Spring 2009 Events
All events are free and open to the public
Email ceas@ccat.sas.upenn.edu for further information
January
Causes and Consequences of Homelessness around the World
Wednesday, January 28, 7:00PM, Carriage House
Join the University of Pennsylvania's African Studies Center, Middle East Center, South East Asia Center, the Center for East Asia Studies, the United Nations Association of Greater Philadelphia and the Women's Campaign International for an engaging panel on homelessness throughout our world.
Contact: Anastasia Shown 215-898-6449 shown@sas.upenn.edu www.africa.upenn.edu
The Cultural Politics of Artistic Expression: China and Europe
Martin Powers, University of Michigan
Thursday, January 29, 4:30PM, Stiteler B21
DECRIPTION TBA
Humanities Colloquium
Competing with China: Entrepreneurship from the Inside
Simon J. MacKinnon, PAST PRESIDENT, CORNING of GREATER CHINA, CHAIRMAN, GLOBAL GREEN POWER, LLC
Friday, January 30, 12:00 pm – 1:30 pm, Heilmeier Hall, 1st Floor Towne Bldg
About the Speaker: Simon MacKinnon has spent most of the last 23 years in China and spent nine years as President of Corning in China from 2000 to 2008. Corning is the world leader in specialty glass and ceramics with global sales of over $6 billion in 2007. Its main products are optical fiber and cable products for the telecoms industry, pollution control products sold to automakers and the power industry and LCD glass for TV, computers and other consumer electronic customers. During this time Corning grew in China from $80 million to $450 million in sales, from 100 staff to over 3,000, from one plant to eight and increased investment from $10 million to over $500 million. Simon has led or been a part of over $2 billion in investments, M&A, restructurings and disposals in China over the last 15 years, is a past Chairman of the British Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai and is an Honorary Citizen of Shanghai. Today he works as China Adviser for European private equity firm Cinven, is a Partner in his own angel/early VC investment firm, is non-executive Chairman of Aggreko China (world leader in rental power), is Chairman of start-up firms in renewable energy in the Philippines and healthcare in China, and is active in charity and community organizations in Shanghai. He studied at Oxford and was a Thouron Scholar at Penn.
Co-Sponsors: Engineering Entrepreneurship Program, The Lauder Institute CIBER Program, Weiss Tech House, John M. Huntsman Program in International Studies and Business, Wharton Entrepreneurial Programs Center for East Asian Studies
February
The Sex Education of a Sinologist
Susan Mann, Professor of History, University of California, Davis
Wednesday, February 4, 4:30PM, College Hall 200
This illustrated lecture presents findings from the author’s forthcoming book on gender and sexuality in Chinese history, ranging from philosophical discussions of human nature in early Chinese texts to the conventions shaping textbooks in contemporary universities.
CEAS Distinguished Lecturer
Pop Icons of Japan Film Series
Screening of Godzilla
Introduction by Linda Chance, Associate Professor of Japanese Studies, University of Pennsylvania
Thursday, February 5, 7:00PM, Cohen Hall 402
Sponsored by the Friends of the Japanese House and Garden and the Center for East Asian Studies
Social Status' Influence on Women's Childbirth Age on in a Rural Korea / Influences of Social Status on Korean Women's Childbirth Age in Rural Area
Sangkuk Lee, Visiting Scholar, University of Pennsylvania
Thursday, February 12, 4:30PM, Goddard Lab 101
In this article, we try to shed light on the aspects of women's childbirth age from the families' social status, along with comparing two household registers in the same area written in eighteenth and twentieth centuries respectively in a rural Korea. We hope that we can provide a Korean case to East Asian colleagues seeking a representative pattern on demographic behaviors in East Asian societies as a whole.
