季風人文講壇 JF SALON
季風人文講壇2026年1月活動
JF Salon Announcement of January
At January, we will bring together voices shaped by writing, history, migration, belief, and dissent: Geling Yan reflects on the moral costs of literary truth under censorship; fellows from the Penn Project on the Future of U.S.-China Relations offer European perspectives on China beyond the U.S.–China binary; Shiyu Lin documents the lived realities behind irregular migration; Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Benjamin Nathans explores how dissidents learned to live “as if free” under totalitarian rule. Together, these conversations ask how individuals speak, choose, and act under constraint.
2026年的開端，我們邀請到著名的作家嚴歌苓，
January 13th, Tuesday, 6:00–7:30 PM｜In English
My Life in Writing: A Conversation with Geling Yan
The life of author and screenwriter Geling Yan 嚴歌苓 has been one of great variety: soldier, dancer, author, scriptwriter, diplomatic spouse, and resident of mainland China, the US, Taiwan, Nigeria and currently Berlin. She has witnessed the massacre at Tiananmen Square and gone from being a high-profile celebrity in China to having her work banned and her online presence and film credit erased. She now publishes her own uncensored work, most recently the English translation of her epic novel Criminal Lu Yanshi, about the life and times of a Chinese intellectual who values truth and freedom but ends up spending much of his life in a labor camp. Please join us for a fascinating exchange moderated by Georgetown professor Kyle Shernuk.
About the Speaker
Geling Yan is an internationally acclaimed author and screenwriter whose work spans literature, film, and cultural criticism. Born in Shanghai, she began her career at the age of twelve as a dancer in a People’s Liberation Army entertainment troupe. Since the 1980s, she has published more than thirty works of fiction and non-fiction, many of which have been adapted for film and television by leading Chinese directors. Her writing has received over thirty major literary and cinematic awards and has been translated into twenty-one languages. Once a celebrated public intellectual in China, Yan now lives in Berlin and publishes her uncensored work independently, writing with sustained attention to memory, violence, gender, and moral responsibility.
Moderator of this talk Kyle Shernuk is an Assistant Professor at Georgetown University specializing in modern and contemporary Chinese and Sinophone literature, film, and culture. His research focuses on ethnicity, indigeneity, queerness, language, and marginalized communities across global Chinese-speaking societies. He has published in leading journals and edited volumes, including Prism, International Journal of Taiwan Studies, and A New Literary History of Modern China.
本場對談將圍繞嚴歌苓橫跨文學、電影與時代變遷的創作人生。從早年的軍旅經驗與文藝創作，到親歷六四後的精神轉折，再到作品被禁、被抹除後的自我書寫，嚴歌苓將分享她如何在審查與流亡之間，持續以文學回應暴力、記憶與道德責任。本場對談由喬治城大學助理教授 Kyle Shernuk 主持。
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January 14th, Wednesday, 6:30–8:00 PM｜In English
European Policy Perspectives on China: Security, Investment, Climate, Development
The Transtlantic and European Dialogue on China, an initiative of the Penn Project on the Future of U.S.-China Relations, develops actionable recommendations for China policy from leading next generation China scholars and experts from across Europe and the U.K. Twenty of the participants in this initiative are visiting Washington, DC this month. Join us to hear reflections from four members of the group speaking to core debates in the European policy context.
About the Speakers
The speakers are fellows of the Penn Project on the Future of U.S.–China Relations, a multidisciplinary initiative that brings together leading next-generation scholars from across Europe and the United Kingdom. Their research spans security studies, political economy, development policy, climate governance, and China–Europe relations, with a focus on producing policy-relevant analysis grounded in regional expertise.
Una Aleksandra Bērziņa-Čerenkova, Assistant Professor of Riga Stradins University
Sam Geall, Associate Fellow of Chatham House
Marina Rudyak, Researcher, Universität Heidelberg
Kostantinos Tsimonis, Assistant Professor of Panteion University
Moderator: Neysun A. Mahboubi is Director of the Penn Project on the Future of U.S.-China Relations at the University of Pennsylvania, where he teaches various courses related to Chinese history, law, and policy, and hosts the China Studies podcast.
