Exhibition: Cycle of Life — Awakening: Works by Asian Women Artists
January 23 – May 15, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Center for Korean Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies
Three Asian women artists will be featured in an exhibition at UC Berkeley's IEAS Gallery January 23 through May 15, 2008. Entitled "Cycle of Life: Awakening," the artists explore in image body and memory, physical processes and spiritual awareness, personal identity and the inexorable cycles of life.
The three artists, Koo Kyung Sook (Korea), Brenda Louie (China), and Dinh Thi Tham Poong (Vietnam), were featured in the first two exhibitions of the "Cycle of Life" trilogy:
"Cycle of Life: Innocence" (Pence Gallery, UC Davis) and "Cycle of Life: Wisdom" (California State University-Sacramento Library Gallery).
All three exhibitions are curated by Dr. Pattaratorn Chirapravati of the Art Department, California State University-Sacramento. Artist Koo Kyung Sook, known primarily for her sculptural installations, here presents a set of images in relief of the female form. Brenda Louie's abstract canvases are fertile fantasies of form and color. The paintings of Dinh Thi Tham Poong combine decorative abstraction with precisely observed yet faceless women sharing her Hmong and Vietnamese cultural heritage.
Disturbing Difference: Translation, Naturalization, and the Global Publication of Japanese Fiction
Stephen Snyder, Associate Professor and Chair, Department of Japanese Studies, Middelbury College
January 25, 2008
Center for Japanese Studies
This paper examines the intersection of theoretical, aesthetic and commercial interests in processes affecting the translation of contemporary Japanese literature. Translation is considered as a multi-stage practice influenced by various agents, involving issues of text selection, the translator's theoretical stance and working strategies, editing principles, and marketing tactics. An examination of naturalizing translation strategies designed to erase cultural difference and radical, often transformative, editing practices and marketing strategies highlight commodification processes in American and European markets.
Umberto Eco has argued that translation is best viewed as an act of negotiation between cultural spheres, but Lawrence Venuti reminds us that it is also a cultural practice that is "deeply implicated in relations of domination and dependence, equally capable of maintaining and disrupting them." The translation of contemporary Japanese fiction plays a central role in the negotiation of the unequal cultural relationship between Japan and the West. An examination of the forces at work in shaping the translated canon can serve to illuminate the contours of that relationship.
The Attractions of Spurned Love: Hur Jin-ho's Cinema and Film-Induced Tourism
Dr. Youngmin Choe, Visiting Assistant Professor, University of San Diego
January 25, 2008
Center for Korean Studies
The melodramas of Korean director Hur Jin-ho have induced an unprecedented number of tourists to visit the locations in the films. Largely attributed to the hallyu (Korea Wave) phenomenon, the question less pursued is how Hur's films specifically prescribe the touristic experience and whether this alters the ways in which his films are viewed. Based on research conducted around the northeast coastal province of Kangwon in 2006, this presentation explores the destinations featured in One Fine Spring Day (Pomnalun Kanda 2001) and April Snow (Oech'ul 2005), examining the ways in which film and tour site implicate each other and how, amidst escalating political tensions between Korea and Japan in 2005, tourism to Hur's film locations mitigated against nationalist sentiments.
Dr. Youngmin Choe received a Ph.D. from the Group in Asian Studies at UC Berkeley in 2007, and is currently Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of San Diego.
Opening Reception: Cycle of Life — Awakening: Works by Asian Women Artists
Pattaratorn Chirapravati
Brenda Louie
Koo Kyung Sook
Dinh Thi Tham Poong
January 28, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Center for Korean Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies
Three Asian women artists will be featured in an exhibition at UC Berkeley's IEAS Gallery January 23 through May 15, 2008. Entitled "Cycle of Life: Awakening," the artists explore in image body and memory, physical processes and spiritual awareness, personal identity and the inexorable cycles of life.
The three artists, Koo Kyung Sook (Korea), Brenda Louie (China), and Dinh Thi Tham Poong (Vietnam), were featured in the first two exhibitions of the "Cycle of Life" trilogy: "Cycle of Life: Innocence" (Pence Gallery, UC Davis) and "Cycle of Life: Wisdom" (California State University-Sacramento Library Gallery).
All three exhibitions are curated by Dr. Pattaratorn Chirapravati of the Art Department, California State University-Sacramento. Artist Koo Kyung Sook, known primarily for her sculptural installations, here presents a set of images in relief of the female form. Brenda Louie's abstract canvases are fertile fantasies of form and color. The paintings of Dinh Thi Tham Poong combine decorative abstraction with precisely observed yet faceless women sharing her Hmong cultural heritage. At the Opening Reception, each artist will speak about her work, and the Curator will discuss the "Cycle of Life" trilogy.
Contextual Design In Yunnan Province, China
Nancy L. Fleming, Principal, Sasaki Associates, San Francisco
January 30, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Landscape Architecture & Environmental Planning
China's Information Revolution
Qiang Xiao, Director, Berkeley China Internet Project
Admission is $5 for the general public, free for I-House residents, members and alumni
January 31, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, International House
Free for I-House residents, members and alumni and $5 for the general public.
Qiang Xiao is the Director of Berkeley China Internet Project. A physicist by training, became a full time human rights activist after the Tiananmen Massacre in 1989. Xiao was the Executive Director of Human Rights in China (1991 — 2002), and is currently vice-chair of the Steering Committee of the World Movement for Democracy. Xiao is a recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship in 2001, and is profiled in the book "Soul Purpose: 40 People Who Are Changing the World for the Better,"(Melcher Media, 2003).
15th Annual Bakai: バークレー研究者大会
February 1, 2008
Center for Japanese Studies
Program
11:00 — Opening Remarks: Professor Duncan Williams, CJS Chair
11:10-11:30 — "Beyond American Exceptionalism in the Study of Welfare States: The Case of Japan" — Kenzo Yoshida, CJS visiting scholar, Matsuyama University, Economics
11:30-11:50 — "An Ethics of Self-Consciousness: Mori Ogai's Stereoscopic Vision" — Christopher Weinberger, Graduate Student, UCB, EALC
11:50-12:10 — "Japan's Falling Savings Rate" — Yoshiaki Azuma, CJS visiting scholar, Doshisha University, Economics
12:20-12:40 — "Social Indexation in Japanese Sign Language" — Johnny George, Graduate Student, UCB, Linguistics
12:40-1:00 — "Development of Immigrant NGOs in Japan and Korea: Convergence and Divergence" — Keiko Yamanaka, Lecturer, UCB, Ethnic Studies
1:00-2:00 — Buffet Lunch
Will the Rise of Chinese Nationalism Make China's Rise Less Peaceful?
Suisheng Zhao, Professor and Executive Director, Center for China-US Cooperation, Graduate School of International Studies, University of Denver
February 1, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies
This presentation tries to address a concern in many country's capitals, that is, if China's aspiration for great power status has drawn upon strong nationalist sentiments. In particular, has the recent rise of nationalism has made Chinese foreign policy more irrational and inflexible and made China's rise less peaceful? These questions will be addressed through a brief discussion on the causes, contents, and foreign policy implications of Chinese nationalism.
Discussant: Kevin O'Brien, Professor, Political Science, UC Berkeley
China at the Crossroads between Economics of Tobacco and Health
Teh-wei Hu, Professor Emeritus, School of Public Health
February 5, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Health Services & Policy Analysis PhD Program
China, Fragile Superpower: How China's Internal Politics Could Derail Its Peaceful Rise
Susan Shirk, Ho Miu Lam Professor of China and Pacific Relations, Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies, UC San Diego, and Director, UC Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation
February 6, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies
Once a sleeping giant, China today is the world's fastest growing economy—the leading manufacturer of cell phones, laptop computers, and digital cameras—a dramatic turnaround that alarms many Westerners. But in China: Fragile Superpower, Susan L. Shirk opens up the black box of Chinese politics and finds that the real danger lies elsewhere—not in China's astonishing growth, but in the deep insecurity of its leaders. China's leaders face a troubling paradox: the more developed and prosperous the country becomes, the more insecure and threatened they feel.
Shirk, a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State responsible for China, knows many of today's Chinese rulers personally and has studied them for three decades. She offers invaluable insight into how they think—and what they fear. In this revealing book, readers see the world through the eyes of men like President Hu Jintao and former President Jiang Zemin. Theirs is a regime afraid of its own citizens, and this fear motivates many of their decisions when dealing with the U.S. and other foreign nations. In particular, the fervent nationalism of the Chinese people has made relations with Japan and Taiwan a minefield.
Shirk argues that rising powers such as China tend to provoke wars in large part because other countries mishandle them. Unless we understand China's brittle internal politics and the fears that motivate its leaders, we face the very real possibility of conflict with China. This book provides that understanding.
"Susan Shirk has written the definitive book at the right time." —Madeleine K. Albright
Susan L. Shirk, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State responsible for U.S. relations with China, is Director of the University of California's Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, and she is a professor at UC-San Diego's Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies. A leading authority on China, she has been visiting that country since 1971, meeting with top Chinese officials, and has written numerous books and articles on this subject, including pieces that have appeared in The Washington Post, Financial Times, and Wall Street Journal.
Program followed by reception and book-signing.
Japanese Society and Culture
Mariko Fujiwara, Research Director of Hakuhodo Institute of Life and Living
Roland Kelts, author of "Japanamerica"
February 6, 2008
Institute of East Asian Studies, Japan Society of Northern California, Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Where is Japanese society and culture headed in the New Year? What social trends may shape Japan's future? From the latest pop culture developments to the changing Japanese attitude toward women and families, our panelists will provide an up-to-date view of Japanese society today and beyond.
Cost: $5.-$15.
Rewriting the Genealogy of Mencius's "500-year Sage"
Mark Csikszentmihalyi, Associate Professor, Chinese and Religious Studies, University of Wisconsin
February 6, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures
All in this Tea: A Film Screening with Les Blank
February 7, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology
Bodies, Names, and the Confusion of Tragedies: Memorializing the Tokyo Air Raids
Cary Karacas, Department of Geography, UC Berkeley
February 7, 2008
Center for Japanese Studies
Between November 1944 and August 1945, Tokyo was subjected to dozens of air raids that killed well over one hundred thousand civilians, caused millions to flee the metropolis, and left over half of the city in ruins. In stark contrast to the monuments, memorials, and museums that speak of the wartime catastrophic events that occurred in other places in Japan, the public structuring of Tokyo air raid memories has taken place on a decidedly smaller scale. In this presentation, I will examine central events and conflicts between citizen's groups, intellectuals, and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government that have shaped forms of remembrance of the air raids and those killed in them.
The New Trend toward Bilateral PTAs: Implications for the Global Trading System
Vinod Aggarwal, Professor and Director, Berkeley APEC Study Center, University of California, Berkeley
February 8, 2008
Center for Korean Studies, Walter H. Shorenstein Fund
Many have hailed the recent U.S.-South Korea bilateral free trade agreement as a positive development for relations between the two countries as well as a sign of forward progress in the trading system. Although this accord still has not been ratified, many see this as a good alternative to the Doha Round of the World Trade Organization in view of the problems in coming to a final agreement. Is this a convincing argument? To examine this question, we will consider several questions: How has U.S. policy toward trade evolved in the aftermath of the end of the cold war? How are bilateral trading agreements likely to impact the global trading system? And how are such arrangements likely to evolve in the future, both within Asia and across the Asia-Pacific?
Vinod K. Aggarwal is Professor in the Department of Political Science, Affiliated Professor of Business and Public Policy in the Haas School of Business, and Director of the Berkeley Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Study Center (BASC) at the University of California at Berkeley. He is also the founder and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Business and Politics and Co-Chair of the U.S. Consortium of APEC Study Centers. His most recent book is Asia's New Institutional Architecture.
Are We There Yet?: Prospects for Two-Party Politics in Japan
Robert Weiner, Political Science, the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey
February 8, 2008
Center for Japanese Studies
Many feel it's only a matter of time before a robust two-party system establishes itself in Japan. Last summer seemed to provide a big, clear push in that direction: the long-ruling LDP lost both its majority and its largest-party status in the Upper House. The Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), along with a few smaller opposition parties, now controls that chamber, and has become the strongest parliamentary opposition the LDP has ever faced. The DPJ's obstructive power has deposed one LDP prime minister, continues to undercut the LDP's policy-making monopoly, and threatens the LDP's hold on the more powerful Lower House.
But we might recall something Chalmers Johnson once said: "I'm reluctant to be drawn in once again to the trap of Japanese politics — that is, to pretend that something significant has happened." Will the DPJ be able to exploit its momentum and bring about a genuine two-party system any time soon? Or will ideological disunity, poor electoral organization, its mercurial leader Ozawa Ichiro, and the allure of cooperation with the LDP frustrate yet another challenge to one-party dominance?
Robert Weiner is an assistant professor of political science at the Naval Postgraduate School (Monterey, CA). His research and teaching focus on Japanese and East Asian politics, political parties and elections, democratic institutions, and research methods. He earned his Ph.D. in political science at the University of California at Berkeley, and was an assistant professor in the Government Department of Cornell University for three years before joining NPS in 2007.
Continuity and Change in Japanese Party Politics: Pursuing the Advantage of a Median Party in Policy Competition
Junko Kato, Law and Politics, Tokyo University
February 12, 2008
Center for Japanese Studies, Political Science
The Japanese political change since 1993 has accompanied a sequence of breakups, mergers, extinctions, and formations of parties that is rare among stable democracies. Many observers attribute this inexplicable change to the centrality of personal bond among politicians that often goes hand in hand with less emphasis on policies in the Japanese party politics. Tackling this problem head on, the author argues that the increasing advantage of the middle-of-road position in party competition explains both the decline of one-party-dominance of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) as well as the survival of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) as a viable contender for office with the LDP. The analysis of changing party positions in policy space underpins the argument.
Historiography on Japanese Colonial History and Industrialization under the Manchukuo Regime: Development, War Damage and Reconstruction of the Iron & Steel Industry
Toshiro Matsumoto, Professor, Economics, Okayama University
February 13, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies
The Anshan Iron and Steel Works (AISW), formerly the Manchuria Iron and Steel Works (MISW), was the second largest iron and steel company in the Japanese-occupied Yen block until 1945. It was also the largest iron and steel company in the People's Republic of China until the 1960s. As for the iron-smelting sector of the industry, the pig-iron output reached 1.3 million tons in 1943, which was about 20% of the total production in the Yen block. It was the second largest pig-iron production plant in the Yen block, second only to the Japan Iron and Steel Co. in Yahata (which produced 30% of the total), and it was the largest producer of pig-iron in Socialist China until the 1970s. By focusing on the AISW, the book examines the following three topics: 1) the output of the iron and steel industry during the Manchukuo era; 2) the complicated changes in military dominance in the final stage of the Chinese Civil War in northeast China, especially the volatile and complex process in and around Anshan, and; 3) the restart of production at the AISW despite war damage.
Bloody Lips and Buried Texts: Some Early Chinese Speech Genres and their Occasions
David Schaberg, Associate Professor, Asian Languages & Cultures, UCLA
February 13, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures
Chinese textual remains from the first millennium BCE are shot through with reflexes of the many genres of effective speech that operated in political and ritual life. A reconstruction of the conventions and occasions of these speech genres will allow a new understanding of the origins of early texts. Drawn from a larger project on ritual and court speech in early China, this paper takes as its example the genre of cursing (zu, zhou), which is represented in several more or less recognizable forms in a wide variety of early sources.
Education and Training Issues in Dealing with China's Environmental Challenges
Robert Spear, Professor, School of Public Health, UC Berkeley
February 13, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Society of Hong Kong and Chinese Affairs
- Interested in environmental problems?
- Want to know how is China's Environment now?
- Come join us and Professor Robert Spear this Wednesday!
- It's free and Open to the Public!
Bark unto Dust: Recovering the Ancient Buddhist Texts of Gandhara
Collett Cox, University of Washington
February 14, 2008
Center for Buddhist Studies
Between 1994 and the present, several collections of early Indian Buddhist manuscripts written in the Gāndhārī language and Kharoṣṭhī script have come to light. Significant as the earliest (1st-2nd cent. CE) texts of any type yet to have been discovered in greater South Asia, these texts also provide unparalleled evidence for reconstructing the early history of Buddhist text styles and textual collections. These early Gāndhārī Buddhist manuscripts are currently being studied and published under the auspices of the Early Buddhist Manuscripts Project (University of Washington).