Korean Studies Colloquium
Pop Icons of Japan Film Series
Screening of Happiness of the Katakuris – Introduction by Lewis Harrington, University of Pennsylvania
Thursday, February 12, 7:00PM, Cohen Hall 402
Sponsored by the Friends of the Japanese House and Garden and the Center for East Asian Studies
Elite Politics and Monetary Swings in China: Then and Now
Victor Shih, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Northwestern University
Wednesday, February 18, 12:00PM, Huntsman Hall 255
The starting point of analyzing banking and monetary policies in China is that all of the major financial institutions continue to be state-owned and controlled by the ruling Communist Party. As such, political considerations dominate banking and monetary outcomes. If a single party dominates the financial sector, why have seen seen such drastic monetary and inflationary swings in the past thirty years? Dr. Shih develops an elite factional model to explain these swings. The model is then applied on inflationary cycles in the mid 90s and in 2008. The talk ends with some implications for the future of the Chinese financial system.
Co-Sponsored by the Center for East Asian Studies, The Joseph H. Lauder Institute of Management & International Studies, and the Penn-Lauder CIBER
“Getting Ahead in the Communist Party: Explaining the Advancement of Central Committee Members in China” – Working Paper Seminar
Victor Shih, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Northwestern University
Wednesday, February 18, 2:00PM, Williams Hall 215
Young Korean students’ study abroad to English-speaking countries and its impact on national language policy
Kathleen Lee & Jiyoon Lee, Graduates Students in the Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania
Thursday, February 19, 4:30PM, Goddard Lab 101
In the past decade, the number of “goose families” or young Korean students that temporarily migrate overseas with their mothers to learn English has grown dramatically. We investigate the resources available to these families who move abroad and analyze the impact of study abroad experiences on language policy in Korea.
Korean Studies Colloquium
Kano Sansetsu and The Song of Everlasting Sorrow
Matthew McKelway, Atsumi Associate Professor of Japanese Art, Columbia University
Thursday, February 19, 5:00PM, Stiteler B26
The Chôgonka emaki (Scrolls of the Song of Everlasting Sorrow), a set of two handscrolls by Kano Sansetsu (1590-1651) in the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin, survives as the most complete visual depiction of the Tang Dynasty poet Bai Juyi's ballad about the tragic romance of Emperor Minghuang and Yang Guifei. A work produced late in Sansetsu's career, the Chôgonka scrolls build upon a long tradition in Japanese art of depictions of Bai Juyi's poem, and yet depart from that tradition in important ways. The lecture will provide an overview of Japanese paintings of the "Song of Everlasting Sorrow" and will seek to elucidate the circumstances in which Sansetsu produced his work and the motivations behind his unusual depiction.
Humanities Colloquium
Pop Icons of Japan Film Series
Screening of Ultraman Mebius and the Ultraman Brothers – Introduction by Frank Chance, Associate Director, Center for East Asian Studies
Thursday, February 19, 7:00PM, Cohen Hall 402
Sponsored by the Friends of the Japanese House and Garden and the Center for East Asian Studies
Jews in China: legends, history, and perspectives
Prof. Guang PAN, Walter & Seena Fair Professor of Jewish Studies, Dean of Center of Jewish Studies Shanghai (CJSS), Director of the Shanghai Center for International Studies
Friday, February 20, 11:00AM, Shotel Dubin Auditorium, Penn Hillel, Steinhardt Hall, 215 South 39th St.
Co-Sponsored by the Center for East Asian Studies, Jewish Studies and Penn Hillel
Pop Icons of Japan Film Series
Screening of Kamikaze Girls - Introduction by Fred Dickinson, Associate Professor of Japanese History, University of Pennsylvania
Thursday, February 26, 7:00PM, Cohen Hall 402
Sponsored by the Friends of the Japanese House and Garden and the Center for East Asian Studies
March
East Asian Security: Prospects and Perspectives
Noboru YAMAGUCHI, Lieutenant General JGSDF (Ret.)