本場講座邀請來自歐洲多國的青年學者，分享當前歐洲政策圈如何重新理解與回應中國議題。討論將涵蓋安全、投資、氣候與發展等核心領域，並呈現歐洲在中美競爭背景下所面臨的戰略抉擇與政策分歧，為華府觀眾提供一個重要的比較視角。
January 16th, Friday, 6:00–7:30 PM｜In Chinese 
走線：繁榮中國的另一面
中國已經成為世界第二大經濟體了，為什麼在過去五年，依然有很多中國人透過「走線」這種危險方式，偷渡到美國？他們在國內經歷了什麼，導致出走如此決絕？他們是如何走線到美國，路上遭遇了什麼？他們到美國後，又是如何在兩種文化的縫隙間重建新生活？他們的內心經歷了怎樣的震盪，以及如何尋找新的平衡？
關於講者
林世鈺，媒體人、作家，長期從事華人社會的口述歷史與非虛構寫作。曾在中國大陸媒體行業工作十餘年，2013年赴美後，先後在媒體、教育與非營利機構任職，並持續為多家中文媒體撰寫專欄。其作品關注普通人在制度、遷移與時代變動中的生命經驗，著有《煙雨任平生：高耀潔晚年口述》《新冠之殤》《美國歲月》《走線：15位中國人的赴美生死路》等多部非虛構作品。其中《煙雨任平生》獲《亞洲週刊》評為「2019年度十大好書（非虛構）」。
Despite China’s rise as the world’s second-largest economy, thousands of ordinary people continue to leave through perilous irregular migration routes known as zou xian. Drawing on firsthand interviews and oral histories, journalist and writer Shiyu Lin examines why people leave, what they endure along the journey, and how they rebuild their lives after arrival. This talk explores migration not as abstraction, but as lived experience shaped by fear, dignity, and choice.
January 31st, Saturday, 6:00–7:30 PM｜In English 
Benjamin Nathans: To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement
Half a century ago, the Soviet Union found itself unexpectedly challenged by a group of Soviet citizens who achieved global fame in the longest battle of the Cold War—the battle of ideas. The struggle of Soviet dissidents for the rule of law and human rights made them instant heroes in the West as they pursued the goal of containment of Soviet power from within. Rather than see dissidents as surrogate soldiers of democracy and liberalism beyond the iron curtain, historian Benjamin Nathans begins with the idea that dissidents were Soviet people. How do orthodoxies generate their own heresies? How do people and societies emerge from totalitarian forms of rule? Soviet dissidents did something, as one of them put it, “simple to the point of genius: in an unfree country, they began to conduct themselves like free people.” This was the dissident story inside the drama of Soviet history, and not surprisingly, it turned out to be anything but simple.
About the Speaker
Benjamin Nathans is the Alan Charles Kors Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a leading historian of modern Russia and the Soviet Union. His most recent book, To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement, received the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction, among other honors. Nathans is also the author of the award-winning Beyond the Pale and a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement, and other major publications.
Moderator: Joseph Torigian is an associate professor at the School of International Service at American University in Washington, DC, and a Center Associate of the Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies at the University of Michigan. Torigian studies the politics of authoritarian regimes with a specific focus on elite power struggles, civil-military relations, and grand strategy. He uses primary sources, rare books, and interviews to provide new accounts of historical milestones in two nations of crucial geopolitical importance: China and Russia.
本場講座由普立茲獎得主、Benjamin Nathans教授主講，重新審視蘇聯異議運動的思想與歷史。他將異議者視為制度內部生成的道德行動者，而非冷戰語境下的政治代理人，探討人在極權體制中如何「像自由人一樣生活」，以及這些選擇如何塑造歷史的長期後果。
我們的網上購書平台 (https://jfbooks.org) 已全面上線並持續更新，歡迎您選購心儀的作品！在這個假期，無論身在何處，閱讀都會是您心靈的歸屬，讓思想的種子在讀書中生根發芽。季風書園攜帶知識的力量與人文的關懷，始終陪伴您左右。期待我們在DC相見！
Additionally, our online book platform (https://jfbooks.org) is fully launched and continuously updated. Welcome to purchase your favorite works! In this holiday season full of vitality, no matter where you are, reading will be the spiritual home of your mind, allowing the seeds of thought to take root in books. JF Bookstore brings the power of knowledge and humanistic care, always accompanying you. Looking forward to seeing you in Washington D.C!
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