Following a brief overview of the collections and of certain methodological and text-critical issues that these manuscripts raise, this presentation will explore the practical side of working with such manuscripts, from the initial stages of preservation and reconstruction through the process of formulating an edition, translation, and contextual interpretation. After setting out the specifics of manuscript work, the discussion will turn to one particular manuscript, a fragment of a polemical, scholastic or Abhidharma text that treats the controversial issue, "everything exists." We will examine, as time permits, its contents, its argument structure, and its significance for the emergence of the scholastic commentarial genre and for our understanding of early Indian Buddhist sectarianism.
Collett Cox received her Ph.D. in Religion from Columbia University and is currently Professor of Sanskrit and Buddhist Studies in the Department of Asian Languages and Literature at the University of Washington. Her field is early Indian Buddhism, specifically scholastic or Abhidharma texts. She is currently Associate Director of the Early Buddhist Manuscripts Project at the University of Washington, which is engaged in the study and publication of recently discovered early Indian Buddhist manuscripts from Gandhāra.
Inequality in China: Findings from the China Household Income Project
Terry Sicular, Professor, Economics, University of Western Ontario
February 15, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies
This presentation will discuss key findings on trends in inequality in China from the China Household Income Project (CHIP). This project has involved long-term collaboration between Chinese and international researchers unique in its scope and duration. Using data from a series of large nationwide household surveys carried out under the project, the project researchers have analyzed changes in China's inequality over nearly 15 years of the transition era, from 1988 through 2002. Their studies, forthcoming in a book from Cambridge University Press, provide fresh insights on income inequality and poverty in China, as well as on the distribution of wealth and wages, with attention to health care, rural tax reform, the role of villages, and groups such as the elderly and migrants.
Discussant: David Roland-Holst, Professor, Agricultural and Resource Economics, UC Berkeley
Politics and Diplomacy in Japan
Andrew Oros, Washington College
Yuki Tatsumi, Henry L. Stimson Center
Robert Weiner, Naval Postgraduate School (Monterey)
February 19, 2008
Institute of East Asian Studies, Japan Society of Northern California, World Affairs Council of Northern California, University of San Francisco Center for the Pacific Rim, Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
What issues await Japanese politicians and diplomats in 2008? At home, Japan's new Liberal Democratic Party Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda must rebuild confidence in his party while working with an upper house controlled by the opposing Democratic Party of Japan. Abroad, Japanese politicians and diplomats grapple with Japan's role in the U.S.-led "War on Terror," a nuclear North Korea, and sovereignty disputes with South Korea and China.
Moderated by Dr. Robert Weiner, our two panelists will share their views on Japanese political, diplomatic and security challenges in the year ahead.
Cost: $5.-$15.
Engaging Buddhism in Cambodge: Ven. Chuon Nath, Ven. Huot That, Mlle. Suzanne Karpelès, and the Making of the "New Mahanikay"
Penelope Edwards, Assistant Professor, Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies, UC Berkeley
February 20, 2008
Center for Buddhist Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies, Center for Southeast Asia Studies
From the 1910s to the 1940s, two gifted monks oversaw the emergence of a particular form of Buddhism as Cambodia's sasana jiet [national religion]. Working from within the chief Mahanikay temple in Phnom Penh, Chuon Nath and Huot Tath sought to purify Buddhism of "corrupt" and "superstitious" elements and to promulgate Buddhist teachings through print media. Their movement was known variously as the Dhamma Tmae [New Dhamma], and the Mahanikay Tmae [new Mahanikay]. In the 1960s and 1970s, each would serve as Supreme Patriarch of the Mahanikay Order. Few could have predicted this outcome from their positions of isolation within the Mahanikay in the 1910s.
Critical in steering their transition from the margins to the mainstream was Suzanne Karpelès, who served from 1922-1941 with the Ecole Française d'Extrême Orient [EFEO] in Phnom Penh, where she became the founding director of the Buddhist Institute. Focusing on the encounters between these three figures, this talk explores the cultural and political repercussions of colonial attempts to engage Buddhism in Cambodge, and considers how the "new Mahanikay" contributed to the ascendance of a new superstition: that of the Khmer nation.
Program followed by reception and book-signing.
After the End of Literature: Notes on Writing from Contemporary Korea
Youngju Ryu, Assistant Professor of Korean Literature, University of Michigan
February 22, 2008
Center for Korean Studies
The recent debate regarding the "end of literature" in South Korea provides an opportunity to rethink the changing place of the writer in Korean society. Engaging the terms of that debate, which include the decline of realism as a viable literary method in the global capitalist market, critical reflections on the role of literature in the modern project of nation-building, and exhortations of "zero-gravity" art liberated from imperatives both collective and individual, Youngju Ryu addresses the dynamics in the contemporary South Korean literary field that sustain what one scholar has called the recurrent "myth of apocalypse." As a means of entering the ongoing debate, Ryu offers a reading of Park Min-gyu's "Korean Standards" (2005) as a text that forces a confrontation with the impossible question—what comes after the end?
Assistant Professor of Korean Literature in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures at University of Michigan, Youngju Ryu specializes in literature and culture of modern Korea with emphases on philosophies of writing and the role of literature in social change. Prior to joining University of Michigan, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Academy of East Asian Studies in Seoul, Korea, and the recipient of President's Fellowship at University of California, Los Angeles. Her teaching interests include Korean literature, popular culture, and cultural geography, and she has taught at UCLA, Yonsei University, and Sungkyunkwan University. Currently, she is writing a history of twentieth century Korean literature titled The Writer's Century: Literature as Revolution in Modern Korea.
A Japanese Immigrant Origin of Japanese Studies in the Western United States
Eiichiro Azuma, History, University of Pennsylvania
February 22, 2008
Center for Japanese Studies
The Cold-War origin of Japanese studies has attracted a keen attention since the 1970s. Vietnam-War generations of liberal scholars have often criticized Edwin Reischauer of Harvard University, and the "modernization theory" that he and his disciples allegedly systematized in the field. The Reischauer school is said to have set a imperialist nature of Japanese studies that has primarily served diplomatic interests of the United States in Cold War Asia. Though some critics rescued scholars like E. H. Norman from historical oblivion as a counter hero to discredit the Reischauer school, no scholar has considered a significant pre-World-War-II origin of Japanese studies that is traced all the way back to the 1910s. Azuma talk will discuss a critical nexus between Japanese immigrant experience and prewar Japanese studies in the United States, with consideration of the different kind of political interests and agendas that had already characterized the nascent stage of the field.
The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Power to the East
Kishore Mahbubani, Dean and Professor in the Practice of Public Policy at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy of the National University of Singapore
February 22, 2008
Institute of East Asian Studies, Institute of International Studies, Institute of Governmental Studies, Berkeley Programs for Study Abroad
For centuries, the Asians (Chinese, Indians, Muslims, and others) have been bystanders in world history. Now they are ready to become co-drivers. Asians have finally understood, absorbed, and implemented Western best practices in many areas: from free-market economics to modern science and technology, from meritocracy to rule of law. Professor Mahbubani will discuss the question: Will the West resist the rise of Asia?
Public Announcements and 'the Public' in Early China
Enno Giele, University of Münster, Germany
February 26, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Department of East Asian Languages & Cultures
Marx in Shanghai: Is China the Emerging Epicenter of World Labor Unrest?
Beverly J. Silver, Professor, Sociology, Johns Hopkins University
Please R.S.V.P. to Myra Armstrong
February 27, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, The Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (IRLE)
Is There Still Buddhism Outside Japan?: Some Thirteenth-Century Perspectives
Jacqueline Stone, Japanese Religion, Princeton University
February 28, 2008
Center for Buddhist Studies, Center for Japanese Studies
Buddhist thinkers in premodern Japan were keenly aware of Japan's location at the extreme eastern edge of the Buddhist world. Contrasting rhetorics alternately maintained that Japan occupied a soteriologically disadvantaged status as a marginal country in a degenerate age, far from the time and place of the historical Buddha, or that, despite its peripheral position, Japan enjoyed a strong, even privileged connection to the dharma. Historians have long been interested in early medieval representations of Japan for what light they may shed on the beginnings of national consciousness. In their own time, however, such representations formed part of a standard framework for Buddhist discourse and were deployed to advance competing definitions of normative Budddhist practice. This paper will examine how some early medieval figures, notably Eisai (1141-1214) and Nichiren (1222-1282), deliberately juxtaposed the two contrasting rhetorics about Japan to promote their own visions of what Buddhism should be.
Jacqueline Stone received her Ph.D. in East Asian Languages and Cultures from the University of California, Los Angeles. Currently she is professor of Japanese Religions in the Religion Department at Princeton University and co-director of Princeton's Buddhist Studies Workshop. She is the author of Original Enlightenment and the Transformation of Medieval Japanese Buddhism (1999) and, with Bryan J. Cuevas, co-editor of The Buddhist Dead: Practices, Discourses, Representations (2007). Her research interests include Buddhist intellectual history; medieval Japanese Buddhism; traditions based on the Lotus Sutra, including Tendai and Nichiren; Buddhist approaches to death and dying; and transformations of Buddhism in modern Japan.
Far-reaching Environmentally Friendly Motor Vehicle Technologies: Eying 2020 and Beyond
Yosuhiro Daisho, Mechanical Engineering, Waseda University, Japan
February 28, 2008
Center for Japanese Studies, CITRIS Program, Consul General of Japan, SF
In order to reduce oil consumption and mitigate global warming, vehicle fuel economy standards will become more stringent in the long term with exhaust emission regulations becoming stricter from 2010 to 2015. With the increase in regulation, advanced technologies will be adopted to meet these needs. Although hybrid, fuel cell, and electric vehicles are expected to begin replacing conventional gasoline and diesel vehicles, the relative ease in adoption of bioethanol, biodiesel, and biomass-to-liquid (BTL) technologies suggests that gasoline and diesel-type vehicles will remain the dominant technology for two or three more decades.
In his talk, Professor Daisho will describe environmental and energy-related motor vehicle technologies that are being investigated in Japan, the USA and the EU. A sample of technologies covered include pre-mixed charged compression ignition (PCCI) combustion systems, exhaust gas recirculation systems, urea-selective catalytic reduction (SCR) and NOx storage reduction catalyst systems (NSR), variable intake, transmission improvements, and engine downsizing. He will also briefly introduce advanced hybrid and electric vehicle technologies achieving higher efficiency and lower CO emission than the conventional vehicles.
Li Ka-shing Foundation workshop on Republican Chinese History
February 29 – March 1, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies
Li Ka-shing Foundation workshop on Republican Chinese History
Friday, February 29, 4:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Saturday, March 1, 10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Stanford's Hoover Institution has a significant collection of Republican Chinese archival materials. Major recent additions include the diary of Chiang Kai-shek, microfilmed GMD central committee minutes during the Sino-Japanese war, GMD central committee materials of the 1950s, and T. V. Soong materials.
This workshop asks ten scholars to discuss their reading and evaluation of the significance of Hoover's new collections. They will address the issues of whether Republican history is to be rewritten in light of the new materials, or because of recent studies of the PRC.
Part 1: Friday, February 29, 4:00–6:30 p.m.
Roundtable discussion: An evaluation of the significance of Hoover's new collections
Part II: Saturday, March 1, 10:00 a.m.–12:30 p.m.
Individual presentations: Will Republican history be rewritten because of the information in the newly available materials?
Part III: Saturday, March 1, 1:30–4:00 p.m.
Individual presentations: Republican history in light of recent studies of the PRC.
Participants:
Timothy Cheek, University of British Columbia
Christian Henriot, Lyon University
William Kirby, Harvard University
Klaus Muehlhahn, Indiana University
Thomas Mullaney, Stanford University
Micah Muscolino, St. Mary's College of California
Brett Sheehan, University of Southern California
Timothy Weston, University of Colorado, Boulder
Tatsuo Yamada, Open Air University
Wen-hsin Yeh, U.C. Berkeley
Red, White, and Bruised: Japanese Disabled Veterans of the Second World War
Lee Pennington, East Asian History, US Naval Academy in Annapolis
February 29, 2008
Center for Japanese Studies
From 1931 to 1945, ensuring the well-being of disabled veterans became a major issue on the wartime Japanese home front. Bloodied by combat, Japan's disabled veterans were heroically cast as "heroes in white," a term derived from the white hospital gowns that they habitually wore in public. But, after 1945, these living casualties of war had to endure not only the trauma of battle and the unease of newly-acquired disabilities but also military occupation by the very-same foe that battered their bodies and shattered their lives. In what ways did total war and total defeat shape the Japanese disabled veteran of the Second World War?
Excessive Cult or Proper Ritual?: Religious Boundaries and Imperial Politics as Seen from a Shanghai Manuscript
Guolong Lai, Assistant Professor, Art History, University of Florida
February 29, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Department of East Asian Languages & Cultures
Chinese, European, and American Universities: Challenges for the 21st Century
William C. Kirby, Geisinger Professor of History, Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor, Chairman of the Harvard China Fund, and Director of the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University
Moderator: C. Judson King, Director, Center for Studies in Higher Education, and former Systemwide Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs
Introduced by George Breslauer, Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost
March 3, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies, Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, Center for Studies in Higher Education, Institute of European Studies
This lecture addresses the recent and rapid growth in Chinese higher education, and seeks to view it in the light of earlier systems of learning in China and other international revolutions in higher education, particularly in Europe and North America. It argues that Chinese, European and American universities share many common objectives and common problems. It focuses on efforts to revitalize undergraduate education, and the often-contested role of the humanities as part of the "general education" of undergraduates at leading universities, seeking to educate individuals with the capacity for critical leadership, rather than students trained in skills that will become obsolete in their lifetimes.
Yoshida Shoin's Encounter with Commodore Perry: A Review of Cultural Interaction in the Days of Japan's Opening
Tao Demin, Chinese Literature, Kansai University
March 4, 2008
Center for Japanese Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies
Yoshida Shoin's (1830-59) attempt to escape from Japan with Commodore Perry's "black ship" in 1854 has been a subject of both scholarly and popular attention for more than a century. By examining the text of the "original" letters kept at Yale and analyzing the dilemmas of both the addressor and the addressee, however, I have tried to rediscover its meaning in the context of Japanese dawning relations with the United States and other western nations.
I see no foundation for the assertion that Shoin was a terrorist trying to kill Perry. To the contrary, I have confirmed that he was a trained military strategist with lofty goals for himself and his country, and have argued that both his motives for going to American to study the advanced military technology, and his actions in attempting to do so, symbolized a new direction in Japan's Western learning. In this, Shoin had recognized the importance of learning about—and from—the English-speaking world fully five years before Fukuzawa Yukichi began to advocate shifting from "Dutch learning" to Anglo-American learning. At the same time, I noted that the unusual difficulties that Perry had experienced in choosing between the American national interest, and his concern for the human rights issues he recognized in dealing with Shoin's request for passage abroad—the fact that Shoin would be handled as a criminal. Japanese scholarship has not, to date, seen the encounter between Shoin and Perry in terms of human rights, largely because Shoin was regarded a national hero making extraordinary contributions to the Meiji Restoration, and his role as mentor of such leading Choshu politicians as Ito Hirobumi and Yamagata Aritomo. Therefore, his attempt to stow away has been considered as motivated solely for the national cause, without interrogating his personal motivations, as I have done here. By "reducing" a hero to an average person and simply looking on Shoin as an ordinary stowaway, however, it has become possible to read the complexities of this historic event and the dilemmas on the both sides.
Artist's Talk: Xu Bing
Xu Bing, Artist
March 5, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies, Arts Research Center, Department of History of Art, Berkeley Art Museum
A recipient of the MacArthur "genius" Award who now divides his time between New York and China, Xu Bing was recently appointed Vice President of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing. Working in a wide range of media, the internationally-acclaimed, Chinese-born artist creates complex, haunting works that call into question how meaning is communicated through language. In preparation for an extended residency at the Arts Research Center in Spring 2009, Xu Bing will present and discuss his work. Work by Xu Bing will be featured in two upcoming exhibits at the Berkeley Art Museum: Mahjong: Contemporary Chinese Art from the Sigg Collection in Fall 2008 and Rare Art in Spring 2009.
Who Cares About the Environment in Japan?
Paul Waley, School of Geography, University of Leeds
March 7, 2008
Center for Japanese Studies, History
Rivers have become an important focus of environmental activity in contemporary Japan. In particular, they have become a rallying point for a large but disparate group of civil society organizations. Faced with a continuing reliance on construction in concrete on the part of many state officials and the construction industry, these groups have been fighting to win acceptance for a more eco-friendly approach to river re-landscaping. In his talk, the author uses these groups as a prism for a discussion about the nature of civil society in Japan and in particular its relation to the state. He refines simplistic interpretations that see civil society as being led or coopted by the state on the one hand or locked into an antagonistic relationship on the other. Instead he advances the idea of a "soft elite" of government officials, academics and other professionals working in the field of landscape and the environment who use their ambivalent position on the borders of civil society and both in and outside the state to campaign for and establish a consensus around a benign view of nature and the environment. He concludes this talk by transferring the concept of a soft elite to the related sphere of town planning and community development to examine the extent to which it may be applicable in these similar contexts.