Monday, March 2, 5 - 6 PM PM, Golkin Room, Houston Hall
A graduate of the National Defense Academy, General Yamaguchi earned a MA at the Fletcher School, Tufts University, and served as a National Security Fellow, Olin Institute, Harvard University. After serving as Senior Defense Attaché in the Japanese Embassy in U.S. and then as Deputy Commandant of the Aviation School, Gen. Yamaguchi became Director of the Research & Development Department, Ground Research and Development Command, Japan Ground Self-Defense Force (JGSDF).
Sponsored by THE INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS PROGRAM, THE CENTER FOR EAST ASIAN STUDIES, THE SEMINAR SERIES IN STRATEGIC STUDIES
Immigrant Children and Education: The role of educators, parents, and the law
Fernando Chang-Muy JD
Wednesday, March 4, 5:00PM, ARCH Building, Crest Room, 3601 Locust Walk
Fernando Chang-Muy, JD is the Thomas A. O'Boyle Lecturer in Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He teaches Immigration Law, Refugee Law, and Law and Social Work in U Penn's Law School and also in the Graduate School of Social Policy and Practice Work. He was the founding director of the Liberty Center for Survivors of Torture, a federally funded project to raise awareness about survivors of torture and to provide survivors with health and legal case management. Formerly he was a program officer at The Philadelphia Foundation and coordinator of the Emma Lazarus Collaborative-a collaborative of foundations that supported service and advocacy for immigrants and refugees. He is the past co-chair of the Philadelphia Bar Association's International Human Rights Committee and served as legal officer with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. He earned a bachelor's at Loyola, a master's at Georgetown, a juris doctorate at Antioch, and completed Harvard Law School's Negotiation Project. http://www.law.upenn.edu/cf/faculty/fchang/
Co-sponsored by the African Studies Center and the Center for East Asian Studies
Three types of “poor” in Korea
Tae Kim, Graduates Student in School of Social Policy & Practice, University of Pennsylvania
Thursday, March 5, 4:30PM, DRL A5
Previous literature dealing with poverty issues mainly focuses on “the poor” as a uniform category. Recent debates on poverty have highlighted different aspects of the poor population in terms of number of poverty spells and poverty duration. However, there has been no systematic and empirical research which has outlined the characteristics of different types of the poor. To fill this research gap, this study identifies a typology of the poor and discusses their socio-economic and demographic characteristics. This study used the 8-year longitudinal data (1997-2004) from the Korean Labor & Income Panel Study (KLIPS). The findings of the study revealed that there are significant differences between the poor which need to be taken into account for effective policy implementation. As such, this research encourages policy makers in designing evidence-based anti-poverty policies in Korea and other developed countries. This study also provides new insight regarding Korean poverty problem during Asian economic crisi and post crisis period.
Korean Studies Colloquium
A performance by Isaburo Hanayagi
Please join us for a performance by Isaburo Hanayagi, followed by a detailed explanation of kabuki makeup and costume as he transforms our male volunteer into a beautiful kabuki character.
Wednesday, March 18, 7:00PM, Houston Hall, Hall of Flags
Isaburoh Hanayagi is currently a Professor of Performing Arts at Tamagawa University in Tokyo, Japan. Trained as a kabuki performer in the Hanayagi School, Isaburoh made his stage debut at age three under the tutelage of his father, Yoshigosaburoh Hanayagi. The Hanayagi School is the largest school of kabuki dance in Japan, with over 200,000 members. Isaburoh is known as a unique dancer and choreographer among them, and in addition to teaching kabuki dance classes, he also instructs in subjects such as Creative Japanese Folkloric Dances and Comparative Study of Western and Eastern Dances. Isaburoh’s personal repertoire of kabuki dance includes more than 150 pieces.
Part of the JASGP Cherry Blossom Festival
Fitting into the Global Meritocracy: The Multigenerational Project of Kirogi Families in the U.S.
