20pm
Panel 3 - Utopianism in Practice in Medieval World
Chair: Guangyi Li

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Ya Zuo, Associate Professor of History, University of California, Santa Barbara — “Too Emotional for Utopia: Taming Women for the Ideal World”



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Alexander Beihammer, Heiden Family College Professor, University of Notre Dame — “Utopia at the Twilight of Empire: Eurasian Ideas of Political Reorganization and Order in the Time around the Fall of Constantinople (1453)”



Coffee Break 20 minutes

3:40-5:00 pm
Panel 4 - Utopia in Literature and in Theory of Medieval West
Chair: Zhao Lu

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Guangyi Li, Professor, Chongqing University– Heaven upon Blood and Iron: War and Peace in Thomas More’s Utopia




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Azfar Moin, Associate Professor of History, University of Texas at Austin — “The Mughal Imperial Utopia of ‘Total Peace’ and Its Western Reception”



Dinner: 6:30 pm

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Monday, December 22, 2025

Breakfast: Kunlun Hotel

9:00 am -10:20 am
Panel 4 - Kang Youwei's Planetary Utopia and Global History
Chair: Liang Cai

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Ying Zhang, Professor, Leiden University, "To Jail, or Not to Jail: Living with the Utopian Structure in Ming Bureaucratic Management"



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Federico Brusadelli, Assistant Professor of Chinese History, University of Naples “L’Orientale” — “Imagining the World as One: Kang Youwei’s Planetary Utopia and the ‘Modernization’ of Confucian Universalism”



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Paul Hösle, Visiting Research Student, Academy of Korean Studies, and Vittorio Hösle, Paul Kimball Professor of Arts and Letters, University of Notre Dame — “The Dialectic of Moral Progress and Material Development in Western Philosophy from the 18th to the 20th Century, with a View on Kang Youwei”


Break (20 minutes)

10:40 am - 12:40 pm
Panel 5 - Utopianism in Modern Day
Chair: Ya Zuo

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Levi Checketts, Associate Professor of Religion and Philosophy, Hong Kong Baptist University — “An Aesthetic Way of Life? Marcuse’s Utopian Hope and the Obstacle of Repression”



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Shiping Hua, Calvin and Helen Lang Distinguished Chair in Asian Studies and Director of the Asian Studies Program, University of Louisville — “Chinese Utopianism in Modern Times: a ‘Better Place,’ or a ‘No Place’?”



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Alex Hsu, Assistant Teaching Professor of Global Affairs, University of Notre Dame — “A No-Place Like Home: Academic Engaged Buddhism in the Present Progressive”



Lunch Break (12:40 pm - 2:00 pm)

2:00 pm - 3:20 pm
Panel 6 - Utopia Region in Contemporary Societies
Chair: Levi Checketts

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Simon Wolfgang Fuchs: Associate Professor of Islam in South Asia and the Middle East, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem— “Is the Middle East the Last Utopian Region on Earth?”




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Ori Tavor, Senior Lecturer in Chinese Philosophy and Religion, University of Pennsylvania— “Peach Blossom Spring Reimagined: ‘Pocket Utopias’ in Contemporary Chinese Society"