Religion and the Rise of Printing Reconsidered
Timothy Barrett, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
March 10, 2008
Center for Buddhist Studies, Center for Chinese Studies
This talk will pick up from a short paper published in 2001 and not widely circulated which has been cited surprisingly frequently in the absence of any other account of the religious roots of printing in China. The remarks in that paper are now to be restated and extended in The Woman Who Discovered Printing, which tries to set out a provisional narrative of the factors affecting printing up till the end of the Tang dynasty. But after completing this account, consideration of what happened next, in the early decades of the tenth century, has suggested to me that we need to look carefully at the political and social factors prevailing at that point to understand the widespread acceptance of printing thereafter. And once again, we need to look very carefully at religious materials to get some picture of what was going on, even if paradoxically they have nothing to do with printing at all.
T.H. Barrett graduated from Cambridge and received his doctorate from Yale. After teaching at Cambridge for over ten years he became Professor of East Asian History at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, in 1986, where he has taught ever since, first in the Department of History and more recently in the Department of the Study of Religions. He has published Li Ao: Buddhist, Taoist, or Neo-Confucian (1992), Taoism under the T'ang (1996), and a number of other studies; his next book, "The Woman Who Discovered Printing," is to be published by Yale in London by the end of March.
Chinese Glass Art and 'Liuli Gongfng': Loretta Hui-shan Yang & Chang Yi Talk About Their Path To Glass Art Creation
中國琉璃與琉璃工房: 楊惠姍與張毅談他們的琉璃創作之路
Loretta Hui-shan Yang, Liuligongfang Co-founder
Chang Yi, CEO of Liuligongfang
March 10, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies
Lecture will be conducted in Chinese
Loretta Hui-shan Yang was a household name in Taiwan in the 1970s as a result of her films "The Young Runaway" and "Kuei-Mei, A Woman," and for two consecutive years won the highest accolades in the Taiwanese film industry for a female leading actress when she was presented with the Golden Horse Awards. For another work "Jade Love," she was awarded a best actress prize at the Asia-Pacific Film Festival. At the time, she was the leading actress in the contemporary Taiwanese cinematic world.
In 1987, when she was at the pinnacle of her career, she left the film world and instead devoted herself to modern Chinese crystal glass art. She established her first glass studio and worked at mastering the unique technique of cire-perdu glass art creation. For over twenty years, she has fulfilled and maintained her stated intention of exploring, experimenting with, and creating a Chinese style of modern glass art work; she has also been at the forefront of pushing the boundaries of modern Chinese glass art.
Yang has used her individual artistic gifts and her acute powers of observation to create sculptured works in glass which are richly imbued with a traditional Chinese artistic vocabulary and human philosophy, enabling herself to take her place among the most influential Chinese glass artists of the day. She is Honorary Professor at the Notojima Museum in Ishikawa Prefecture, Japan, and Centre International du Verre et Arts Plastiques (CIRVA) in Marseille, France.
At 19, >Chang Yi became a well-known short story writer whose work was twice voted as the Best Short Story of the Year. After graduation from "Shih-chieh hsin-wen University" he began his career as a film director. The film "Kuei-Mei, A Woman," which he directed, won him the Best Director Prize of both the Golden Horse Film Award and the Asian Pacific Film Festival Award. The grand finale to his film-making career, the film "My Love," was cited by the Variety International Filmguide as one of the ten masterpieces of a century (1895–1995) of film-making in Taiwan. In 1987, Chang decided to blaze a new trail in the Chinese art of "liuli" crystal glass work by founding the first-ever glass art studio in Taiwan. With this unique Liuli Glass Art Workshop (Liuli Gongfang), he has opened up new possibilities for this traditional Chinese artistic handicraft. In his artistic designs, he not only lays stress on the fundamental concepts of creation in contemporary art but also incorporates and embodies strong sentiments of Chinese national heritage, including ancient totemisms that manifest traditional Chinese ethical codes and concepts of the universe. In his designs can be seen a deep love for the Chinese nation. He is Honorary Professor at the Glass Art Studio of Tsinghua University.
Asia's New Institutional Architecture: Evolving Structures for Managing Trade, Financial, and Security Relations
Vinod Aggarwal, University of California, Berkeley
Min Gyo Koo, Yonsei University, Seoul, South Korea
March 12, 2008
Center for Korean Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies
This book investigates the origins and evolution of Asia's new institutional architecture in trade, finance, and security from both a theoretical and empirical perspective. The traditional institutional equilibrium in Asia has come under heavy strain in the 'post triple shocks period' — the post-Cold War, the post-financial crisis of 1997-98, and the post-9-11 attacks. The new dynamics of rivalry and cooperation among states at both the intraregional and transregional levels is now shaping a new institutional architecture. Political and business leaders from Northeast and Southeast Asia interact with each other more frequently. South Asia's participation in the rest of Asia in recent years is truly impressive. As we show, the future institutional trajectory of Asia is still open, but we believe that the book provides a timely examination of key shifts in the region. In doing so, our hope is to provide policymakers and analysts with an institutional road map for the future.
Contents:
V.K. Aggarwal, M.G. Koo: Asia's New Institutional Architecture
J. Ravenhill: Asia's New Economic Institutions.
K. Tsunekawa: Building Asian Security Institutions Under the Triple Shocks.
M. Oba: Regional Arrangements for Trade in Northeast Asia.
M. Ye: Security Institutions in Northeast Asia.
H.E.S. Nesadurai: Southeast Asia's New Institutional Architecture for Cooperation in Trade and Finance.
R. Emmers: Southeast Asia's New Security Institutions.
V.K. Aggarwal, R. Mukherji: India's Shifting Trade Policy.
E. Sridharan: The Evolution of Post-Cold War Regional Security Institutions in South Asia.
V.K. Aggarwal, M.G. Koo: The Past, Present, and Future of Asia's Institutional Architecture.
Program followed by reception and book-signing.
Y.R. Chao's Teaching Tradition and New Developments in Teaching Chinese as a Second Language: 赵元任的教学传统与汉语教学的新发展
Shengli Feng (馮勝利), Professor, East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University
March 12, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, East Asian Languages and Cultures, National Center for K-16 Chinese Language Pedagogy
提要：本讲首先介绍赵元任先生奠定的海外汉语教学的传统和模式，然后通过 Ullman 提出的人脑及语言习得模式，讨论海外汉语教学的一般原则和实践。最后，根据赵氏
和 Ullman 的原则以及我们自己的实践，提出：
(1) 海外汉语教学的基本原则当以能否带来或产生更大的 "训练效果 (Practice Effects)" 为准则,
(2) 近来发展的 "结构功能 教学法" — 每一结构均有功能，每种功能皆有结构。语言教学，必须两兼而不能偏废。分三个题目讲述：
一、海外汉语教学的哈佛传统
二、神经语言学研究的新成果
三、理论指导下的基本原则（外语教学的基本原则和结构功能教学观）
This talk discusses basic principles and practices of teaching Chinese as a foreign language (TCFL) in the United States, based on the pedagogical model developed by Y. R. Chao in the 40's, and the Declarative/Procedural model discovered recently by Ullman (2001). It is shown that Y.R. Chao's teaching principles are solidly confirmed by recent studies of neurosciences and that Practice Effects must be taken as an ultimate criterion, by which all L2 theories and practices are examined and evaluated not only for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language but also for L2 teaching of all human languages. More specifically, I will elaborate on some important issues in the field, including (1) the northern American tradition of Direct Method established by Professor Yuen Ren Chao, (2) the Neuroscience-based evidence for Yuenren-Tradition, and (3) some empirical principles and results derived from the "structural-function approach" developed recently. Finally, it is argued that no matter how the L2 theories are formed, drilling always goes first.
Adjusting to Globalization: Moving Forward with the Toyota Way
Yoshio Ishizaka, Advisor, former Vice-President, Toyota Corporation
March 12, 2008
Center for Japanese Studies, Yomiuri Shimbun, Haas School of Business
Yoshio Ishizaka joined Toyota in 1964 upon earning a degree in law from Tokyo's Hitotsubashi University. His career has centered on overseas business, and he has served two, extended stints at Toyota's operations outside Japan: six years in Australia in the late 1970s and four years in the United States in the late 1980s. Mr. Ishizaka served as senior vice president and chief coordinating officer of Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc. from 1986 to 1990, while helping to develop the special project that became the Lexus Division.
Mr. Ishizaka then became general manager of the Europe division at Toyota in 1990. In that position, he supervised accelerating efforts to build an integrated, local organization in Europe to support expanded manufacturing, marketing and product development there. Named to Toyota's Board of Directors in 1992, Mr. Ishizaka returned to the U.S. sales arm to serve as president from 1996 to 1999. He returned to Japan in 1999, whereupon he was promoted to senior managing director in charge of overseas operations. In 2001, he became an executive vice president in charge of Toyota's overall overseas operations. In 2005, he became senior advisor to the board. In April of that same year, Mr. Ishizaka became the co-chair of the Trade and Investment Liberalization and Facilitation Working Group of the APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC).
In this talk, Mr. Ishizaka will introduce Toyota's progress overview, current status, and the Toyota's way and discuss the secrets of Toyota's success and its future challenges.
Missions Without Missionaries?: Politics of Secularity in the Case of Korean Evangelicals in Afghanistan
Ju Hui Judy Han, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Geography, University of California, Berkeley
March 13, 2008
Center for Korean Studies, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Asian Cultural Studies Working Group
A group of twenty-three South Korean evangelicals made worldwide headlines in 2007 when they were taken hostage by the Taliban for nearly six weeks in Afghanistan. While critics pointed to the hostage situation as indicative of misguided missionary zeal and recklessness, mission advocates continued to claim that the hostages should be described as "church volunteers" or "humanitarian aid workers." The insistence on avoiding the term "evangelical missionaries" certainly reflects the precarious nature of proselytizing illegally and the obvious need for secrecy in clandestine operations. But claims of secularity also arise out of mission strategies that espouse voluntarism and humanitarianism over conspicuous evangelism and conversion—an important feature of the new evangelical internationalism. Drawing from field research of "Islam missions" and "frontier missions," this talk discusses how Korean/American missionaries reconcile notions of secularity and religiosity in the global capitalist-evangelical assemblage.
Ju Hui Judy Han is a PhD candidate in geography with a Designated Emphasis in Women, Gender, and Sexuality at UC Berkeley. Her dissertation concerns the politics of evangelism and subject-formation, and how contemporary Korean/American missions both support and subvert existing racial, gender, and geopolitical hierarchies associated with colonial missions and US hegemony.
Open to the public. Sponsored by the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, the Center for Korean Studies, and the Asian Cultural Studies Working Group. For further information, contact Christine Hong (cjhong@berkeley.edu).
The SARS Epidemic in China: Facts and Consequences
Sake J. de Vlas, Senior Researcher, Infectious Disease Control, Department of Public Health, Erasmus University, Rotterdam
March 13, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Center for Occupational and Environmental Health
Dr. de Vlas is the co-author, with Chinese colleagues, of a series of articles forthcoming in a special issue of Tropical Medicine and International Health covering the SARS epidemic including its timing and extent, economic costs, and longitudinal studies in former patients.
Intimate Diplomacy: Overseas Korean Adoption and Cold War Geopolitics
Eleana Kim, Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Rochester
March 14, 2008
Center for Korean Studies, Walter H. Shorenstein Fund
The adoption of children from South Korea to the West has been ongoing since the end of the Korean War in 1953. During the past half century, more than 200,000 children have been adopted into white families in Western Europe, North America, and Australia. Part of a larger project that frames these adoptions as forms of global intimacy and transnational biopolitics, this talk examines how the initial crisis of "mixed-race" orphans or "GI babies" was solved in the 1950s by their adoptions into American families. These children became enmeshed in Cold War geopolitics as "Americans" who belonged in America, and also provided a solution for childless couples during a period of heightened pronatalism in the U.S. In addition, I track the shift in the demographics of adopted children from "mixed-race" to full-Korean children starting in the late 1950s, which initiated a radical expansion of the international adoption system. Children were simultaneously excluded from the national body through population control policies and social welfare institutions and also enrolled as "cultural ambassadors" through the rhetoric and policy of "civil diplomacy." The shifting and ambivalent value of these children from pitiable orphans to transnational cosmopolitans has become part of the peculiar heritage of adult adoptees who are now examining their individual and collective histories and, on their return trips to Korea, finding themselves caught up in webs of nationalist, internationalist, and globalizing discourses, complicated further by the ascendance of neoliberal values in contemporary South Korea.
Eleana Kim is Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Rochester.
Chinese and Indian Buddha Images: A Study of Early Cultural Interaction
Madhuvanti Ghose, Art Institute of Chicago
March 14, 2008
Center for Buddhist Studies, Center for Chinese Studies, Center for Buddhist Studies Silk Road Initiative
A lecture by Madhuvanti Ghose, Art Institute of Chicago, followed by a workshop/discussion. Rsvp to 510-643-5104.
Madhuvanti Ghose is the Alsdorf Associate Curator of Indian, Southeast Asian, Himalayan and Islamic Art at The Art Institute of Chicago. She is responsible for the exhibition, expansion, preservation and research of the institute's holdings in these fields. Dr. Ghose was previously a Lecturer at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London and a Research Fellow in the Department of Eastern Art at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. She specialises in ancient Indian art and iconography. The interaction of South Asia with the Hellenistic, Roman, Near/Middle Eastern, Iranian, Central Asian and Chinese worlds from the Bronze Age to the coming of Islam is another major area of research activity. Her forthcoming publications include: From Nisa to Niya: New Discoveries and Studies in Central and Inner Asian Art and Archaeology (co-editor, forthcoming 2008), The Origins of Indian Cult Images (2008) and A Catalogue of the Gandhara and Central Asian Antiquities at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (2009). She is one of the co-founders of the Circle of Inner Asian Art (CIAA) which promotes the pre-Islamic art of Central Asia worldwide.
China's First Empire? Interpreting the Material Record of the Erligang Culture
Haicheng Wang, Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for Chinese Studies, UC Berkeley
March 19, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Archaeological Research Facility
In the last few decades Chinese archaeology has documented a wide spread of material culture called the Erligang culture after a type site in modern Zhengzhou. Large-scale dissemination of a distinctive material seems to have been fairly common at the beginning of civilizations, probably the best known instance being the "Uruk expansion" in ancient Mesopotamia. Additional close parallels are provided by the Indus Valley civilization in the Old World and the Olmec civilization in the New World. In all four cases, the homogeneity of material culture over a large area suggests something more than casual contact: something of great magnitude was taking place, an intense interaction of some kind. So far, however, specialists have reached no consensus as to the social mechanisms involved, no agreement as to how things, ideas, and/or people were spreading. Although writing seems to have been in use in all four civilizations, inscriptions are few and poorly understood, so it is only from material culture that we can hope to learn anything about the archaeological problem. By comparing the four material cultures, I hope to draw up a list of possible models for cultural expansion, models that
might not occur to us if we focused just on one region. Two major questions will be addressed. What are the criteria for correlating archaeological remains with political structures? What is the logic of privileging elite objects or utilitarian utensils in describing and interpreting the evidence of expansion?
Wang Haicheng earned his MA at Peking University (2000) and PhD at Princeton (2007). He is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Center for Chinese Studies at UC Berkeley.
Passing on History: The Problems for Youth in Hiroshima
Steve Leeper, Director, Hiroshima Peace & Culture Foundation
March 19, 2008
Center for Japanese Studies, Yomiuri Shimbun
Steven Lloyd Leeper (age: 60) has been a management consultant and peace activist in Hiroshima since 1984. He is the only non-Japanese to serve on the Board of Directors of two Hiroshima corporations and the only non-Japanese to represent Hiroshima peace activists in the Asahi Shimbun-Hiroshima City Peace Symposium. After working six years for Mayors for Peace, an NGO based in Hiroshima and funded primarily by Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in April 2007 he became the first non-Japanese chairman of the Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation. The Foundation, with 110 employees and a budget of approximately $12 million, is the official peace and international relations arm of the city of Hiroshima, managing the Peace Memorial Museum, the National Memorial Hall, and the International Conference Center.