Seung-kyung Kim, Associate Professor of Women's Studies, University of Maryland
Thursday, March 19, 4:30PM, DRL A5
As Korean families compete to position their children in a social environment that is rapidly changing through globalization, education is considered to be the key to their success. The options for education have expanded in the last few decades, and Korean families have been zealous and innovative in their pursuit of the best opportunities for their children. A combination of factors including dissatisfaction with Korean public education, English as the hegemonic language of the global economy, the increased access to educational opportunities overseas, and increased wealth of families in Korea have led to the efflorescence of education projects such as private schools, after school private tutoring (kwaoe), and early study abroad (chogi yuhak). To facilitate early study abroad, Korean families have developed a new family pattern that has come to be called wild geese families (kirogi kajok). The wild geese or kirogi family is a split-household transnational family with the mother and children moving to an English speaking country for education and the father staying behind in Korea to work and support the family. Kirogi families are engaged in a long term project that can last a decade or more, and often requires considerable flexibility to adapt to changing circumstances. The projects of kirogi families often include brief episodes of short term migration of the entire family; sending children to stay with relatives abroad; or sending children to boarding school. Kirogi families are deeply traditional, in that they seek to maintain or improve family status through education, and assume a traditional Korean family structure with an indissoluble marriage and the strongest bonds being between a mother and her children, however, the entire project is innovative, transformative and future-oriented in that it seeks to maximize children’s opportunities for the 21st century. Based on interviews with members of kirogi families, our paper examines the lived experiences of these families in order to understand their pursuit of success through education in the global arena. We see this transnational, education-motivated family as engaged in a process of positioning their younger generation within the global meritocracy. In examining the dynamics of kirogi families, we want to show how their project requires them to continually rework ideas of family, nation, individual within the context of their own lives.
Korean Studies Colloquium
Konnichiwa Japan!
Teacher's Workshop
Saturday, March 21, 2009 9:00am - 3:00pm, Penn Museum, Classroom 2
Spend a day exploring Japanese culture, history and society. Discussions with University of Pennsylvania scholars, demonstrations of traditional arts, and a private tour of the museum's Japanese collection will give new insight and exposure to pre-modern and contemporary Japan . A Japanese lunch is included to help participants fully internalize the experience. Designed as a workshop for teachers but open to all inquiring minds, “Konnichiwa Japan !” will be a memorable visit to the Far East, right here in Philadelphia . Fee- $30 lunch included Cosponsored by the Japan America Society of Greater Philadelphia , Center for East Asian Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and Camden County College Receive professional development credits for Pennsylvania and New Jersey .
For more information please contact - Prema Deshmukh 215-898-4065 or deshmukh@sas.upenn.edu Penn Museum , 3260 South Street , Philadelphia , PA 19104
The Varieties of Health Care in Eleventh-century China
Nathan Sivin, Professor Emeritus of Chinese Culture and of the History of Science
Wednesday, March 25, 12:00PM, Cohen Hall 203
Previous work on Chinese medical history has studied only the classical tradition. The great majority of Chinese before modern time “rural, illiterate, and poor” had no access to its elite practitioners. Most depended on local healers, or on masters of the popular religion, or of Buddhist or Daoist movements, whose therapies were mainly ritual. Sivin’s current research will describe spectrum from self-therapy and family therapy through popular healing to classical medicine, and study their interactions.
Humanities Colloquium
From To Live to Brothers: On Literature and Reality
Yu Hua
Wednesday, March 25, 4:00PM, ARCH Building, Crest Room, 3601 Locust Walk
In Yu Hua’s fiction, contemporary China is presented as an absurd, petrified landscape of ruins permeated by historical violence, contingencies, and irrationality. In this talk, he will discuss his unique conceptualizations of history, reality, and realism. Yu Hua is one of the most powerful and influential contemporary Chinese novelists. His immensely popular and critically acclaimed novels To Live and The Chronicle of a Blood Merchant were named as two of the last decade’s ten most influential books in China. His work has been translated into French, German, Italian, Dutch, Spanish, Japanese, and Korean. To Live was awarded Italy’s Premio Grinzane Cavour in 1998, and Yu Hua became the first Chinese writer to win the prestigious James Joyce Foundation Award in 2002. His most recent novel Brothers, newly translated into English, is a bestseller in China, short-listed for the Man Asian Literary Prize, and a winner of France’s Prix Courrier International. It presents an epic and wildly unhinged black comedy of modern Chinese society running amok.
