Professor Andrew Hui received his PhD at Princeton University in the Department of Comparative Literature. A literary scholar and cultural historian teaching at Yale-NUS College in Singapore since 2012, he was a fellow at the Berlin Institute for Advanced Studies last year, where he researched and wrote on his new project titled “Confucius the Stoic: The Encounter between Chinese and Western Philosophy in the Global Renaissance.” This forthcoming book will encompass the knowledge transfers and cultural exchanges between European Jesuit missionaries and the Chinese Imperial Court in the 17th and 18th centuries.

In his talk, Professor Hui will analyze the Jesuit construction of a garden maze in Yuanming Yuan as a gift for the Qianlong Emperor and describe the ways that the maze and the garden serve as metaphors for the cultural encounters between China and Europe in the eighteenth century.

Introduction by Duane Corpis, Area Head of Humanities, Associate Professor of History, NYU Shanghai; Global Network Associate Professor, Faculty of Arts and Science, NYU.