The Formal Drift: On the History of Chinese Revolutionary Cinema
Jason McGrath, Assistant Professor, Asian Languages and Literatures, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
March 20, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, East Asian Languages and Cultures
From the critical realism of the Left-Wing Film Movement of the 1930s to the socialist realism and "revolutionary romanticism" of the early People's Republic and finally the model opera films of the Cultural Revolution, Chinese revolutionary cinema saw a "formal drift" away from the cinematic aesthetics of realism. This drift accompanied a shift in the idea of the "real" from an existential category to an epistemological or even metaphysical category. Ironically, the formal drift in revolutionary cinema, though corresponding to an ever increasing importance of ideology, may have helped to set the stage for the collapse of the authority of Maoism.
The Word of the Buddha or the Disputations of his Disciples?: The Buddhist Path as Presented in the Nikāyas
Rupert Gethin, University of Bristol
March 20, 2008
Center for Buddhist Studies
The Pali Nikāyas contain a number of different schemes of the Buddhist path. These schemes are characteristically set out in the Nikāyas by way of variations on stock formulas presented in a variety of narrative frames. It has been argued by scholars that these different schemes represent competing voices within early Buddhist texts, and some scholars even argue that it is possible to identify the authentic voice of the Buddha among these voices. Such an approach assumes that the Nikāyas are best considered as the end result of a somewhat haphazard and unsystematic process of compilation and redaction that reveals instances of incoherence and inconsistency which can then be used as a basis for distinguishing between early and late in the different path schemes. Rupert Gethin argues that such an approach has overlooked the extent to which the Nikāyas are a systematically redacted whole: the product of a particular process of compilation and editing which the compilers and editors deliberately employed in order to present a particular vision of the Buddhist path. Analysing the schemes and formulas both numerically and contextually, Gethin attempts to articulate what the vision was by establishing what the compilers of the Nikāyas wished to highlight and emphasize in their presentation of the Buddhist path.
Rupert Gethin is the Numata Visiting Professor in Buddhist Studies at UC-Berkeley for Spring 2008. He is Reader in Buddhist Studies in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies, and co-director of the Centre for Buddhist Studies, at the University of Bristol, and (since 2003) President of the Pali Text Society. He holds a BA in Comparative Religion (1980), a Masters Degree in Buddhist Studies (1982), and a PhD in Buddhist Studies (1987), all from the University of Manchester. He was appointed Lecturer in Indian Religions by the University of Bristol in 1987, and then Reader In Buddhist Studies in 2005. His 1998 book The Foundations of Buddhism is frequently used in university-level classes on Buddhism in English-speaking countries.
The Ancient Jomon and the Pacific Rim
March 20-22, 2008
Center for Japanese Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies, Department of Anthropology, Archaeological Research Facility, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Henry Luce Foundation
"Jomon" is the name of a prehistoric culture and period on the Japanese archipelago. Dating from about 16,000 to 2500 years ago, the Jomon culture is known for its artistic pottery, large settlements and complex ritual sites such as stone circles. Unlike most prehistoric pottery-using peoples in other parts of the world, the people of the Jomon period are thought to have been hunter-gatherer-fishers. It is also known that characteristics of the Jomon culture changed significantly through time, and between regions. By examining such temporal and regional variability, Jomon archaeology can contribute to understanding the Japanese past and the mechanisms of long-term culture change in human history.
Scholars who work on other archaeological cultures along the Pacific Rim, such as California, have pointed out the importance of comparative studies. Similarities between Jomon and Native American cultures include a heavy reliance on marine food and various nuts, including acorns. Recent developments in new scientific techniques, such as AMS radiocarbon dating, and bioarchaeological studies, have further stimulated academic interaction between Japanese and North American archaeologists.
The goals of this symposium are thus twofold: (1) to compare the Jomon with other archaeological cultures along the Pacific Rim, and (2) to exchange new information on theory and method of hunter-gatherer archaeology, environmental archaeology and archaeological science. By doing so, we hope to demonstrate that Jomon archaeology is an exciting and emerging regional field.
This symposium is part of our institutional project "Understanding Lifeways and Biocultural Diversity in Prehistoric Japan" supported by the Luce Initiative on East and Southeast Asian Archaeology and Early History.
The 2008 US Presidential Election and Japan
Glen Fukushima, Director and CEO, Airbus Japan KK
March 21, 2008
Center for Japanese Studies, Haas School of Business, Political Science
Buddhist Studies Conference and Workshop
Faculty and graduate students only
March 28-30, 2008
Center for Buddhist Studies
The State of California, taken as a whole, has unequalled resources for the academic study of Buddhism. UC Berkeley, UC Los Angeles, UC Santa Barbara, and Stanford each have world-renown specialized Ph.D. programs in Buddhist Studies, as well as dedicated Centers for Buddhist Studies that promote advanced research as well as a variety of outreach programs. Together these four campuses have some two dozen faculty specialists in the art, architecture, culture, history, literature, and philosophy of Buddhism. Each of these scholars is a leader in his or her respective subfields; in addition, there are a number of eminent scholars teaching in smaller programs at UC San Diego, UC Riverside, UC Santa Cruz, and the University of Santa Clara.
While these faculty members are all familiar with the research interests and published work of their peers from other programs, to date there has been little attempt to collaborate on research or coordinate teaching across institutions. The only formal effort at cross-campus collaborative teaching was a joint Buddhist studies graduate seminar between UC Berkeley and Stanford that ran through much of the 1980s and 1990s. Berkeley and Stanford recently revived this cooperative spirit, putting together a joint colloquium series as well as sponsoring an annual Berkeley-Stanford Graduate Student conference. The student conference met over the past three years, alternating between the two campuses, and was a tremendous success.
This inaugural conference provides an opportunity not only for graduate students to present their research to a broad group of specialists, but also a venue to explore possibilities for greater cooperation and collaboration among Buddhist Studies programs throughout the UC system and with other, non-UC programs in California.
Trauma in Public and Private: Songs of the South Korean Survivors of the Japanese Military "Comfort Women"
Joshua Pilzer, Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellow in Music, Columbia University
April 1, 2008
Center for Korean Studies
During the long era of public secrecy about Japanese military sexual slavery, Korean survivors made use of veiled expressive forms such as song to reckon with their experiences and forge social selves without exposing their already opaquely public secrets. In the era of the "comfort women grandmothers" protest movement, which began in the early 1990s, the women became star witnesses and super-symbols of South Korea's colonial victimization at the hands of Japan; and the new normative constraints of this role compelled the women to continue to express taboo sentiments and continue the work of self-making behind the veils of song, often in the most public of places. The women's songs are thus simultaneously records of traumatic experiences; transcripts of struggles with traumatic memory; performances of traumatic experience for an expectant public; and works of art that stretch beyond the horizons of traumatic experience and Korean cultural identity.
Joshua Pilzer is a Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellow in Music at Columbia University. He received his Ph.D. in Music from the University of Chicago in 2005 and previously taught at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Fungi Treasures
Mo Mei Chen, Visiting Scholar, Mycology and Plant Pathology, University and Jepson Herbaria
April 2, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies
More than 1,800 years ago, during the Eastern Han Dynasty in China, people began to discover and use wild mushrooms for their unique medicinal properties. Today, San Francisco Bay Area residents know many of the precious edible mushrooms such as Dong Chong Xia Cao, Ling Zhi etc. but few know about their medicinal values.
In the history of mushroom cultivation, people have never been satisfied with their current achievements. Mushroom cultivation is a science that is compatible to horticulture science, and many superb wild mushrooms have been domesticated. Among the 10,000 species of wild fungi across the world, more than half of them have economic values to different degrees, and some 2000 of these have important edible and medicinal value. But there are only a few that can be domesticated, and very little work has been to-date in this field. Until the 1970's, the world mushroom trade was dominated by button-mushrooms, with more than 140 countries or areas in different continents producing this single variety. Shiitake, woodear, oyster and others are now more widely cultivated, but are limited to certain regional species, with different outputs in East Asia and Europe. With the opening and economic development of China, and concurrent increase in people's living standards, their consumption styles have changed and they now pursue new healthy foods, which has created a new demand for mushrooms. While paying special attention to the reform of traditional cultivation technology, people also place importance on domestication and species introduction. In Mo-Mei Chen' "The Mushroom Treasures" (1982-2008), she introduces 150 varieties of these irreplaceable gifts of nature, and describes their medicinal uses and cultivation techniques.
Land And Territorial Politics In China
You-tien Hsing, Associate Professor, Geography, UC Berkeley
Allie Thomas, Ph.D. student, City and Regional Planning, UC Berkeley
April 2, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Department of City and Regional Planning
Eyes of Dew: Poems of Dr. Chonggi Mah
Dr. Chonggi Mah
April 2, 2008
Center for Korean Studies, Intercultural Institute of California
Dr. Chonggi Mah has enjoyed prominent careers in both poetry and medicine. Born in Japan, he returned to Korea shortly before the end of World War II and began studying medicine at Yonsei University after the Korean War. While in college, he was introduced to poet Park Tu-jin and began publishing his own work in the journal Hyŏndae munhak. Dr. Mah received the Yonsei Literary Award in 1961 for his first anthology of poems, Quiet Triumph. He graduated from Yonsei in 1963. After military service, he moved to the United States, where he interned and completed his radiology residency training at the Ohio State University Hospital. He became an assistant professor in the Department of Radiology and Pediatrics at the Medical College of Ohio. The fourth year of his professorship, he was presented with the "Best Professor of the Year" award. He continued to write poetry that was published and celebrated in Korea, including the collections Frontier Flowers (1976), Invisible Land of Love (1980), How Should Living Together Be Only for Reeds? (1986), The Color of That Country's Sky (1991), Eyes of Dew (1997), In the Birds' Dreams Trees are Fragrant (2002), and Are We Still Calling Each Other? (2006). He received many significant Korean literary awards from these works. Dr. Mah became a prominent leader in the Korean community of Toledo and continued to achieve recognition as a doctor, including further academic appointments in Ohio and his induction as a fellow of the American College of Radiology.
The Center for Korean Studies is honored to host Dr. Mah, who will read and discuss his work.
Are External Objects Spiritually Harmful or Philosophically Impossible?: Some Remarks on the Criticism of External Reality in South Asian Buddhist Thought
Birgit Kellner, Visiting Assistant Professor of Buddhist Studies, UC Berkeley
April 3, 2008
Center for Buddhist Studies
Various Buddhist thinkers have criticized the notion that our cognitions are of external objects, or that external, material entities which we can cognize actually exist. This talk will discuss several varieties of this criticism that were articulated in the latter half of the first millennium CE in South Asia. In doing so, I am going to especially pursue two aspects: first, the philosophical characteristics of the various arguments that are advanced, and second, the interplay of philosophical argumentation, which looks at whether the existence of external objects is rationally defensible, with soteriological attitudes that might instead focus on whether believing in external reality is spiritually harmful.
Brigit Kellner specializes in the history of Buddhist logic and epistemology in ancient India and Tibet. After completing her M.A. studies under the supervision of Ernst Steinkellner at the University of Vienna (Austria) in 1994, she went to Japan, where a dissertation on the knowledge of absence in Buddhist epistemological thought in India after Dharmakirti, supervised by Shoryu Katsura, earned her a PhD from the University of Hiroshima in 1999. Supported by further research fellowships from the Austrian Science Fund and the Alexander von Humboldt-Foundation (Germany), she carried out further research on the relationship between realist and idealist epistemologies in Buddhist thought, which is also going to be the topic of her Habilitation monograph that is currently being completed. In addition to her work on the history of Buddhist philosophy, Birgit Kellner developed and implemented several academic database projects, notably the "Indian Logic Knowledge Base", funded by the European Commission. She currently carries out a research project on the theory of reflexive awareness (svasamvedana) in Dharmakirti's Pramāṇavārttika at the Department of South Asian, Tibetan and Buddhist Studies of the University of Vienna. Together with Helmut Tauscher and Helmut Krasser, Birgit Kellner edits the monograph series "Vienna Studies in Tibetology and Buddhism", and together with Helmut Krasser, she acts as editor-in-chief of the Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies.
Post-Minjung Art: Urban Explorations of South Korean Political Art Movements since the Late 1990s
Chunghoon Shin, Ph.D. Candidate, Studies in the History and Theory of Art and Architecture, State University of New York at Binghampton
April 3, 2008
Center for Korean Studies, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Asian Cultural Studies Working Group
At the turn of the millennium, a series of political art practices reemerged in South Korea that critically responded to state-driven policies of urban renewal. In particular, these avant-garde art practices sought to place the neo-liberal restructuring of the urban landscape in sharp critical relief. Rejecting the depoliticized, self-complacent kitschy aesthetics of so-called Shinsedae ("New Generation") Art, artist collectives such as Forum A and FlyingCity sought to reactivate the oppositional legacy of minjung (people's) art—a politically engaged art movement that had vigorously resisted the oppressive military regime of the 1980s but had fallen into lethargy in the ostensibly democratized 1990s. Precariously suspended between critical realism, on the one hand, and visual romanticization of urban slums and ruins, on the other, these millenarian art movements threatened, however, to devolve into an overwhelming concern with loss. Relative to post-minjung avant-garde art, the salient task thus emerged: through what fresh artistic vocabularies could these art movements counter their own self-destructive, melancholic tendencies?
A graduate of Seoul National University, Chunghoon Shin is a PhD candidate in Studies in the History and Theory of Art and Architecture at State University of New York at Binghamton. His dissertation concerns the effects of globalization on urban form and urbanism in East Asia, focusing on how contemporary East Asian artists respond to transformations in the urban landscape as a result of economic restructuring in East Asian global cities. Sponsored by the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, the Center for Korean Studies, and the Asian Cultural Studies Working Group. For further information, contact Christine Hong (cjhong@berkeley.edu).
Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade
Ha-Joon Chang, Reader in the Political Economy of Development, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge
April 7, 2008
Center for Korean Studies, Center for Latin American Studies
Over the last 25 years, most developing countries have experienced a slowdown in growth, rising inequality and increased economic instability. The outcome is, Ha-Joon Chang contends, due to the policies imposed on them by the rich countries and the international organizations they control — free trade, free international investment, privatization, stronger protection of intellectual property rights and conservative macroeconomic policies. These are not the policies rich countries used when they themselves were developing countries nor are they policies used by more recent development success stories. Featuring Alexander Hamilton, the Lexus, Nokia mobile phone, his son, Orson Welles and an elephant, Chang's talk argues for a fundamental reform of the international economic system and for national policies focused on raising long-term productivity(mostly) in manufacturing.
Ha-Joon Chang is a Reader in the Political Economy of Development at Cambridge University and a fellow at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC. He is the author of Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective and Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism.
About Bad Samaritans: "The best riposte [to contemporary globalization] from the critics that I have seen." &8211; Paul Blustein, Washington Post Book World, February 17, 2008
Co-sponsored by the Center for Latin American Studies.
Rethinking the Characteristics of Traditional Historiography in Ancient China: 中国古代传统史学特点的再思考
Wu Huaiqi (吴怀祺), Professor, Institute of Historiography, School of History, Beijing Normal University
April 9, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies
中国古代传统史学具有自己的特点:
首先是中国传统史学具有的历史意识，这种历史意识虽然还没有达到近代历史意识的高度，但这种历史意识是把历史看作是有渊源变化的、并且在变化中又显示出阶段性的特征
再者，中国古代历史编纂学具有二重性特点；另外，古代很多史学家通过天人相互联系，也就是自然与社会相互联系，解释历史的发展和变化。
当然，还有其它重要历史观点，都值得我们重视和研究的。中国传统史学有优点，也有不足和消极方面的东西，如在历史变化见解上，有附会性解释历史运动的三统说、五行运转说，以及为了主观褒贬而扭曲历史真相，这又削弱了其历史意识的积极方面；在天人关系论中有天人感应论；等。
This lecture will be conducted in Chinese.
Impressions of the East: Treasures from the C. V. Starr East Asian Library
Deborah Rudolph, Senior Editor, East Asian Library
April 9, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies
From oracle bones to twentieth-century manuscripts, Impressions of the East presents selections from the Library's rare book collection in their technological and cultural contexts. Embedded in the descriptions of prints, maps, scrolls, and more is the history of the lands where the works originated and the ways in which they influenced each other. Opulently produced and brilliantly designed, the book brings excitement and scholarly insight to the print and manuscript traditions of East Asia.
Program followed by reception and book-signing.