A Discussion with Isaburo Hanayagi
Tuesday, March 31, 6:00PM, Penn Museum, Rainey Auditorium
Kabuki, the classical Japanese dance-drama, is the topic of this presentation, offered by world-renowned Kabuki performer, and Professor of Performing Arts at Tamagawa University in Tokyo, Japan, Isaburoh Hanayagi. Professor Ayako Kano, Associate Professor, Department of East Asian languages and Civilizations, will interview and interpret Professor Hanayagi’s work and discuss the history of Kabuki and its place in current Japanese society and the world. Following the discussion, Isaburoh Hanayagi transforms a Japan America Society of Greater Philadelphia volunteer with the elaborate makeup of a Kabuki dancer—a fascinating process!
Co-sponsored by International Classroom program of Penn Museum’s Education Department, the Center for East Asian Studies of the University of Pennsylvania, the Japan America Society of Greater Philadelphia, and Camden County College. $5 general admission; free to Penn Museum members. Registration recommended: 215/573-4203, or nriley@sas.upenn.edu.
April
Wives, Concubines, Courtesans, Nuns: Early Modern Japanese Women
The Center for East Asian Studies and the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations present an academic symposium in honor of Cecilia Segawa Seigle, Professor Emerita of Japanese Studies.
Saturday, April 4, 2009; 9:00 a.m. - 6 p.m.
Cohen (formerly Logan) Hall 402
Keynote speaker: Mary Elizabeth Berry, "Was there a Genroku for Women?"
Symposium speakers: Julie Nelson Davis, Janet Ikeda, Elizabeth Lillehoj, Matsui Yoko, Joshua Mostow, and Laura Nenzi, Cecilia Segawa Seigle; Chairs and respondents: Linda H. Chance, Rachael Hutchinson, Ayako Kano, and Holly Sanders
Program details forthcoming
Advance registration for Saturday recommended: email Women-of-early-modern-japan@googlegroups.com with subject heading “Preregistration”
Specialists on Tokugawa women may apply to attend a Japanese-language workshop on research methods in original sources, to be held in the afternoon of Friday, April 3 rd . Presenters will be Matsui Yôko and Wakabayashi Haruko (Tokyo Daigaku Shiryô Hensanjo). Email lchance@sas.upenn.edu
See our Google Group for detailed information on accommodations in Philadelphia and other updates.
Imperial Korea's New Capital: Pyongyang on the Eve of the Russo-Japanese War
Eugene Park, University of Pennsylvania
Tuesday, April 7, 4:30PM, DRL A7
From the perspective of international relations, outcome of the Russo-Japanese War sealed the fate of the independent Korean Empire (1897-1910). Rather than dismissing her as the tail end of precolonial Korean history, a growing body of studies is elucidating various dimensions of a modernizing Korea. In this presentation, I shall argue that while the official rhetoric of an empire needing two capitals gives us a good sense of imperial Korea's understanding of her place in the civilized world of the past, present, and future, the circumstances wherein the Pyongyang construction project began and then came to a sudden halt raises questions about her geopolitical concerns.
