Past Events

2012 Events

"Of Power and Profit: American Seamen in Asian Waters" is an exhibit of prints made from photographs by a nineteenth century American naval officer, Asa Mattice. In the 1880s, he was assigned to the USS Juniata, which undertook a three-year survey expedition, calling at ports from Suez to Sapporo. The photographs in this exhibit are the voyages relics of encounter.

As the nineteenth century moved into the era of high colonialism, ships journeyed forth from the metropoles on voyages of power and profit. The USS Juniata rode the wave of America's post-Civil War international expansion. Unlike the whaler or slaver privateers of earlier generations, now the fleets served national agendas. The US "opening of Japan" at mid-century signaled a new conception of America's relation to Asia.

With missions from the ice fields to the tropics, the Juniata was a part of the US effort to explore, engage, and extract. On board the USS Juniata was military engineer turned naval instructor Asa Mattice. He turned his camera on the sights around him, capturing images of Asia in the last century, and capturing too the sensibilities of his place and time. The photographs from the voyage shown in this exhibit include photographs of Korea, China, Japan, and Southeast Asia. The categories of these visions — the "views," the "everyday life," the "coolie," — consolidated all through the generations of occidental gaze. The shadows captured on these plates, rescued from oblivion by photographer John Dowling, document a moment in America's trajectory toward being a contender in the Pacific.

Event Contact: ieas@berkeley.edu, 510-642-2809

(No event on January 16, 2012.)

This talk will map out the intricate relationship between China, Japan, and the League of Nations throughout the Sino-Japanese Conflict. While China engaged in fierce struggles with Japanese forces, it also had to play politics with the League of Nations. Chinese leaders from Chiang Kai-shek to Mao Zedong each faced the necessity of dealing with the League of Nation's own political goals throughout this turbulent time; these shifts in opinion give historians today a unique look at how global geopolitics interacted with Chinese foreign policy.

This talk will be conducted in Chinese without translation.

Open to all audiences.

Event Contact: ccs-vs@berkeley.edu, 510-643-6322

Today's China is governed by a new economic model that marks a radical break from the Mao and Deng eras; it departs fundamentally from both the East Asian developmental state and its own Communist past. It has not, however, adopted a liberal economic model. China has retained elements of statist control even though it has liberalized foreign direct investment more than any other developing country in recent years. In China's Regulatory State, Roselyn Hsueh demonstrates that even as the Chinese government introduces competition and devolves economic decisionmaking, the state has selectively imposed new regulations at the sectoral level, asserting and even tightening control over industry and market development, to achieve state goals. This mode of economic integration is contrasted with Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan's manifestly different approaches to globalization.

Introduced by Stanley Lubman, Lecturer in Residence, UC Berkeley Law School

This talk is part of the IEAS book series "New Perspectives in Asia."

Event Contact: ieas@berkeley.edu, 510-642-2809

The redistribution effect and the progressivity of China's individual income tax during the ten years from 2000 to 2009 are evaluated from the perspectives of income groups and income composition by calculating average tax rates and pre-tax and after-tax income shares. Considering the data of gray income of urban residents, the calculation indicates that the overall average tax rates, tax rates of wage and tax rates of property income are lower than the results basing on the data from the statistic authority and the tax bureau, revealing the regressive effect of individual income tax on income distribution. Strong policy implications can be got from the contradiction of the two conclusions from different perspectives. The mechanism of a perfect tax system will fail and can not achieve its policy objective of improving distribution without strict supervision on higher income group and exact statistics of their real income. Therefore, to establish an effective system of tax collecting and administration is a breakthrough of individual tax reform.

This talk will be conducted in Chinese without translation.

Open to all audiences.

Event Contact: ccs-vs@berkeley.edu, 510-643-6322

Studies of East Asia rooted in nationalist historiographies have tended to view culture and identity as if they were at once atomistic and homogeneous. In fact, culture and identity are much more porous and fluid than such approaches would suggest. Prominent scholars in many fields thus challenged those earlier narratives of unity, continuity, and homogeneity. The result has been a more rigorously critical approach to political, cultural, intellectual, and artistic identities throughout East Asia.

Having rejected the idea of a static East Asian tradition, can we acknowledge that culture and identity are fluid and diverse and still talk about them in a meaningful way?

This conference proposes to address this larger question, as well as related questions including, but not limited to: What roles have geography and place played in forging connections and identities? To what extent can identity be invented or reinvented, and what institutional or social mechanisms might affect these processes? When have cultures and identities been transmitted and carried on, and when has transmission failed? Why? How have material evidence of the past encouraged us to rethink the boundaries and periods of style, chronology, or culture attached to somewhat arbitrary delineations of space or regions?

Click here to view the conference website.

This conference is made possible through the Walter and Elise Haas Chair Endowment at the Institute of East Asian Studies.

Event Contact: abuster@berkeley.edu

During the lifetimes that they spent in Korea, Western missionaries took many photographs and collected much valuable memorabilia. Photographs from the Clark-Roberts collection, taken between 1905 and 1973 and covering three generations of American Presbyterians who went to Korea in 1902, are the basis of this illustrated lecture. The collection concentrates on Pyongyang, in North Korea, which was once known as the "Jerusalem of the East" for its concentration of Christian institutions.