The Internet Revolution in China
Xiao Qiang, Adjunct Professor, Graduate School of Journalism, University of California, Berkeley
April 9, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies, Osher Lifelong Learning Institute
Beginning in April, Berkeley will offer a unique preview of the Beijing Summer Olympics with a series of lectures, a symposium and in-depth magazine coverage of the historical and cultural meaning of this event to China and the World. The events are a collaboration among the California Alumni Association and California magazine, the Institute of East Asian Studies and the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute(OLLI @Berkeley). For more information, please contact: 510-642-9934.
The series is open to the public for a fee of $10 per lecture. Campus community with a Cal ID, CAA members with a membership card, and OLLI members are free. *Please RSVP to berkeley_olli@berkeley.edu*
Other programs in the OLLI @Berkeley Lecture Series: The Emerging Narrative of China:
April 16: Striking a Balance: Development and Conservation in Rural China Today — Mui Ho, Department of Architecture, University of California, Berkeley
April 23: China From Space: Cities, Land, and Preservation Policies — Peng Gong, College of Natural Resources, University of California, Berkeley
April 30: A History of Misunderstanding — Wen-hsin Yeh, Department of History, University of California, Berkeley
CSPAN Book Event: Challengers or Latecomers? How Chinese and Muslim Economies are Reshaping Capitalism
Loretta Napoleoni, Author, "Rogue Economics"
April 9, 2008
Institute of East Asian Studies, Institute of International Studies, Institute for Global Challenges and the Law, Religion, Politics and Globalization Program
In her book, Rogue Economics, Ms. Loretta Napoleoni examines the deleterious economic forces that have historically accompanied great epochal shifts. She argues that the explosion of the sex trade in Eastern Europe; the ascendancy of the hawala form of Islamic banking; and the transformations taking place in China as it tests, and at times reshapes, the rules of the global market, are all symptoms of an economic Pandora's box opened by this epochal shift.
Ms. Napoleoni is one of the world's leading experts on money laundering and terror financing. Her previous works include the bestselling Terror Inc: Tracing the Money Behind Global Terrorism, traced the economics of the terror networks and has been translated into 12 languages; her second book, Insurgent Iraq was an early look at the growing insurgency as led by al-Zarqawi.
Books will be sold and signed after the event
Chinese Voices
April 10, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Graduate School of Journalism
An hour-long screening of video vignettes followed by a question and answer session with digital journalists, presented by The Center for Digital TV and the World in association with UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism
Chinese Voices: A look at Chinese living an American experience in San Francisco, and those in the Pearl River Delta city of Guangzhou — all forging new identities as they search for opportunity, equity and meaning.
Separated by the Pacific Ocean, linked by cultural roots, nurtured by generations of migration and interchange, people in America and China consider new answers to old questions: Which society is more modern? More competitive? More comfortable? These are stories of ordinary people who follow their values on personal journeys that are wholesome, joyous and distressing.
San Francisco
Artistic Mixes by Laurie Burkitt: For more than 150 years, generations of Chinese immigrants have come to America and set up shop. Their small businesses have multiplied, straying far from laundries and restaurants, to enterprises that more deeply engage new American sensibilities. Shinmin Li has blended a unique art form with upscale tastes and created a thriving business.
Tradition by Cynthia Dizikes: He moved to San Francisco from southern China as a boy. He sees himself as an American, but says he still feels a responsibility to his Chinese roots. Now, Randy Deng wants to start his own family.
Property by Mason Cohn: Owning a home has motivated Americans across generations. But while a buy-first, think-later culture has put homes out of reach for many Americans, some of San Francisco's Chinese have cracked the real estate game. Down payments come from the top of the family tree. It's a story of hard work and shrewd sacrifice.
New Neighbors by Jason Witmer: In a search for affordable housing, many Chinese families have moved into black neighborhoods. Despite bouts of inflammatory rhetoric and fear, Chinese Americans and African Americans are learning to get along.
Fatherhood by Susa Lim: How do you transmit old-country cultural values? Frank Ung works hard to teach his children Chinese ways and hints at a discovery: his teenage son and daughter are both irretrievably American, and Chinese American.
Missing China by Brian Aguilar: Like most migrants, Xiao Lan Yu came to America in search of a better life. Slowly, her family's living situation has improved, thanks to hard work and study. Still, she wonders whether leaving China was the right decision.
Guangzhou
New Wealth by Laurie Burkitt: With China's economy growing at about 11 percent a year, most people remain poor, but a new middle class is emerging &8211; especially in the cities. Once prodigious savers, some people are joining a new consumer culture by spending more. One young woman &8211; with talent, pluck and a good education &8211; savors her buying power and upward mobility.
Separate and Unequal by Brian Aguilar: Over the last 20 years, an estimated 200 million rural Chinese have resettled in the cities they helped build. In Guangzhou, migrants make up a third of the population. Considered outsiders, the adults face discrimination and inequality. So do their children: most public schools won't educate them.
AIDS Ward by Mason Cohn: AIDS in China is often transmitted through risky behaviors &8211; mostly shooting drugs and unprotected sex. But fear of family shame keeps many suffering in secret. Society's failure to fully confront the stigma and the disease means some patients are left to die alone in hospital beds, bearing the scars of double lives their families could never face.
Remember the Wedding by Susa Lim: More money, fancier dreams and a traditional desire to memorialize a rite of passage have been a boon to wedding photography businesses across China. Couples often put on exotic costumes &8211; Eastern and Western. Photographer, Han Songlin captures the moment.
Risky Bets by Cynthia Dizikes: For droves of new individual investors in China, buying stocks can be a way to pass the time, or a chance to make a better life. But risk is always there. Some say they feel stressed out or trapped: sucked into a market that may lead to riches or losses.
Abandoned by Jason Witmer: Some workers who fuel China's manufacturing boom are tossed aside &8211; like broken, but replaceable parts &8211; once they are injured. Monitors of China's labor practices report that a widespread system of corruption lets companies ignore safety and compensation laws.
The Center for Digital TV and the World, a project of the Tides Center in San Francisco, is supported by gifts from The Skirball Foundation, Sony, Apple, and the Walter and Elise Haas Fund, with support for coverage in China from the Center for Chinese Studies, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Institute of East Asian Studies, Office of Resources for International and Area Studies, and the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley.
Collaboration and the Limits of Empire: The Korean Populist Reformers and the Japanese Colonization of Korea, 1896-1910
Yumi Moon, Assistant Professor of History, Stanford University
April 11, 2008
Center for Korean Studies
Yumi Moon will examine the Ilchinhoe, a Korean pro-Japanese organization during the Japanese protectorate period in Korea (1905-10). The Ilchinhoe has been remembered as a "puppet" of Japan in modern Korean history, and its pro-Japanese activities were belatedly investigated under a Korean law enacted in 2004. This talk revisits the identity of the Ilchinhoe by investigating its political campaigns for people's rights, its massive mobilization for tax resistance, and its tragic end, when the organization was caught between Japanese constraints on its reforms and increasing Korean animosity toward its members. This talk asks what the paradoxical trajectory of the Ilchinhoe tells us about collaboration, reform, and empire, and explains how that trajectory revises the history of the Japanese annexation of Korea in 1910.
Yumi Moon teaches modern Korean history in the Department of History at Stanford. She received her undergraduate and master's degrees from Seoul National University and her Ph.D. degree from Harvard. Her dissertation, "The Populist Contest: The Ilchinhoe Movement and the Japanese Colonization of Korea, 1896-1910," redefined the identity of the Ilchinhoe as an organization of populist reformers and explored how the group's democratic orientation contested the "reforms" of the Korean monarch Kojong and of the Japanese protectorate. She is currently transforming her dissertation into a book manuscript centered on the theme of collaboration in colonial situations. Her next research project may investigate assimilation and collaboration in colonial Korea (1910-1945) and reconsider the concept of colonial modernity in light of this investigation.
Striking a Balance: Development and Conservation in Rural China Today
Mui Ho, Lecturer, Department of Architecture, University of California, Berkeley
April 16, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies, Osher Lifelong Learning Center
Beginning in April, Berkeley will offer a unique preview of the Beijing Summer Olympics with a series of lectures, a symposium and in-depth magazine coverage of the historical and cultural meaning of this event to China and the World. The events are a collaboration among the California Alumni Association and California magazine, the Institute of East Asian Studies and the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI @Berkeley). For more information, please contact: 510-642-9934.
The series is open to the public for a fee of $10 per lecture. Campus community with a Cal ID, CAA members with a membership card, and OLLI members are free. *Please RSVP to berkeley_olli@berkeley.edu*
Other programs in the OLLI @Berkeley Lecture Series: The Emerging Narrative of China:
April 9: The Internet Revolution in China — Xiao Qiang, Graduate School of Journalism, University of California, Berkeley
April 23: China From Space: Cities, Land, and Preservation Policies — Peng Gong, College of Natural Resources, University of California, Berkeley
April 30: A History of Misunderstanding — Wen-hsin Yeh, Department of History, University of California, Berkeley
Origin of the Shingon Patriarchal Portraiture: Or, Disjunction between History and Theory
Ryûichi Abé, Japanese Religions, Harvard University
April 17, 2008
Center for Buddhist Studies, Center for Japanese Studies
This talk examines, first, the social and historical condition in which Kûkai produced the portraits of Nâgârjuna and Nâgabodhi in the twelfth year of the Kônin era (821), and, secondly, the validity of the theory of Shingon's Dharma transmission, the nondual transmission of the Matrix and Diamond Mandalas, which is said to be grounded in these paintings and Kûkai's narratives attached to each of these works. Although a few art historians have studied these portraits, there is not yet a thorough investigation on Kûkai's motive to commission the production of these paintings at this particular stage in his career. Professor Abé will focus his analysis in the relationship, on one hand, between these two portraits produced under Kûkai's supervision and the five patriarchal portraits Kûkai brought back from China, and, on the other, between the biographical narrative texts Kûkai prepared to be attached to the seven portraits. The concluding part of the talk considers Kûkai's production of the portraiture in relationship to his swiftly increasing visibility and public responsibility in the early Heian priestly and aristocratic circles.
Ryûichi Abé is the Reischauer Institute Professor of Japanese Religions at Harvard University. Until May 2005, he was Professor of Japanese religions and Buddhism of East Asia at Columbia University, where he received the Philip and Ruth Hettleman Award for distinguished teaching. Professor Abé, through his teaching and books, has made an important contribution to the Western understanding of Japanese Buddhism. His book on Kûkai underscores Kûkai's impact on 9th century Japanese society. At a time when Confucian discourse dominated Japan, Kûkai developed a "voice" for Buddhism. He has also written about Ryōkan, and Saichō. His publications include The Weaving of Mantra: Kûkai and the Construction of Esoteric Buddhist Discourse (1999), Great Fool: Zen Master Ryōkan: Poems, Letters, and Other Writings (1996, with Peter Haskel), and Saichō and Kûkai: A Conflict of Interpretations (1995).
The China Price: The True Cost of Chinese Competitive Advantage
Alexandra Harney, Former Editor, The Financial Times
April 17, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Center for Labor Research and Education
The China Price is a landmark eyewitness exposé about the consequences of China's ceaseless pursuit of economic growth, from unethical business practices to pollution to an epidemic of occupational diseases. Author Alexandra Harney takes readers into Chinese factories and their dormitories to show youths who have flocked from the countryside to take dangerous manufacturing jobs. She visits model factories, where rules on working hours and product safety are followed, as well as "shadow" factories (often operated under contract to the same owners) where anything goes in the drive to produce cheaper products. Harney also finds stirrings of change; aided by regional labor shortages, rising wages and intrepid activists. Chinese workers are demanding—and gradually winning—more rights.
Alexandra Harney worked as a reporter and editor at the Financial Times from 1998 to 2007. She has been reporting on Asia for most of the past decade and currently lives in Hong Kong.
China Town Hall: Local Connections, National Reflections
Norman J. Ornstein (Via webcast), Resident Scholar, American Enterprise Institute
Stephen A. Orlins (Webcast moderator), President, National Committee on U.S.-China Relations
Sidney Rittenberg (in-person), President, Rittenberg Associates, Inc.
April 17, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Berkeley China Initiative, National Committee on U.S.-China Relations
China Town Hall is a national day of programming on China involving 40 cities throughout the United States.
Mr. Ornstein's presentation, including real-time Q&A segment, will be webcast live starting promptly at 4:00 p.m. until approximately 4:45 p.m. PST. A "Question Kiosk" computer will be provided for local event attendees to submit their questions in real time. Mr. Rittenberg's presentation will follow the webcast at approximately 5:00 p.m.
Norman J. Ornstein is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. He also serves as an election analyst for CBS News and writes a weekly column called "Congress Inside Out" for Roll Call newspaper. He has written for the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, and other major publications, and regularly appears on television programs such as The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, Nightline, and Charlie Rose. He serves as senior counselor to the Continuity of Government Commission, working to ensure that our institutions of government can be maintained in the event of a terrorist attack on Washington. His campaign finance working group of scholars and practitioners helped shape the major law, known as McCain/Feingold, that reformed the campaign financing system. He is also co-directing a multi-year effort, the Transition to Governing Project, to create a better climate for governing in the era of the permanent campaign.
Mr. Ornstein is a member of the board of directors of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and the Campaign Legal Center, and of the board of trustees of the U.S. Capitol Historical Society. He was elected as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2004. His many books include The Permanent Campaign and Its Future, Intensive Care: How Congress Shapes Health Policy, The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track—all co-authored with Thomas E. Mann; and Debt and Taxes: How America Got Into Its Budget Mess and What to Do About It, with John H. Makin.
Steve Orlins has been President of the National Committee since May 1, 2005. Prior to becoming president, Mr. Orlins was the managing director of Carlyle Asia, one of Asia largest (USD 750M) private equity funds. Since its founding in 1999, he has been and remains the chairman of the Board of Taiwan Broadband Communications (TBC). TBC is now one of the three largest cable television companies in Taiwan with over 640,000 subscribers. Prior to joining Carlyle, Mr. Orlins was a senior advisor to AEA Investors Inc., a New York based leveraged buyout firm, with responsibility for AEA's business activities throughout Asia.
From 1983 to 1991, Mr. Orlins was with the investment banking firm of Lehman Brothers where he was a Managing Director from 1985 to 1991. From 1987 to 1990, he served as President of Lehman Brothers Asia. Based in Hong Kong, he supervised over 150 professionals with offices in Hong Kong, Korea, China, Taiwan, Thailand, Manila and Singapore. Prior to joining Lehman Brothers, Mr. Orlins practiced law with Coudert Brothers and Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison in New York, Hong Kong and Beijing.
From 1976 to 1979, Mr. Orlins served in the Office of the Legal Advisor of the United States Department of State, first in the Office of the Assistant Legal Advisor for Political-Military Affairs and then for East Asian and Pacific Affairs. While in that office, he was a member of the legal team that helped establish diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China. Mr. Orlins is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College and earned his law degree at Harvard Law School. He speaks Mandarin Chinese and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. In 1992, Mr. Orlins was the Democratic nominee for the United States Congress in New York's Third Congressional District.
Sidney Rittenberg is currently the President of Rittenberg Associates, Inc. Since 1986, he has been a senior advisor to major US and international corporations doing business in China. His clients included AIG, Intel, Nextel, Teledesic, Digital Equipment, ARCO, Hughes Aircraft, ICO, Pricewaterhouse Coopers, Ford, Nintendo USA, Trammell Crow, Prudential Insurance (UK), Levi Strauss, Hershey, United Conveyers, Dan Rather (CBS News), Billy Graham and Family, USIS, etc. He has been a partner in the consulting firms Index Group and Kamsky & Rittenberg. He was the Vice Chairman for Asia at Computerland Corporation. Mr. Rittenberg lived and worked in China for 35 years. He had worked with Chairman Mao Zedong (founder of the People's Republic of China) and was a friend of Zhou Enlai (late Premier of China). He was close enough to late premier Deng Xiaoping to persuade him to agree to his first television interview with a Westerner: Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes. He maintains close relationships with people in high places in Beijing, as well as in Washington D.C. Mr. Rittenberg graduated from the University of North Carolina and attended postgraduate studies at Stanford University. He is a Director of the Washington State China Relations Council, and a member of Rotary Club International.
Symposium on Literati Buddhism in Middle-Period China
April 19, 2008
Center for Buddhist Studies, Center for Chinese Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies, Townsend Center for the Humanities
This conference seeks to examine the intersection between elite culture and Buddhism in the Tang, Song, and Yuan dynasties. This relationship has several dimensions: literati who pursued Buddhism as a complement or alternative to state-sanctioned studies; engagement with "Confucian" learning by Buddhist monks; the role of Buddhist sites in literary and artistic imaginations; the use of poetry and calligraphy by Buddhist monks; the role of Buddhist monasteries, temples, and cloisters in local society; and the material instantiations of the relations between monks and the literati.