Korean Studies Colloquium
Trafficking with the (Organs) Traffickers: Global Justice and the Traffic in Humans for Transplant
Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Chancellor’s Professor, Anthropology, UC Berkeley
Thursday, April 9, 4:30PM, College Hall 200
What journalists benignly call ‘transplant tourism’ involves more than consenting individuals engaged in intimate bodily exchanges and backdoor transplants that are privately arranged. Each illicit transplant involves an extensive and highly organized criminal network of well-placed intermediaries with access to willing transplant surgeons, excellent public and private hospitals, laboratories, offshore bank accounts, police protection and even the tacit approval or blessing of government and/or health officials. Nonetheless, this is a dangerous game and the high risk players in the global ‘transplant mafia’, who think they are invincible and above the law, can suddenly find themselves shoved up against a wall and handcuffs slapped on their wrists. Surgeons have been pulled out of operating rooms, and transplant patients carried out on stretchers and taken to nearby public hospitals. In Durban, South Africa , the final trigger in a police sting of a private clinic at St. Augustine’s Hospital was the madcap escape down a back door of the clinic of a trafficked kidney donor for an Israeli transplant tourist. Most of the foreign kidney sellers were Brazilians (from the slums of Recife) and Moldovans ( from collapsed agricultural villages) who were recruited and trafficked to South Africa by transplant brokers. My paper, based on fieldwork in Recife, Durban, and Jerusalem, explores the following questions: What kind of moral worlds do kidney hunters and organs traffickers and their clients inhabit? How do they justify their actions? These intimate exchanges of life-giving body parts concern more than medical necessity and individual life-saving. In the case under study they entail complicated histories of debt peonage on the one hand (Brazil) , and of genocide, race hatred, and mass death (Israel) on the other. Gaddy Tauber, the Brazilian- based Israeli broker and bag man for this particular organs trafficking scheme far more was at stake then large sums of money. \Greed, yes, but also revenge, restitution and even reparation for the Holocaust played a role in these unconventional transnational transplant proceedings. Redemption, resurrection, and reparations on the one hand, organ stealing, blood libels, and seething resentment on the other make the global traffic in humans for organs a unique, unstable and particularly dangerous proposition, a political tragedy in the making of truly epic and Shakespearean dimensions.
Global Distinguished Lecturer – Sponsored by the Center for East Asian Studies, South Asia Center, Middle East Center and African Studies Center
The Trouble with Anthologies: The Case of the Poems of Ying Qu
David R. Knechtges, University of Washington
Monday, April 13, 4:30PM, Annenberg 110
DECRIPTION TBA
EALC Rickett Memorial Speaker
Containment: The Muting of Students in Semidemocratic Southeast Asia
Meredith L. Weiss, University at Albany, SUNY
Tuesday, April 14, 4:30PM, Stiteler B21
Postcolonial, developmental states recognize the need for higher education to generate both ideas and skilled human resources. Many seek too, though, a level of state control incompatible with ideals of academic freedom. This dilemma is all the more keen for semidemocratic states such as Malaysia or Singapore, which can neither curb protest so coercively as more authoritarian neighbors nor accept such free-wheeling criticism as more politically liberal ones. University students across Southeast Asia are heir to a tradition of political engagement, based largely on a collective identity as "students." Despite crackdowns, students have been central to political change across the region, particularly in the context of still-developing formal political institutions. They remain so in much of Asia—but not, for instance, in Malaysia. The muting of student protest there may be traced in large part to a post-1969 process of intellectual containment, or normative delegitimation and historical erasure of student activism, with far-reaching implications.
