Conference - Korea, East Asia and the World: Neo-Confucianism in Comparative Perspective

Wednesday 15 September 09:00 - 20:00 and Thursday 15 September 08:45 - 16:00

Venue: Brasenose College, University of Oxford

With the participation our history faculty academics: Alan Strathern and Eric Schluessel 

The overarching ambition of the conference is to build further links between Korean intellectual history and the field of global history by establishing connections and comparisons with the rest of East Asia and the wider world. It will do this through a reappraisal of the role of Neo-Confucianism, the dominant intellectual movement in East Asia of the long early modern period before the rise of European imperialism. Arising in China during the Song dynasty (960-1279), neo- Confucianism became the dominant ideology of the Chinese state until the early-twentieth century. It was successfully exported across east Asia, to Vietnam, Tokugawa Japan (1603-1868) and Joseon Korea (1392-1897), where it had a particularly profound impact, becoming the undisputed ideological basis of Joseon rule. This conference, in partnership with scholars from Korea University, offers an opportunity for interdisciplinary and international exchange on recent developments in Korean scholarship on this subject.