The Nuts and Bolts of Social Science Research in China
Jenny Chio, PhD. Candidate, Anthropology, UC Berkeley
Rachel Stern, PhD. Candidate, Polical Science, UC Berkeley
Leslie Wang, PhD. Candidate, Sociology, UC Berkeley
April 22, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies
Rachel Stern, Leslie Wang, and Jenny Chio will hold a panel discussion and Q&A session by and for grad students on the practicalities of research in China. They will share insights and tips—gleaned from their own time spent doing field work (roughly 2006-2007), working on fairly different topics and with differing approaches—on such topics as getting a visa/research affiliation, dealing with human subjects, working with a RA, websites to help you on the way, etc.
Buddhism and Technology: Attitudes, Philosophy, and Practices
Marcus Bingenheimer, Dharma Drum Buddhist College, Taiwan
April 22, 2008
Center for Buddhist Studies, Center for Japanese Studies
Information technology slowly changes the ways of research and teaching in the Humanities. As new forms of scholarly publication and evaluation emerge, scholars in the Humanities are challenged to rethink the role of technology for their field. Taking cues from the philosophy of technology in the Western tradition, especially that of Martin Heidegger, this talk will probe the possibilities of a dialog between Buddhism and technology. The presentation will make the case for a critical and reflective attitude towards the use of technology and the chance for Buddhist Studies as academic discipline to play a mediating role in the emerging dialog.
Marcus Bingenheimer's research interest lies mainly in the history of Buddhism and Buddhist historiography. Beyond that he is engaged in the task of editing and supervising the production of digital Buddhist texts and Buddhist study tools. Dr. Bingenheimer has published on Japanese and Chinese monks of the 7th and 8th century, the Chinese Buddhist historiographer Yinshun (1906-2005) and contemporary Buddhist whole-body relics in Taiwan. He has contributed an entry to the DDB on Yinshun.
China From Space: Cities, Land, and Preservation Policies
Peng Gong, Professor, College of Natural Resources, University of California, Berkeley
April 23, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies, Osher Lifelong Learning Institute
Beginning in April, Berkeley will offer a unique preview of the Beijing Summer Olympics with a series of lectures, a symposium and in-depth magazine coverage of the historical and cultural meaning of this event to China and the World. The events are a collaboration among the California Alumni Association and California magazine, the Institute of East Asian Studies and the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI @Berkeley). For more information, please contact: 510-642-9934.
The series is open to the public for a fee of $10 per lecture. Campus community with a Cal ID, CAA members with a membership card, and OLLI members are free. *Please RSVP to berkeley_olli@berkeley.edu*
Other programs in the OLLI @Berkeley Lecture Series: The Emerging Narrative of China:
April 9: The Internet Revolution in China — Xiao Qiang, Graduate School of Journalism, University of California, Berkeley
April 16: Striking a Balance: Development and Conservation in Rural China Today — Mui Ho, Department of Architecture, University of California, Berkeley
April 30: A History of Misunderstanding — Wen-hsin Yeh, Department of History, University of California, Berkeley
Heritage Language Development and Placement of College-Level Korean Learners
Sung-Ock Sohn, Professor, Asian Languages and Cultures, UCLA
April 25, 2008
Center for Korean Studies
Like all immigrant groups, Korea-born and second generation Korean-Americans lose competency in their heritage language through successive generations. The attrition of Korean language skills in children is often exacerbated by parental preferences and schooling practices. For example, in Los Angeles, Korean-speaking parents often prefer to enroll their children in all-English programs. This study describes the documented success of a program that helps children maintain and develop knowledge of their heritage language while acquiring high levels of English and academic skills. Furthermore, this study discusses the socio-linguistic profiles of English-speaking Korean heritage learners who enroll in a college-level Korean class. Using empirical research based on the heritage learners' linguistic profiles, it examines the importance of a placement decision and pedagogical approaches.
Enigma of an Absence: Buddhist Archaeology, Art and Inscriptions in the Transit Zones of Xinjiang and Northern Pakistan
Jason Neelis, University of Florida
April 25, 2008
Center for Buddhist Studies, Center for Chinese Studies, Center for Buddhist Studies Silk Road Initiative
A network of passageways through the upper Indus region of northern Pakistan directly connected the Northern Route (uttarāpatha) of South Asia with branches of the so-called Silk Routes in the southern Tarim Basin of Xinjiang. These capillary routes were instrumental in the cross-cultural transmission of Buddhism as well as commercial exchanges, migrations, diplomatic contacts, and military expeditions throughout the first millennium CE. However, the dearth of archaeological remains of Buddhist monasteries in Xinjiang before ca. 250 CE and in the upper Indus before the visit of Faxian shortly after 400 CE is enigmatic. The late appearance of residential monasteries in the intermediate regions between Buddhist centers in the northwestern Indian subcontinent, western Central Asia, and China poses challenges to the standard model of point-to-point diffusion from South Asia to western Central Asia and along the silk routes of eastern Central Asia to East Asia. In "Buddhism Across Boundaries: The Foreign Input" Erik Zürcher rejects the model of "contact expansion" as an insufficient explanation for the early phases of the establishment of Buddhism in China by drawing attention to the fact that the first Iranian and western Central Asian foreign monks and translators belonged to a Buddhist community in Loyang about a century before Buddhist monasteries appear in the Tarim Basin. Zürcher develops an alternative model of "long-distance transmission" to account for hybrid forms of Later Han period Chinese Buddhism, which resulted from irregular contact with Buddhist cultures in western Central Asia and South Asia because the transit zone of Xinjiang did not have sufficient economic surpluses to support residential communities of monks and nuns until later periods. This presentation will reassess the model of long-distance transmission and its application to Xinjiang and the Northern Areas of Pakistan by examining early Buddhist archaeology, art (including rock drawings), graffiti inscriptions, and other written documents. An attempt will be made to extend this model for the transmission of Buddhism to other areas of the Buddhist world.
Jason Neelis received his Ph.D. in Asian Languages and Literature from the University of Washington with a dissertation on long-distance trade and transmission of Buddhism through Northern Pakistan. He is an Assistant Professor for South Asian Buddhism in the Department of Religion at the University of Florida. While specializing in the study of early Buddhist inscriptions and manuscripts, he seeks to understand patterns in the cross-cultural transmission of Buddhism between South Asia and Central Asia. Recent publications include "La Vieille Route Reconsidered: Alternative Paths for Early Transmission of Buddhism Beyond the Borderlands of South Asia" in the Bulletin of the Asia Institute and "Passages to India: Śaka and Kuṣāṇa Migrations in Historical Contexts" in On the Cusp of an Era: Art in the Pre-Kuṣāṇa World.
Beijing's Red Guard Movement: The Cultural Revolution in Retrospect
Andrew Walder, Sociology, Stanford University
April 25, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies
Professor Andrew Walder, who has taught at Harvard, Columbia, and Hong Kong University, and is now a member of the Sociology Department of Stanford University, will describe the main findings of his forthcoming book, Fractured Crusade: The Beijing Red Guard Movement. He will focus on the surprises that he encountered about the Red Guard movement; what he expected to find and how his understanding changed in the course of his research. The Red Guard movement was a form of "bureaucratic politics with mass participation" — manipulated but not controlled by elite sponsors, driven by the divergent interests of student groups but heavily shaped by Chinese institutions even as they were thrown into disarray. Three UC Berkeley faculty will act as discussants: Hong Yung Lee in Political Science, author of a definitive book on the Cultural Revolution; Xin Liu in Anthropology, and Kevin O'Brien in Political Science, both experts on protests in China and the formation of the modern individual. The event will be moderated by UC Berkeley History Professor Wen-hsin Yeh, who will present a forum not only on the subject of the Cultural Revolution but also on the question of how scholars form their views on large historical questions.
The Art of Translation
April 25, 2008
Institute of East Asian Studies
This symposium features language and literature specialists from various UC Berkeley departments and beyond academia in conversation on the art of translation.
Participants:
Keynote speaker and roundtable moderator: Robert Alter
Classical Chinese: Paula Varsano and Jeffrey Yang
Modern Chinese: Andrew Jones and Karen Kingsbury
French: Nicholas Paige and Donald Nicholson-Smith
Indonesian, Dutch: Jeroen Dewulf and Rudolf Mrazek
Japanese: H. Mack Horton and Dennis Washburn
Vietnamese: Nguyen Nguyet Cam and Linh Dinh
This symposium is sponsored by: Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Center for Southeast Asia Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies, Jewish Studies Program, Dutch Studies Program, Department of Comparative Literature, Department of French, Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies.
A History of Misunderstanding
Wen-hsin Yeh, Professor, Department of History, University of California, Berkeley
April 30, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies, Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, California Magazine
From my very first visit to China in 1984, I found myself wrestling with a subtle exercise in translation, not so much between English and Chinese, as between Right and Left. It has been all too easy these days, perhaps, for us to overlook, when interacting with our friends in China, that there is a government and a history under the Chinese Communist Party that operates with assumptions different from Western liberal democracies and yet is proud of what it has accomplished while determined to carry on. My talk will focus on the "cognitive dissonance" that I've experienced and observed in my decades of interaction with China — all the while searching unfailingly for bettering understanding.
This lecture concludes the OLLI @Berkeley Lecture Series: The Emerging Narrative of China and opens the symposium, A Beijing Olympics Primer: Place, Performance, and Performative Space, which will be held on Thursday, May 1 at the Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley.
The series is open to the public for a fee of $10 per lecture. Campus community with a Cal ID, CAA members with a membership card, and OLLI members are free. *Please RSVP to berkeley_olli@berkeley.edu*
Ecological Design and the Paradox of the Proxy: Lessons from Bill McDonough's Huangbaiyu
Shannon May, PhD Candidate, Anthropology, UC Berkeley
April 30, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning
A Beijing Olympics Primer: Place, Performance, and Performative Space
May 1, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies, California Magazine, Osher Lifelong Learning Institute
On the eve of the Olympics, Berkeley faculty, guest scholars, and contributors to a California magazine special issue on China assess this historical moment in Beijing from three perspectives: the rapidly evolving cityscape, environmental dynamics, and, in the context of a changing society, traditional attitudes and values relating to self, body, and performance.
A keynote address by History Professor Wen-hsin Yeh entitled "A History of Misunderstanding" will take place the evening prior in 150 University Hall as part of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute's "Emerging Narratives of China."
WELCOME
Wen-hsin Yeh, Director, Institute of East Asian Studies
Kerry Tremain, Editor, California Magazine
Susan Hoffman, Executive Director, Osher Lifelong Learning Center
PLACE: CHINA'S ENVIRONMENTAL CHALLENGES
Chair:Thomas Gold (Director, Berkeley China Initiative, and Associate Professor, Sociology, University of California, Berkeley)
Panelists:
Robert Collier (Visiting Scholar, Center for Environmental Public Policy, Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley): The Case for Centralized Environmental Regulation
Understanding why China has become the world's #1 source of greenhouse gas emissions is not only a crucial policy challenge for all nations, but is the key to understanding why climate change is accelerating so fast. China's anarchic, uber-capitalist economic explosion has become so uncontrollable, so far beyond the grasp of the Communist government, that the international community's primary task in setting an agenda for fighting global warming may simply be to help central government officials in Beijing regain control of the nation's economy.
Chi-Yuen Wang (Earth & Planetary Science, University of California, Berkeley): Water scarcity and the South-North Water Transfer Project
With the unprecedented pace and scale of socioeconomic growth in China, adjustment problems to water scarcity on the Northern China Plain are greatly exacerbated. The South-to-North Water Transfer Project aims at alleviating some of these problems and, if completed, will deliver 40~50 cubic kilometers of water from the Yangtze drainage basin to the highly water-stressed North China plain. Construction of the central route was kicked off in 2005 and is scheduled to begin flowing to Beijing this summer before the upcoming Olympic Games. The western route, on the other hand, is still under debate. In this talk I will discuss, from a geologic and environmental point of view, some problems with the construction of this route.
Nan Zhou (China Energy Group, LBNL): Strategies for low-carbon development
Between 1980 and 2000 energy use/GDP declined in China due to strong energy efficiency policies; however, during China's transition to a market-based economy in the 1990s, many of the country's energy efficiency programs were dismantled and between 2002 and 2005 China's energy use increased significantly, growing faster than GDP. Continuation of this trend in increased energy consumption relative to GDP growth — given China's stated goal of again quadrupling GDP between 2000 and 2020 — will lead to significant demand for energy, most of which is coal-based. In 2005, realizing the significance of this situation, the Chinese government announced an ambitious goal of reducing energy consumption per unit of GDP by 20% between 2005 and 2010. One of the key initiatives for realizing this goal is the Top-1000 Energy-Consuming Enterprises program. This presentation intends to review the historic trend and current status of energy consumption in China, describe the Top-1000 program in detail, and provide analysis on whether China can achieve its goal.
Kristen McDonald (Director, China Rivers Project): Beyond the Three Gorges: China's River Conservation Challenges
China has the most number of dams of any country in the world, and many of its rivers are polluted to the point of being unsafe for human contact. 2008 summer Olympics host Beijing relies on ground water supplies that subside by meters every year. What are the governance challenges to effective freshwater management in China? Dr. McDonald presents finding from field research in Yunnan Province, and the work of China Rivers Project, an organization she founded to promote river conservation for people and wildlife in China.
SPACE: NEW DIRECTIONS IN CHINA'S BUILT ENVIRONMENT
Chair: Harrison Fraker (Dean, College of Environmental Design, University of California, Berkeley)
Panelists:
Harrison Fraker (Dean, College of Environmental Design, University of California, Berkeley): Neighborhood models for sustainable development
The Qingdao Sustainable Neighborhood Project (QSNP) is an alternative to the problems faced by China's typical "gated super block" development model. The Qingdao EcoBlock uses an integrated whole-systems approach to generate all its energy from on-site renewables, to recycle all of its water and to recycle over 80% of its waste for on-site uses. In addition, the EcoBlock is designed to provide convenient pedestrian and bike access to a new bus rapid transit system located on a major adjoining arterial. The EcoBlock's whole-systems approach is flexible and adaptable to multiple local conditions and climates and is widely replicable throughout China. If the Qingdao EcoBlock's whole-systems approach works as well as the pre- feasibility study indicates, it will be the first (almost) self- sustaining neighborhood in the world and could help lead China to a more sustainable future.
Reagan Louie (artist/photographer): Building the New Beijing, 1980-2007
Louie will show photos of Beijing made over a 27-year period, a chronicle of its transformation from a northern capitol to a global center. The pictures will show not only the city's physical changes but also the effects of those changes on its citizens.
Lanchih Po (Visiting Professor, International and Area Studies and East Asian Languages and Cultures, University of California, Berkeley): Spatial Structure, "Green" Development, and the "New" Courtyard House
The construction on a massive scale of Olympics facilities has had a significant impact on Beijing's spatial structure. As infrastructure and amenities continue to be concentrated on the north side of the city, more and more real estate development has led to the city to sprawl further north, on the one hand, and widened the pre-existing disparity between the north and south of the city, on the other. In addition, huge new man-made green spaces surrounding the Olympics facilities have rendered open space a luxury commodity in the city's concrete jungle, and helped to promote the consumption of "green" ideology. The spaces at the core of Beijing's tradition courtyard houses along historic hutongs, however, are being gutted and rebuilt as gated homes in traditional guise custom-made for China's millionaires.
Renee Chow (Architecture, University of California, Berkeley): Progress and Practice
In the re-making of Chinese cities and countryside, officials, developers, planners and architects envision progress for a country that has led to unprecedented physical change. International design practices have been invited to propel China from third world status to leading the 21st century. These global practices are learned in one setting and patched into others without translation, without regard for each city's uniqueness, coherence or cultural practices. Instead, this substitutional method finds its value in how explicitly each piece can separate itself from its context, expressing its own content. In Beijing, as in cities throughout the world, the result is a fragmenting urbanism. This talk describes alternative paradigms for practice and progress in China.
PERFORMANCE: CONCEPTUALIZATIONS OF THE BODY IN CHINA
Chair: Wen-hsin Yeh (Professor, History, University of California, Berkeley)
Panelists:
David Johnson (Professor, History, University of California, Berkeley): No losers or winners: public spectacle in premodern China in light of the Beijing Olympics
There were virtually no athletic competitions in traditional China, but there were public spectacles in the form of (among other things) temple festivals, with their processions and operas. Nor was there nationalism until the nations of European with their ethos of competition, symbolized in classical times by the Olympic games and gladitorial entertainments, forced on China the concept of the nation, and its dark shadow, nationalism.