Issues in Contemporary East Asia
Korean Buddhist Journeys to Lands Worldly and Otherworldly
Robert Buswell, Professor; Director of the Center for Buddhist Studies, UCLA
Thursday, April 16, 4:30PM, Claudia Cohen Hall Auditorium
DECRIPTION TBA
Philip Jaisohn Distinguished Lecturer
Transnational Pasts (1500-1800) - A One-Day Symposium
Date: April 20, 2009
Time: 9:30-5:30
Venue: McNeil Center for Early American Studies 3355 Woodland Walk, UPenn Campus, Philadelphia, PA 19104
This symposium will bring together a group of eminent scholars working in literature and history (roughly 1550-1800) to discuss issues concerning the methodological, theoretical and institutional aspects of doing comparative, transnational work in the early modern period. Exciting work on transnationalism has emerged with regard to the premodern period from economic historians such as Bin Wong and Sanjay Subrahmanyam. Such economic historians have acknowledged the need to bring questions of culture into their discussions. On the other hand, literary critics have long spoken about the need to engage with economic history. However, as yet such dialogues between literary studies, literary history, history and economic history are in their infancy. Transnational Pasts will stage such a dialogue by bringing together scholars from a range of disciplines whose work has been consequential for discussions of transnationalism and global relations in the early modern period.
The symposium will focus on the question of disciplinary change; the “global” turn in the field of English and Comparative Literature as well as in South Asia, East Asian and other “area” studies; new ways of conducting literary and historical studies across cultural and linguistic divides; the usefulness of economic historians' models of the “Great Divergence” or world systems theory; synchronic comparison of empires; global processes of cultural integration; translation, structural similarity, incommensurability or false equivalences; imitation and influence models of literary studies; how to do collaborative work.
Papers will be pre-circulated and will be available by March 1. At the symposium speakers will present a 20 minute reflection on issues raised by the papers. This will be followed by intensive discussions and a concluding round table.
Participants:
Walter Cohen, English and Comparative Literature, Cornell University . He has published Drama of a Nation: Public Theater in Renaissance England and Spain as well as numerous articles on Renaissance literature, literary criticism, and the history of the novel. He is currently completing a critical study entitled European Literature on the history of European literature in relation to the non-European world.
Roy Bin Wong, Director of the UCLA Asia Institute and Professor of History. Distinguished and creative scholar of Chinese and world history, focusing both on the social and economic forces that have affected the course of Asian history and development over the past thousand years. His publications include China Transformed: Historical Change and the Limits of European Experien ce and "The Search for European Differences and Domination in the Early Modern World: A View from Asia ," which was published in the American Historical Review in 2002.
Eric Lewis Beverley, is Assistant professor of History, at SUNY Stonybrook . His interests include Modern and Early Modern South Asia, Transnational History, Comparative Colonialism, Islamic Studies, British Empire, Urban Studies in South Asia , Indian Ocean World, Urdu and Persian Literature and Postcolonial Studies.
Lydia Liu, Professor of Chinese and Comparative Literature at Columbia University , specializes in modern Chinese literature and culture, critical translation theory, postcolonial empire studies, as well as semiotics and media studies. Her English publications include Translingual Practice: Literature, National Culture, and Translated Modernity (1995), The Clash of Empires: The Invention of China in Modern World Making (2004), Tokens of Exchange: The Problem of Translation in Global Circulations (edited, 1999), and Writing and Materiality in China (co-edited with Judith Zeitlin, 2003).
Felicity Nussbaum is Professor of English at UCLA. She is the author most recently of The Limits of the Human: Fictions of Anomaly, Race, and Gender in the Long Eighteenth Century (Cambridge University Press), and editor of The Global Eighteenth Century (Johns Hopkins University Press). Her most recent essays range from studies of blackness, slavery, and the Orient, to actresses' memoirs, theatrical property, and celebrity. Her current projects include a book on the women, performance, and material practices in the eighteenth-century British theatre; and a collection of essays on The Arabian Nights in historical context.
Jonathan Burton is Associate Professor at West Virginia University and author of Traffic and Turning: Islam and English Drama , 1579-1624. University of Delaware Press, 2005 as well as (with Ania Loomba) Race in Early Modern England: A Documentary Companion , New York : Palgrave, 2007. His interests include Anglo-Islamic relations in the Renaissance.
Peter C. Perdue is Professor Emeritus at Yale University . He is the author of Exhausting the Earth: State and Peasant in Hunan 1500-1850 A.D. (Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1987) and China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia (Harvard University Press, 2005). His research interests lie in Chinese and world history.