Donald N. Clark is Murchison Professor of History at Trinity University in San Antonio. He is the author of many books and articles on modern Korea, two of which bear directly on this presentation: Missionary Photography in Korea (New York: The Korea Society, 2009), and Living Dangerously in Korea: The Western Experience, 1900-1950 (EastBridge, 2003).

Open to all audiences.

Event Contact: cks@berkeley.edu, 510-642-5674

From Lord of the Rings in New Zealand to Twilight in the northwest United States and Italy, cinema has inspired tourists to travel to places featured in and contrived for films. Studies on film-induced tourism tend to focus on the impact of such phenomena on local culture and community development, marketing strategies by local tourist boards, and on-site experiences of film-induced tourists, focusing more on how to use film, and less on questioning the cinematic language that induces the desire to travel and its ideological underpinnings. Such approaches also undervalue differences in film genres, and subsequently the ways in which these genres influence the viewer's displacement of film sight onto film site. Focusing on melodramas, this talk will discuss Korean films that unexpectedly generated tourism, particularly during the period from 1998-2002 when South Korea sought out cinematic collaborations with Japan and China as a platform for regional reconciliation. Choe argues that the trope of travel featured in this intercultural cinema, which was initially intended to promote cross-cultural understanding, later became a means to propagate a film's affective experience beyond the screen, so much so that many films seem self-conscious of their own capacities to not only provoke tourism, but also to provide ersatz historical experiences of political and historical negotiation. The talk will also assess what is at stake when historical and political affect becomes commodified and consumed through practices such as film-induced tourism.

With the death of dictator Kim Jong-il, the attention of the international community is focused on the transition in North Korea and the succession of his son Kim Jong-un. Speaker Michael Nacht (UC Berkeley Goldman School of Public Policy) and a panel of faculty experts will discuss the international reaction to the leadership transition and how these events may affect future policy.

Event Contact: ieas@berkeley.edu, 510-642-2809

Studies of East Asia rooted in nationalist historiographies have tended to view culture and identity as if they were at once atomistic and homogeneous. In fact, culture and identity are much more porous and fluid than such approaches would suggest. Prominent scholars in many fields thus challenged those earlier narratives of unity, continuity, and homogeneity. The result has been a more rigorously critical approach to political, cultural, intellectual, and artistic identities throughout East Asia.

Having rejected the idea of a static East Asian tradition, can we acknowledge that culture and identity are fluid and diverse and still talk about them in a meaningful way?

This conference proposes to address this larger question, as well as related questions including, but not limited to: What roles have geography and place played in forging connections and identities? To what extent can identity be invented or reinvented, and what institutional or social mechanisms might affect these processes? When have cultures and identities been transmitted and carried on, and when has transmission failed? Why? How have material evidence of the past encouraged us to rethink the boundaries and periods of style, chronology, or culture attached to somewhat arbitrary delineations of space or regions?

Click here to view the conference website.

This conference is made possible through the Walter and Elise Haas Chair Endowment at the Institute of East Asian Studies.

Event Contact: abuster@berkeley.edu

This talk considers a case of postcolonial archiving with discussion of recent efforts by South Korean research foundations to digitally archive photographic images of late nineteenth and early twentieth century Korea produced by Westerners. Many of the photographs assembled in the South Korean archive had previously been part of Euro-American archives, produced in the context of growing Western power in East Asia, and documenting people and scenery little known in the West. The South Korean digital archives of these images partially critique the orientalist and imperialist view inscribed in them; at the same time, the postcolonial taxonomy produces a self-orientalizing view of Korea's past.

Introduced by Clare You, East Asian Languages and Cultures, UC Berkeley

Event Contact: ieas@berkeley.edu, 510-642-2809

When discussing Korea's "Chinese Decade," roughly defined as the dozen or so years prior to the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, most of the attention is focused on the heavy-handed activities of Yuan Shikai in Seoul. Less well known is that part of this Chinese effort to bind Korea more closely to China involved the absorption of Korea's newly-formed Maritime Customs Service. Using the recently-discovered correspondence of the first commissioner of customs in Pusan from 1883 to 1886, the book uncovers some heretofore unknown aspects of this attempted takeover by China in the late Choson period.

Introduced by Kate Chouta, IEAS Publications.

This talk is part of the IEAS book series "New Perspectives in Asia."

Event Contact: ieas@berkeley.edu, 510-642-2809

This talk focuses on understanding the working and living conditions of migrant workers in the informal sector of China's construction industry. It presents three distinct employment arrangements found among these migrant workers. Each employment arrangement is linked with specific mechanisms that channel migrants into a segmented informal labor market, together which shape the lives of these migrants on and off the jobsite.

Event Contact: ccs@berkeley.edu, 510-643-6321

"East Asian Imaginarium: Case Studies in Architecture" presents the designs of four UC Berkeley Architecture students for a new building devoted to East Asian Studies at Berkeley. In 2007, Berkeley celebrated the construction of the magnificent C.V. Starr East Asia Library, the first free-standing library in the United States dedicated exclusively to East Asian collections. This marked the completion of Phase 1 of the Chang-Lin Tien Center for East Asian Studies.