Andrew Lam (writer and journalist): The new cultural revolution: sex and shame
Ancestral worship is on the wane as many now flock to the temple of the body. The We of tradition defined by proper behavior and relationships is ceding to the Me of the new generation, one defined by sex.
Margaret Jenkins (choreographer and artistic director): Other Suns: a collaborative Chinese investigation of balance and imbalance
In 2004 I spent three weeks in China: Hong Kong, Guangzhou, and Beijing. During this time I taught classes in technique and gave workshops in the creative process to three very distinct modern dance companies. I had the opportunity to see choreography and to interact with the dancers. This experience not only launched my next project: Other Suns, a collaboration between my Company and the Guangdong Modern Dance Company, but provoked many thoughts about the nature of the training of the body in China as well as the growing creative endeavors of those new to giving voice to individual interpretations.
Special Spring Workshop: The Beijing Olympics
May 2, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies
Planning for the 2008 Olympics has literally changed the face of Beijing. Urban image, construction, event-led city marketing, the society of spectacle, and the civilizing process through city construction have radically transformed daily life and public perceptions of the capital. This workshop will discuss aspects of this change, and the economic, political, and social implication of Olympics-led urban renewal in Beijing.
View this event online
Anne-Marie Broudehoux, Associate Professor, School of Design, University of Quebec at Montreal: "Building the Dream: The Making of Beijing's Olympic Image" — This presentation addresses Beijing's urban transformation in the context of the 2008 Olympic Games. It examines how the Olympics have been instrumentalized to both legitimize and accelerate an important urban image construction program initiated in the 1990s, which sought to modernize the Chinese capital and change the global perception of the city and its inhabitants. This paper investigates two main aspects of this beautification program, one focusing on the city's physical landscape, the other one concerned with Beijing social-cultural image. In many ways, the Olympics have allowed Beijing to reprioritize its urban agenda, turning the city into a model of event-led urban regeneration, and acting as a catalyst to fast track major infrastructures investments and redevelopment projects that strongly reconfigured the city. The Games also facilitated the development of city-marketing strategies, with the construction of high-visibility iconic projects and neighborhood re-branding initiatives. Simultaneously, the Olympics enabled the pursuit of a social reform and disciplining program, and hastened the civilization process that sought to turn Beijing residents into modern citizens. Merging Olympic ideals with notions of a "harmonious civilization" in official propaganda eased state efforts to transform social behavior and reshape the body to fit global expectations of civility. The Olympics also represent a powerful tool of pacification in a moment of rising instability, and dissidence, allowing diverging interests to unite around a great national endeavor. Through a series of short case-studies, this paper assesses some of the social, cultural and economic impacts of these image construction programs, in terms of socio-spatial polarization, displacements and evictions, and loss of civil liberties and citizenship rights. It also investigates what kinds of response these two programs have elicited, including diverse forms of resistance by different categories of actors within local society.
You-tien Hsing, Associate Professor, Geography, UC Berkeley: "From Property Rights to Residents' Rights: Urban Construction and Grassroots Resistance in Beijing" — In this presentation I will focus on inner city residents' resistance against forced eviction, inadequate relocation and unfair compensation under Beijing's massive urban redevelopment projects since the early 2000s, especially the redevelopment projects initiated in the name of the 2008 Olympics. I will analyze their framing of grievances, their strategies of mobilization, the transformation of their demands, and the political, social, and territorial implications of their mobilization. I argue that as urban mobilizations evolved, the demand of narrowly-defined property rights by pre-revolution private homeowners was broadened into demands of urban residents' social rights to the livelihood in the city.
Youjeong Oh, Graduate Student, Geography, UC Berkeley: "State- and Citizen-driven Nationalisms in Mega Sport Events: Comparison of the 1988 Olympics in Seoul and the 2002 World Cup Game between South Korea and Japan" — The Seoul Olympic Games played a significant role in political transformation, international relations and national development in South Korea. Held in 1998 the Seoul Olympics had political and social impacts on Korean society, although its role in urban image construction and real estate development was not as fully manifested as it is in the case of Beijing's 2008 Olympics. The 1988 Olympics in Seoul was a part of the discourse of democratization in South Korea since the "June29 declaration." After the massive public uprising in 1987, the June29 declaration was made in order to reduce the possibility of jeopardizing the 1988 Olympics. The declaration also paved the way for a direct presidential election after long military dictatorship. The 1988 Olympics in Seoul helped South Korea show its economic success to the world. It also served as a vehicle to establish economic and political connections with the post Socialist blocs. The South Korean government also used the Games to mobilize citizens to "beautify Seoul," and to be disciplined supporters and participants of the Games under the official discourse of "for the success of the Olympic." I call it a state-driven nationalism embedded in the 1988 Olympics in Seoul. In comparison, the World Cup game in 2002 between South Korea and Japan could be seen as a citizen-driven nationalism shaping and was shaped by a mega sport event. In many ways, the S. Korea-Japan Game was an even more explosive event, with a more profound social impact than the Olympics. The citizen-driven nationalism manifested during the world cup game has a lot to say about the complex politics of nationalism and its varied and sometimes contradictory discourses in the transformation of South Korea from the 1990s to the 2000s.
Subtitling Can be Disturbing: Memories of Agano and Abusive Translation
Abe Markus Nornes, Screen Arts & Culture/Asian Languages & Cultures, Unviersity of Michigan
May 2, 2008
Center for Japanese Studies, East Asian Languages and Cultures, Film Studies, Berkeley Film Seminar
In 1992, director Sato Makoto released Living on the River Agano, a documentary closely examined the impact of Minamata Disease on a rural community in the mountains of Niigata. It was the result of several years spent living with the old farmers in the area. Ten years later, Sato and his cameraman returned to Niigata to renew their friendships with the farmers — at least those that had survived in the intervening years, and on this occasion, they made another film Memories of Agano (2004). These two films posed a range of challenges to the subtitler, beginning with the remarkably thick dialect of Niigata. Sato wanted his sequel to steadfastly resist the reduction of these people to the Disease, deciding that his goals could be best served by forcing spectators to listen to how people spoke rather than simply what they were saying. This posed a novel challenge to the English subtitler. Nornes used Memories of Agano as an opportunity to bring his theorization of an "abusive subtitling" into thorough practice. After screening his version of Memories of Agano, Nornes will discuss his collaboration with Sato. Abé Markus Nornes is the author of Cinema Babel (Minnesota UP), a theoretical and historical look at the role of translation in film history. He also wrote Forest of Pressure: Ogawa Shinsuke and Postwar Japanese Documentary and Japanese Documentary Film: From the Meiji Era to Hiroshima (both Minnesota UP). He co-edited Japan-American Film Wars (Routledge), In Praise of Film Studies (Kinema Club), and many film festival retrospective catalogs. He is on the editorial boards of Documentary Box (Japan), International Studies in Documentary, and Mechadamia and has been co-owner of the internet newsgroup KineJapan since its inception.
Still Life
Advance Tickets $12.50: (510) 642-5249
May 6, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, 51st San Francisco International Film Festival at PFA Theater
The Role of Innovation in the Transformation of Taiwan to a Technology-based Economy, 1975 to 2000
Otto C.C. Lin, President and CEO, China Nansha Technology Enterprises, Ltd., Hong Kong
May 6, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies, Center for Studies in Higher Education
During the last quarter of the the 20th century, Taiwan has been transformed from an agriculture-based to a technology-driven economy. This economic progress has provided the needed resources and stability for political reform. Thus Taiwan has advanced from an oligarchy to a democracy, a first in China's 5000 years history. Taiwan's development model was a subject of considerable interest worldwide.
What has powered these transformations? What are the underlying causes of the "Taiwan Miracle?" Are there lessons to be learned for countries or economies that at present exist in a state similar to the Taiwan of the 1970s? Many analyses have suggested the key role played by the national innovation system (NIS) in Taiwan. The innovation system has enabled the institutional players to work efficiently with synergy.
This seminar will attempt to present the key elements of the innovation system in Taiwan and the leadership role it play in the development.
Berkeley Students Working in China on the Future of a Water Village in the Pearl River Delta and on the Grand Canal in Hangzhou
Peter Bosselmann, Professor, City and Regional Planning, Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning, UC Berkeley
May 7, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning
Up the Yangtze
Advance Tickets $12.50: (510) 642-5249
May 8, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, 51st San Francisco International Film Festival at PFA
Exploiting the Tension between the Transnational and National Spheres in Korean Hip-hop
Donna Kwon, Visiting Assistant Professor, Music, Lawrence University
May 9, 2008
Center for Korean Studies
Since the emergence of Seo Taiji and the Boys in the early 1990s, many Korean hip-hop and pop groups have sought to create cultural continuity in their work by drawing from explicitly Korean sources. This trend has persisted in the work of One Sun, Drunken Tiger, MC Sniper and even in recent collaborations with samulnori drumming master Kim Duk-Soo in his performances with Korean B-boys, DJs and rappers. I would argue that this ongoing impulse to engage intentionally with Korean expressive elements is a distinguishing characteristic of Korean hip-hop and illustrates a strong desire to maintain a national flow in the music, even with the continuing influence of pan-regional and transnational sounds and forces. With this in mind, I would like to first identify some of the challenges that Korean artists have faced in adapting Korean expressive elements to hip-hop; these include differences in language, socio-cultural attitudes, rhythmic patterns, melodies, timbres and movement styles. I will then focus the rest of my analysis on how Korean artists have struggled to articulate and exploit potential areas of compatibility and tension between the "transnational" and "national" spheres: reconciling hip-hop beats with Korean rhythmic cycles or jangdan, distorted guitars with the sound of a wailing taepyeongso, synthesized sounds with the delicate, flexible timbre of the gayageum, and the rich rhyming flow of American rap with a language that features a fundamentally different grammatical structure and poetic style. I will also discuss other engagements with Korean sources including the use of vernacular phrases and melodies drawn from folksongs, the indexing of earlier Korean popular genres, and sampling from Korean film scores. My intention is to provide a more nuanced view of the ways in which artists exploit the tensions between contrasting expressive elements to project varying national, regional and transnational sensibilities and identities.
The Practice of Photographing 'Model Minorities' in Chinese Tourism
Jenny Chio, PhD Candidate, Anthropology, UC Berkeley
May 9, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Tourism Studies Working Group, Graduate Assembly
Critique, Responsibility, and Performative Rights
Judith Butler, Rhetoric/Comparative Literature, University of California at Berkeley
May 12, 2008
Center for Japanese Studies
Judith Butler is Maxine Elliot Professor in the Departments of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley.
Professor Butler received her Ph.D. in Philosophy from Yale University in 1984, and is the author of numerous works that include Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (Routledge, 1990), Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative (Routledge, 1997), Antigone's Claim: Kinship Between Life and Death (Columbia University Press, 2000), and Hegemony, Contingency, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left, (with Ernesto Laclau and Slavoj Zizek, Verso Press, 2000). In 2004, she published a collection of writings on war's impact on language and thought entitled Precarious Life: Powers of Violence and Mourning with Verso Press. That same year, The Judith Butler Reader appeared (edited by Sara Salih, Blackwell Publishers). Among Professor Butler's most recent books is Who Sings the Nation-State?: Language, Politics, Belonging (co-authored with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Seagull Books, 2007). She continues to write on cultural and literary theory, philosophy, psychoanalysis, feminism, and sexual politics.
Judith Butler's translated works in Japanese 『ジェンダー・トラブル — フェミニズムとアイデンティティの攪乱』 竹村和子 訳(青土社, 1999 年) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, (Routledge, 1990)
『触発する言葉 — 言語・権力・行為体』(岩波書店, 2004 年) 竹村和子訳 Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative, (Routledge, 1997)
『アンティゴネーの主張 — 問い直される親族関係』竹村和子訳（青土社, 2002 年) Antigone's Claim: Kinship between Life & Death, (Columbia University Press, 2000)
『偶発性・ヘゲモニー・普遍性 — 新しい対抗政治への対話』竹村和子・ 村山敏勝 訳（青土社, 2002 年)Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left, with Ernesto Laclau and Slavoj Zizek, (Verso, 2000.)
『生のあやうさ — 哀悼と暴力の政治学 』 本橋哲也 訳 (以文社, 2007 年) Precarious Life: the Powers of Mourning and Violence, (Verso, 2004)
The Maruyama Lectures are named in honor of the late Maruyama Masao (1914-96), historian of East Asian political thought and one of the most influential political thinkers in twentieth-century Japan. The series brings to the university important scholars and thinkers who will offer reflections on the problem of political engagement and responsibility in modern times, which was the central and overriding concern in Maruyama's work.
This series is supported by a grant from the Konishi Foundation for International Exchange, Tokyo
Critique, Responsibility, and Performative Rights
Judith Butler, Maxine Elliot Professor of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature, UC Berkeley
May 13, 2008
Center for Japanese Studies
Reservation required. Contact: 510-642-3156 or cjs@berkeley.edu.
Cal Japan Day
May 17, 2008
Center for Japanese Studies
Celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Center for Japanese Studies at UC Berkeley!
UC Berkeley's Center for Japanese Studies (CJS) is one of the oldest Japanese Studies centers in the United States, with internationally recognized strengths in Japanese history, literature, political science, religion, anthropology, and art history. CJS has hosted numerous historic conferences and visiting scholars from Japan and other countries, funded our best-in-the-nation Japanese collection in the C.V. Starr East Asian Library, distributed research grants to hundreds of graduate students and faculty, and sponsored a wide range of events to introduce Japan to Berkeley and the larger community in the San Francisco Bay Area.
To celebrate our 50th anniversary, we are inviting Cal alumni and others with an interest in Japan back to campus for Cal Japan Day. This will officially launch a year of 50th anniversary celebrations with exciting events such as a reading by the novelist, Murakami Haruki, coming up in the Fall.
Rakugo: Japanese Sit-down Comedy in English
Kaishi Katsura, Ambassador, Ministry of Culture, Japan
May 17, 2008
Center for Japanese Studies
What is Rakugo? Rakugo can be best described as Japanese sit-down comic story telling, with a history of about 400 years. The performer sits on a small cushion in front of the audience and acts out stories consisting of conversations among several characters.
Dressed in traditional formal Japanese clothes (Kimono) and usually equipped with a paper fan (Sensu) and hand towel (Tenugui). The performer uses these items to help act out the story. There are about 300 popular classic Rakugo today, and after a few hundred years, people still find new laughter in them.
Traditional Rakugo comedian and current cultural ambassador for Japan, Kaishi Katsura performs an entire cast of traditional Japanese characters from the comfort of his cushion. With only the help of his fan, Katsura enacts the voices, faces, and activities of a range of people such as geisha, samurai, merchants, and ninja. He will perform some traditional pieces as well as his own original stories. Enjoy this unique art with Kaishi Katsura, one of the world's top performers of English Rakugo.
Kaishi Katsura started his career as a professional Rakugo performer in 1994 and started presenting Rakugo in English in 1997. He has given more than 200 performances in 12 different countries. In 2007, Katsura was appointed by the Japanese Ministry of Culture as its cultural exchange ambassador. He will be on a nationwide tour of English Rakugo in the United States from April to September 2008. Do not miss this unique opportunity.
$15 — General Public; $10 — Student
Please send a check payable to UC Regents to Center for Japanese Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 2223 Fulton Street, CA 94704-2318.
The Mission
Johnnie To (Hong Kong, 1999, 81 mins)
Advance Tickets: (510) 642-5249
May 29, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Pacific Film Archive
Fulltime Killer
Johnnie To, Wai Ka-fai (Hong Kong, 2001, 102 mins)
Advance Tickets: (510) 642-5249
May 29, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Pacific Film Archive
Goddesses: Prints by Mayumi Oda
June 1 – September 15, 2008
Center for Buddhist Studies, Center for Japanese Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies
Shaped by training in traditional Japanese arts and informed by contemporary concerns, Oda's "Goddesses" interprets the Buddhist pantheon with a feminine flair. Environmentally aware and encompassing in her religious vision, Oda's vibrant compositions bring to life an array of icons from household gods to Buddhism's supreme dieties.
Mayumi Oda's Artist's Talk will be held on Friday, September 12, 2008 at 5:30 pm.
