His book An Artistic Exile: A Life of
Feng Zikai was awarded the
Joseph Levenson Book Prize for Modern China, 2004. He was editor of the ANU based e-journal China Heritage Quarterlyfrom 2005 to 2012,[2] and is the editor of China Heritage.[3] In 2016, he founded The Wairarapa Academy for New Sinology[4] in collaboration with sinologist
John Minford.
Education and career
Barmé took his B.A. Asian Studies from the
Australian National University, majoring in Chinese and Sanskrit, then studied at universities in the People's Republic of China (1974–77) and Japan (1980–83).[1]
When he first returned to Australia as a lecturer in history, one of his first students was future Australian Prime Minister
Kevin Rudd, whose support was important in funding the Centre for China in the World.[5]
He edited the journal East Asian History from 1991 to 2007 [6]
In 2011, he gave the inaugural "China in the World" Invited Lecture at ANU, "Australia and China in the World: Whose Literacy?" [7]
New Sinology
In an essay first published in 2005, Barmé called for a "New Sinology," which would be
descriptive of a "robust engagement with contemporary China" and indeed with the Sinophone world in all of its complexity, be it local, regional or global. It affirms a conversation and intermingling that also emphasizes strong scholastic underpinnings in both the classical and modern Chinese language and studies, at the same time as encouraging an ecumenical attitude in relation to a rich variety of approaches and disciplines, whether they be mainly empirical or more theoretically inflected. In seeking to emphasize innovation within Sinology by recourse to the word 'new', it is nonetheless evident that I continue to affirm the distinctiveness of Sinology as a mode of intellectual inquiry.[8]
The historian
Arif Dirlik is among those who welcomed Barmé's intervention as "an important reminder of the importance of language as the defining feature of the term."[9]
—— (2002). An Artistic Exile: A Life of Feng Zikai (1898-1975). Berkeley: University of California Press.
ISBN0520208323.
—— (2012).
"New Sinology". China Heritage Project; Reprinted from Chinese Studies Association of Australia Newsletter, No. 3, May 2005. Archived from
the original on 11 August 2019.
—— (2010), "For Truly Great Men, Look to This Age Alone —Was Mao Zedong a New Emperor?", in
Cheek, Timothy (ed.), Cambridge Companion to Mao, Cambridge: Cambridge Univ Press, pp. 243–272
References
^
abResearchers Services (2015).
"Dr Geremie Barme". Australia National University.
^"New Sinology"Archived 2015-04-11 at the
Wayback Machine, China in The World, First published in the Chinese Studies Association of Australia Newsletter Issue No. 31, May 2005