Phase 2 of the Chang-Lin Tien Center calls for a building devoted to the study of East Asia, housing the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures and the Institute of East Asian Studies. The designs displayed in this exhibit showcase the imagination and skill of Berkeley students in envisioning a new home for East Asian Studies. Four students were selected for the quality and ingenuity of their designs:

• Sherrilyn Mulyono (Architecture – 4th year)
• Jina Lee (Architecture – graduated Dec 2011)
• Timon Covelli (Architecture – 4th year)
• Jin Young Park (Architecture- 4th year)

Professor Renee Chow, who oversaw these students’ work in her class “On Site: In Section,” during the fall 2011 semester, offers a description of the project, and each of the students provides a description of his or her designs, together with plans and images to convey their visions to viewers.

Event Contact: ieas@berkeley.edu, 510-643-6492

Okinawa, Japan’s southernmost islands, means different things to different parties. For many Japanese, Okinawa symbolizes a tropical paradise with blue oceans and white beaches. For the Japanese state, it provides the ideal site to host Asia’s largest American military bases. For the American government, it is a strategic cornerstone for protecting its regional interests. For the Okinawans who have lived there for generations, however, it is home—the home where their heart belongs no matter what happens to it, no matter where they live, and no matter how long they are away. The tragic turns of events brought to the islanders the Ground Battle in 1945, the American military occupation until 1972, and the poorest prefecture throughout the post-WWII era sharply divided by the foreign military presence. How do Okinawans live them in their everyday life? This panel presentation combines academic papers with videographies to deliver voices of ordinary Okinawans living inside and outside of Okinawa.

Schedule:
4:10 Keiko Yamanaka, “Introduction”

4:15 Kensuke Sumii
Paper “Estrangement: Residual Sovereignty and Bare Life of Okinawa”

4:40 Todd Carrel
Video, “Okinawa: Video Reports from Japan and America”
Stories by Noah Buhayar, Diana Jou, Ayako Mie, Laurel Moorhead, Tyler Sipe, Jake Schoneker, and Jun Stinson

5:10 Keiko Yamanaka
Video, “Nuchi du Takara (Life Is a Treasure): Tales of the ‘Battle of Okinawa’ Survivors in California”

5:30 Wesley Ueunten
Paper, “Post-War Articulations of Okinawan Identity in Northern California”

6:00 Questions and Answers

Open to all audiences

Event Contact: cjs-events@berkeley.edu, 510-642-3415

The Five Jinas, cosmic Buddhas associated with the four directions and their central axis, appear prominently across the Himalayan art historical corpus. These sets are visual synecdoche for the initiation (abhisekha) of Shakyamuni as told in yoga tantra texts like the Tattvasamgraha. In these accounts, four progressive initiations elevate Shakyamuni to full enlightenment (abhisambodhi) and with it realization of his true identity as Vairochana. When painted on a thangka, these events become an exemplar through whose re-enactment subsequent isomorphic awakenings can take shape.

Given their soteriological importance, the Five Jinas are the single most important iconographic motif in Sarma Buddhist art. As early as the 11th century, Ngari temples associated with Rinchen Zangpo and the Kashmiri art style focus on the Five Jina motif of the yoga tantras. Five Jina motifs also figure prominently in the corpus of (11th-12th century) central Tibetan paintings, where Indian styles predominate. By the 13th century, however, new anuttara yoga tantra deities had largely eclipsed Vairochana and his yoga tantra imagery. It was during this time that Sakya masters commissioned a particularly important set of Five Jinas - which is now being conserved by San Francisco's Asian Art Museum. In these three magnificent paintings, artists have focused on the old yoga tantra motif, but here they employ a radical new style - the Beri, or Nepalese. The Beri employs deep detailing to create dimensional effects on each thangka. Each thangka in its turn is part of a larger dimension - that of the Vajradhatu mandala from which each derives. On these thangkas, the ordinary sense of vision becomes a laboratory in which we can directly watch two flat dimensions magically become three.

Trained in Sanskrit and Tibetan at the University of Virginia, Jeff Durham is curator of Himalayan Art at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. Prior to joining the Museum, he served as professor of Religious Studies at St. Thomas Aquinas College in New York, where he developed cross-cultural approaches to the study of sacred art. Currently involved with a project focused on the influence of Yogacara thought on Yoga Tantra practice, Jeff has visions of creating the first transdisciplinary, pan-Asian exhibition of Vajrayana art on the west coast.

Event Contact: buddhiststudies@berkeley.edu, 510-643-5104

Please join the Center for Chinese Studies in celebrating the Year of the Dragon.

Event is Friday, February 3 from 6-9 pm in a Richmond restaurant. RSVP to Chloe Alexander at ccs-vs@berkeley.edu or 510-643-6322 by January 27.

Food, fun, and fabulous raffle prizes.
$15 students and staff; $25 faculty and non-staff. Children under 15 free.

Payment must be received in advance.

Event Contact: ccs-vs@berkeley.edu, 510-643-6322