This list of conference speakers is preliminary and may be revised:

 

Dan Ben-Canaan: A Professor of Research and Writing Methodology at Heilongjiang University School of Western Studies in Harbin, China. He is the founder and director of the university’s Sino-Israel Research and Study Center and has written extensively about the Jewish community in Harbin.

 

Richard Bernstein: A writer and former foreign correspondent for The New York Times. He served as a foreign correspondent in Beijing for Time Magazine and is the author of a number of books. He recently completed a book entitled, China, 1945: America, Mao’s Revolution, and the Turning Point in Asia.

 

Pan Guang: The Dean of the Center of Jewish Studies Shanghai (CJSS) and a leading scholar on the history of the Jews of China. He has written a number of books and lectures extensively on this subject. Joshua Fogel: The Canada Research Chair and professor of history at York University. He is the author of numerous books and scholarly articles on Sino-Japanese cultural relations and has translated books from both Japanese and Yiddish into English.

 

Jonathan Goldstein: A professor of history at the University of West Georgia and is the author and editor of a number of books on Asian history. Among other things, he is the editor of a two-volume book on The Jews of China, a collection of scholarly articles and research guide from a conference on the Jews of China held at Harvard University in the 1990s.

 

Manli Ho: The daughter of Dr. Feng Shan Ho, who received the title of Righteous Among the Nations, Israel’s highest award, for courage in issuing Chinese visas to save Jews from the Shoah while he was the Chinese Consul General in Vienna from 1838 through 1940. Manli Ho has researched and written extensively about her father’s courageous actions, which enabled thousands of Jews to obtain safe passage out of Austria.

 

Steve Hochstadt: A professor of history at Illinois College. He has done extensive research on Jewish refugees who fled to Shanghai (including his grandparents, who lived in Vienna but left for Shanghai to avoid persecution) and is the author of Exodus to Shanghia: Stories of Escape from the Third Reich. Hochstadt also is the treasurer of the Sino-Judaic Institute, a nonprofit organization that promotes cooperation in matters of mutual historic and cultural interest between Chinese and Jewish people.

 

Tess Johnston: An author who has lived in Shanghai for many years. She came to Shanghai in 1981 to work at the American Consulate General and stayed on after retiring from diplomatic service in 1996. Ms. Johnston has an extensive library of historical documents and books about Shanghai and often serves as a consultant on matters pertaining to the Western presence in old Shanghai.

 

Maisie J. Meyer: Is affiliated with the London School of Jewish Studies and is the author of From the Rivers of Babylon to the Banks of the Whangpoo: A Century of Sephardi Jewish Life in Shanghai (University Press of America 2003).

 

Marcia Ristaino: The author of a number of books, including Port of Last Resort: The Diaspora Communities of Shanghai (Stanford University Press 2003), which was reviewed favorably in the New York Review of Books and other publications.

 

Oren Rozenblatt: Deputy Consul General at the Israeli Consulate General in Shanghai. Among other things, he is the publisher of a book of photographs by Sam Sanzetti, who came to Shanghai from Russia in the early 1920s and was a studio photographer for more than three decades.

 

Liliane Willens: Born in Shanghai to Russian-Jewish parents and lived in Shanghai until the early 1950s: has written about her experiences in China in Stateless in Shanghai (2010: Earnshaw Books), a memoir.

 

Xu Xin: Professor and Director of the Glazer Institute for Jewish Studies at Nanjing University. Among other things, he has written a college text in Chinese on the history of the Jews and is the author of Anti-Semitism: How and Why, a Chinese text distributed to University libraries in China.