Dear colleagues,
We are pleased to announce the following online workshop, ‘Meeting of Minds and the Art of Rhetoric: An Interdisciplinary and Comparative Workshop on Ancient Greco-Roman and Chinese Rhetoric’, which will be held on 15 June 2026 at 10:00 a.m. (London time).
This workshop forms part of the ongoing online lecture series Building Bridges: Exploring Graeco-Roman Oratory and Rhetoric from a Cross-cultural Perspective. Devoted to the comparative study of ancient rhetorical traditions, it brings together two specialists working on different cultural and intellectual traditions in order to create a dialogue between scholars of ancient Chinese and Greco-Roman rhetoric. The event explores how rhetorical communication in both traditions has been shaped by historical legacies and transmitted across time, and seeks to foster exchange not only between the two intellectual traditions but also among all participants.
All are welcome; no registration required.
Meeting of Minds and the Art of Rhetoric
An interdisciplinary and comparative workshop on ancient Greco-Roman and Chinese rhetoric
Date & Time: 15 June 2026, 10.00 London (11.00 Paris/Berlin, 17.00 Beijing, 18.00 Seoul/Tokyo)
Zoom Meeting ID: 931 5944 5855
Link: https://zoom.us/j/93159445855
Programme
Xiaoye You (Pennsylvania State University): Confucian Rhetoric on Comparative Terms
Henriette van der Blom (University of Birmingham): Chinese and Greco-Roman Rhetoric — and Beyond
Open discussion and Q&A
Abstracts
Confucian Rhetoric on Comparative Terms
Xiaoye You
How can non-Western rhetorical traditions be studied within the prevailing discourse of Western rhetoric? This talk approaches the question through a comparative lens, focusing on Confucian rhetoric. Beginning with the well-known case of Jesuit missionaries who, at the end of the seventeenth century, sought to describe Chinese rhetoric, the talk shows how their accounts reveal the difficulties of interpreting Confucian practices through Western categories. Drawing on the Analects, it identifies four key concepts central to Confucian rhetorical thinking and practice — junzi, ming, li, and yan — and traces how these were reinterpreted by the Han dynasty thinker Dong Zhongshu and mobilised to consolidate authority within Han imperial ideology, highlighting both the internal evolution of Confucian thought and its broader implications for comparative rhetorical study.
Chinese and Greco-Roman Rhetoric — and Beyond
Henriette van der Blom
Turning Xiaoye You's question on its head, this response asks how students and scholars of Western rhetorical traditions might develop their understanding of rhetoric through engagement with other rhetorical traditions. Arising from the speaker's work on the forthcoming Cambridge History of Rhetoric I: The Ancient World to c. 350 CE, the intervention proposes a different way of understanding 'rhetoric' that embraces a wider range of discourse phenomena, illustrated through short examples from a range of non-Western cultures discussed in comparison with Greco-Roman material.
Please feel free to circulate the programme to colleagues and students who may be interested!
With best wishes,
Mike Edwards, Christos Kremmydas, Lene Rubinstein, Ching-yuan Wu and Mengzhen Yue