David Wallace is Judith Rodin Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania . He is a scholar of medieval and early modern studies with interests in French, German, eastern Europe, women's writing, romance, the Americas and the history of slavery. He is working on questions of empire and European history and his most recent book is Premodern Places: Calais to Surinam , Chaucer to Aphra Behn.
Sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania Research Foundation; the Departments of English, Comparative Literature, and History; the Center for East Asian Studies, Alice Paul Center for Research on Women, Gender, and Sexuality, South Asia Center, Ethnohistory Program, Middle East Center; and the English Department 18th Century Group and Latitudes/Postcolonial Group.
Organized by Ania Loomba ( loomba@english.upenn.edu ) and Chi-ming Yang (cmyang@english.upenn.edu)
Please contact Ania Loomba (loomba@english.upenn.edu) or Chi-ming Yang (cmyang@english.upenn.edu) for papers or more information.
Migration, Immigration and the Myth of Korean Uniqueness
Timothy Lim, Professor of Political Science, CSU,LA
Thursday, April 23, 4:30PM, DRL A5
There is still a strong tendency among Koreans—and many outside observers, including scholars—to assume that South Korea is particularly resistant, if not immune, to the types of socio-economic, political, and especially cultural changes other countries and societies have undergone in response to industrialization and other macro-level processes. Nowhere is this more evident than in views toward immigration or permanent settlement: for the most part, Korean policymakers have operated on the presumption that, unlike most other countries, Korea will never have to accept large numbers of “foreigners” as a permanent part of Korean society. Recent trends have not only demonstrated that this presumption is wrong, but that South Korean society is surprisingly adaptable.
Korean Studies Colloquium
May
Anxieties of Interpretation: Reading, Hermeneutics, and Knowledge in Early China
Michael Puett, Harvard University
Tuesday, May 5, 4:30PM, Cohen 337
Over the course of the Han dynasty, a complex set of debates developed over the ways to read earlier texts and the types of hermeneutic strategies that should be employed in reading them. This paper will be an attempt to explore this debate, trace its development, and explicate the significance of the positions taken.
Humanities Colloquium
Conference on Uygur Archaeology
Saturday, May 9, 9-5PM, Rainey Auditorium, University of Pennsylvania Museum
On Saturday, May 9, 2009, the University of Pennsylvania will host a conference on Uygur Archaeology. The conference will explore Uygur remains, especially in the context of Tang China and as they relate to material evidence of other nomadic peoples of East and Central Asia, particularly Turk and Kitan. The conference is sponsored by the Center for East Asian Studies and the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology of the University of Pennsylvania. Speakers include: Christopher Atwood, Jan Bemmann, Gwen Bennett, Zsuzsanna Gulasci, Tigran Mkrtychev, Tsulten Odbataar, Lilla Russell-Smith, Nancy Steinhardt, and Joshua Wright.
Admission is free, but pre-registration is required. For further information, e-mail Bryan Miller millerbk@sas.upenn.edu To register e-mail Miki Morita mimorita@sas.upenn.edu
How to translate Sanskrit into Chinese: An observation of the translation method described in the Fozutongji 43
Toru Funayama, Institute for Research in Humanities, Kyoto University
Monday, May 11, 12:00PM, Cherpack Lounge (543 Williams Hall)
Very roughly speaking, there are two types of translation method throughout the history of Chinese Buddhism. A passage in the well-known thirteenth-century Buddhist Chronicle Fozutongji ???? compiled by Zhipan ?? (Taisho No. 2035), fascicle 43, gives us clear and comprehensive information as to how the masters of the Northern Song, as a representative of the second type of translation group, rendered Indic texts into Chinese. In this talk, I would like to introduce the contents of the passage in question as minutely as possible and point out some problems underlying it by comparing it with a couple of similar but different cases depicted in other source materials.
Humanities Colloquium
June