Culture and Health in Nineteenth Century Japan
June 1 – August 29, 2008
Center for Japanese Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies, ORIAS (Office of Resources for International and Area Studies)
Disease, medicine, and health through the lens of artistic production illuminate cultural attitudes and beliefs current in nineteenth century Japan. Selected digital reproductions of woodblock prints in the collection of the University of California, San Francisco Library offer lively, imaginative, and revealing views of an era when Japan was not only coping with traditional scourges, but grappling with new attitudes and approaches to medicine as Japan opened its doors to the West. The full collection can be viewed online here. This exhibit is presented in conjunction with the ORIAS summer teachers' workshop "Pestilence and Public Health."
Running on Karma
Johnnie To, Wai Ka-fai (Hong Kong/China, 2003, 93 mins)
Advance Tickets: (510) 642-5249
June 4, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Pacific Film Archive
Throw Down
Johnnie To (Hong Kong, 2004, 81 mins)
Advance Tickets: (510) 642-5249
June 11, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Pacific Film Archive
Last Descent of the Yangtze River 'Great Bend': geology, water politics and the history of exploration in China's Grand Canyons
Leif Karlstrom, Grad Student, Geology, UC Berkeley
June 11, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Department of Earth and Planetary Science
Breaking News
Johnnie To (Hong Kong, 2004, 90 mins)
Advance Tickets: (510) 642-5249
June 12, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Pacific Film Archive
Election
Johnnie To (Hong Kong, 2005, 100 mins)
Advance Tickets: (510) 642-5249
June 18, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Pacific Film Archive
Triad Election
Johnnie To (Hong Kong/China,2006, 92 mins)
Advance Tickets: (510) 642-5249
June 18, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Pacific Film Archive
Exiled
Johnnie To (Hong Kong, 2006, 110 mins)
Advance Tickets: (510) 642-5249
June 21, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Pacific Film Archive
Olympics and Tibet: Issues in U.S.-China Relations
Ling-Chi Wang, Professor Emeritus, Asian American Studies, UC Berkeley,General Admission: $30 per person (includes dinner)
June 26, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, California Alumni Association Chinese Chapter
Come join the California Alumni Association Chinese Chapter for a sumptuous Chinese banquet and an informative evening with Professor Ling-Chi Wang as he examines recent events related to the use of the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics and the torch relay to address a number of domestic and foreign policies in both China and the United States.
General Admission: $30 per person (includes dinner); Tickets may be purchased online at: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/35494.
About the speaker: Professor Ling-Chi Wang is a distinguished scholar and activist on Asian American issues. He was at the center of the struggles that shaped the creation of the Ethnic Studies Department at UC Berkeley, and has been an advocate ever since of the departments social activist agenda. He has been centrally involved in the fight to expand civil and political rights of racial minorities in the U.S., dialogue surrounding the Japanese governments responsibility to Chinese, Koreans, and other Asian targets of Japanese aggression during World War II as well as playing a key role as strategist and advisor during former Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist Wen Ho Lees battle against espionage charges.
About the CAA-Chinese Chapter: The California Alumni Association (CAA) Chinese Chapter is committed to serve the alumni and to advance the welfare of the University of California at Berkeley. Since its founding in 1933, the Chinese Chapter has provided monetary scholarships to deserving students entering the Berkeley campus and currently provides over 20 scholarships and endowments annually, the most of any club or organization at UC Berkeley.
For additional information, contact Bak Chan at bak_chan@mba.berkeley.edu or 510-891-7068.
Mad Detective
Johnnie To, Wai Ka-fai (Hong Kong, 2007, 90 mins)
Advance Tickets: (510) 642-5249
June 27, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Pacific Film Archive
USA Women's Olympic Indoor Volleyball Intrasquad Scrimmage
Jenny Lang Ping, U.S. Team Coach, 1984 Olympic Gold Medalist
Team USA players will sign autographs after the scrimmage
Tickets: $5 for everyone. On sale at 4 p.m. the day of the scrimmage at the facility.
July 31, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, California Athletic Department
Japan's Multicultural Multiethnic Future: Problems and Solutions for the 21st Century
Arudou Debito, Hokkaido Information University
August 27, 2008
Center for Japanese Studies
Arudou was born David Christopher Aldwinckle in California. He attended Cornell University, first visiting Japan as a tourist. Following this experience, he dedicated his senior year as an undergraduate to studying Japanese, graduating in 1987. Aldwinckle then joined a small Japanese trading company in Sapporo. It was this experience, he recounts, that started him the path of the controversial activist that he would later become. In 1993 he joined the faculty of Business Administration and Information Science at the Hokkaido Information University, a private university in Ebetsu, Hokkaidō. As of 2007 he is an associate professor.
Aldwinckle became a permanent resident of Japan in 1996. He obtained Japanese citizenship in 2000, whereupon he changed his name to Debito Arudou (有道出人, Arudō Debito), whose kanji he says have the figurative meaning of "a person who has a road and is going out on it."
Arudou has written a book about the 1999 Otaru hot springs incident. Arudou originally wrote the book in Japanese; the English version, Japanese Only — The Otaru Hot Springs Case and Racial Discrimination in Japan, was published in 2004 and revised in 2006. Jeff Kingston, reviewer for The Japan Times, described the book as an "excellent account of his struggle against prejudice and racial discrimination."
Discussant &8211; John Ertl, Cal alum and Kanazawa University professor
Munjado (Ideograph Painting) during the Joseon Dynasty: The Relation between Confucianism and Folk Art
Byungmo Chung, Professor, Department of Cultural Properties, Gyeongju University
August 29, 2008
Center for Korean Studies
This lecture will address the ways in which Confucian ideology affected folk art and its evolution into a decorative art during the late Joseon Dynasty (eighteenth to nineteenth century).
Munjado folk art, on which I will focus, is one that is shared by many countries that are under the cultural rubric of Chinese characters. These include China, Japan, Vietnam and Korea. The popularity and artistic value of munjado reside in the fact that each character carries an image and a story. As is widely known, Chinese characters are pictograms that copy the shapes of objects. They are also ideograms that symbolize the meanings of the characters. While artists in the other countries chose to use the commonly repeated characters that represent the three auspicious wishes—Happiness, Success and Longevity—Korean artists during the Joseon Dynasty chose to draw characters that stand for the Eight Confucian Virtues—Filial Piety, Brotherly Love, Loyalty, Trust, Propriety, Righteousness, Integrity and Sensibility.
My investigation is of the following questions: Why did Confucian munjado become popular during the Joseon Dynasty? Why did the people of Joseon choose filial piety over happiness? Why was patriotism privileged over longevity?
In this lecture I will demonstrate that munjado during the Joseon Dynasty is a product of historic circumstances, in particular of Confucian ideology. Joseon's Royal Court executed a cultural education policy that inculcated Confucian ideology in its people. This cultural promotion explains in part why Confucian munjado became popular at the end of the Joseon Dynasty. Furthermore, one should not overlook the fact that Confucian munjado gradually gained popularity amongst the common people because of their desire to adopt the culture of the aristocrats (yangban) who would display munjado screens and discuss the Confucian ideology contained in the characters.
Drawing on the two social aspects—the governmental policy and the desire for social status—I will analyze how Joseon's munjado evolved from one that imitates the Chinese counterpart that focuses on telling stories behind the characters to its own autochthonous style that emphasizes simpler symbolic images. In other words, unlike the Chinese case that includes narrative drawing inside each character, Joseon's munjado came to emphasize its decorative quality by either simplifying the narrative aspect or by embellishing the characters. Thus, Joseon's munjado settled itself as a decorative art rather than an artistic arrangement of a text.
Efforts to Standardize Chinese Characters in the Last Twenty Years (近20年来的中国语言文字规范化工作)
Guo Xi (郭熙), Director, Institute of Chinese Literature, Ji'nan University (暨南大学华文学院院长)
This lecture will be conducted in Chinese
August 29, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, National Center for K-16 Chinese Language Pedagogy
This lecture will be conducted in Chinese
近 20 年来的中国语言文字规范化工作 (内容简介)
上个世纪中期开始，中国语言文字规范化工作发生了不少变化，出现了不少新情况，也取得不少成就。演讲将介绍相关的背景和成果，分析取得这些成果的原因和条件，探讨中国语言文字规范化理论发展变化的轨迹，总结中国语言文字规范化实践的经验教训，希望通过这些分析和总结，对中文教学中相关语言问题的处理有所启示。
In Search of Lin Zhao's Soul (寻找林昭的灵魂)
Admission: $5 public; $3 member
August 29, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Chinese Culture Center SF
http://www.c-c-c.org/programs/c4/
Book Talk – Shanghai Splendor: Economic Sentiments and the Making of Modern China, 1843-1949
Wen-hsin Yeh, Richard H. and Laurie C. Morrison Professor in History and Director, Institute of East Asian Studies
September 3, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies
Engaging the entire span of Shanghai's modern history from the Opium War to the eve of the Communist takeover in 1949, Wen-hsin Yeh traces the evolution of a dazzling urban culture that became alternately isolated from and intertwined with China's tumultuous history. Rich with details of everyday life, this multifaceted social and cultural history of China's leading metropolis in the twentieth century offers a kaleidoscopic view of Shanghai as the major site of Chinese modernization. Looking in particular at Shanghai's leading banks, publishing enterprises, and department stores, she sketches the rise of a new maritime and capitalist economic culture among the city's middle class. Making extensive use of urban tales and visual representations, the book captures urbanite voices as it uncovers the sociocultural dynamics that shaped the people and their politics.
Water Pollution, River Currents, and Digestive Cancers in China
Avi Ebenstein, Robert Wood Johnson Postdoctoral Scholar, Harvard University
September 3, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Demography Department
Converging Interests: Foreign Firms, the Chinese State, and the Solution to the Common Agency Problem
Doug Guthrie, Professor, Stern School of Business, New York University
For more information, contact "cliff_mak@haas.berkeley.edu"
September 3, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Seminar in Organizational Behavior and Industrial Relations, Haas School of Business
Sky Burial in Tibet: A Film Screening and Discussion with Tang Danhong
Tang Danhong, Filmmaker and Poet
September 4, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies
The Chinese poet and filmmaker Tang Danhong will be screening her film Sky Burial, a documentary film about sky burials in Tibet. The event will also include a talk in which Tang will discuss her experiences making the film, as well as some of her other experiences in Tibet.
Lecture conducted in Chinese with English translation.
Tunneling in China: The Remarkable Case of Inter-Corporate Loans
Charles Lee, Visiting Professor, Graduate School of Business, Stanford University with Professors Guohua Jiang and Heng Yue, Peking University
September 4, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Haas School of Business
The Great Urban Transformation: Politics of Land Development in Post Mao China
You-tien Hsing, Associate Professor, Geography, UC Berkeley
September 8, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Berkeley Center for Law, Business and the Economy
RSVP required: BCLBE@law.berkeley.edu or contact Phyliss Martinez at 510.642.0532
Sponsored by the Berkeley Center for Law, Business and the Economy
Book Talk: Veneration and Imagery of Buddhist "Saints" in Japan from 1700–Present
Patricia Graham
September 10, 2008
Center for Buddhist Studies, Center for Japanese Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies
Introduced by Gregory Levine, History of Art, UC Berkeley.
This talk explores the reasons for the enduring popularity in the Japanese Buddhist pantheon of Buddhist "saints" — monks known as Rakan (Luohan in Chinese; and Arhat in Sanskrit) and laity known as the Buddha's 10 Great Disciples (Shaka Judai deshi). Both groups were devout, unconventional personages who gained enlightenment after hearing the teachings of the Buddha in India. Their popularity as personal saviors continues to the present and has inspired the creation of numerous idiosyncratic images by artists working within and apart from formal Buddhist organizations. Their widespread appeal is emblematic of their transcendence beyond Buddhism to universal symbols of individualism and integrity.
Patricia J. Graham, a former professor of Japanese art and culture, and museum curator, is an independent scholar and Asian art consultant based in Lawrence, Kansas. This talk is drawn from her new book, Faith and Power in Japanese Buddhist Art, 1600-2005 (University of Hawai'i Press, 2007).
Mahjong: Contemporary Chinese Art from the Sigg Collection
Museum Admission $3-$8
September 10, 2008 – January 4, 2009
Center for Chinese Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies
God's New Whiz Kids?: Korean American Campus Evangelicals and Reverse Korean Missionaries in America
Rebecca Kim, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Pepperdine University
September 10, 2008
Center for Korean Studies, Religion, Politics and Globalization Program (RPGP), Institute for Leadership Development & the Study of Asian North American Religion (PANA Institute)
God's New Whiz Kids? focuses on second-generation Korean Americans, who make up the majority of Asian American evangelicals, and explores the factors that lead college-bound Korean American evangelicals—from integrated, mixed race neighborhoods—to create racially segregated religious communities on campus. Kim illuminates an emergent "made in the U.S.A." ethnicity to help explain this trend, and to shed light on a group that may be changing the face of American evangelicalism, both at home and abroad.
The Women of The Tale of Genji
John R. Wallace, East Asian Languages and Cultures, UC Berkeley
Liza Dalby
Ellen Susan Peel, Department of Comparative and World Literature, San Francisco State University
September 11, 2008
Institute of East Asian Studies, Japan Society, USF Center for the Pacific Rim
Dr. John Wallace, Visiting Professor at the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures of the University of California, Berkeley and cultural anthropologist and author Dr. Liza Dalby discuss The Tale of Genji's female characters and the significant roles they play in the story as they examine the work. Moderated by Dr. Ellen Susan Peel of San Francisco State University, our panel of experts will consider the position of women in Japanese society—their power as well as their limitations—during the Heian period.
Dr. John R. Wallace teaches premodern Japanese language and literature, specializing in Heian period women's memoirs. Wallace is the author of Objects of Discourse: Memoirs by Women of Heian Japan. He is currently working on the poetry of Ono no Komachi and Ise as early precursors to the romantic persona constructed by Heian memoirists. He received his Ph.D. from Stanford University.
Dr. Liza Dalby has lived and studied in Japan periodically since her early teens. After earning her undergraduate degree at Swarthmore and graduate degree at Stanford in cultural anthropology, Dalby returned to Japan to research and complete her dissertation on the place of geisha in modern Japan. She is the author of several books including The Tale of Murasaki, a novel which chronicles life in Japan's golden age of high aesthetics as told through the voice of Lady Murasaki at the end of her life.
Dr. Ellen Susan Peel is a professor in San Francisco State University's Department of Comparative and World Literature. The author of Politics, Persuasion, and Pragmatism: A Rhetoric of Feminist Utopian Fiction, she also has published articles on teaching The Tale of Genji. Peel earned her undergraduate degree at Harvard University and completed her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at Yale University.
$5.00 USD (Members & Students)
$10.00 USD (Non-Members)
Considering Anthropophagy in Tibet
Frances Garrett, University of Toronto
September 11, 2008
Center for Buddhist Studies
This presentation will examine "cannibalism" as a locus of connection between religious, medical and occult traditions in Tibet. Surveying examples of the consumption of human body parts as articulated in Tibetan contemplative, ritual, occult and medical literature, and in myth, iconography and narrative, this talk will consider how anthropophagy has been controversial not only for Buddhologists and European visitors to Tibet, but also for Tibetans themselves. Professor Garrett draws in particular from the Nectar Tantras canon and its writings on the contemplative and ritual practice called Accomplishing Medicine (sman sgrub), an esoteric exercise that involves the creation and use of "nectar" recipes using human products. She concludes that in Tibet anthropophagous practices and narratives are acts of transgression, generosity, and incorporation that are simultaneously savage and civilized.
Frances Garrett is Assistant Professor of Tibetan Buddhism in the Department for the Study of Religion. She received her PhD from the University of Virginia in 2004. She is intrigued by how Buddhist voices command a growing literary, ideological, social and political presence in the formative twelfth-fifteenth centuries in Tibet. A history of ideas that weaves across sectarian and disciplinary boundaries, her book, Religion, Medicine and the Human Embryo in Tibet (Routledge, 2008) links aspects of Tibetan medicine to expressions of culture, religion, art and literature through a study of embryology in Tibetan literature. Current projects consider the intersections between tantric practice, ritual and occult knowledge, and medical theory, and what these tell us about the processes of institutional and ideological change in "renaissance" Tibet.
Dwelling in Guangzhou: The Housing Design in Guangzhou's Central Business" and "Taoism and Thoroughfare in the Design of Cities and Buildings of Ancient China
Liming Tang, Vice-Chair, Department of Urban Planning, College of Architecture, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou
Chun Xie, Vice-Chair, Department of Urban Planning, College of Architecture, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou
September 11, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning
Liming Tang, Vice-Chair, Department of Urban Planning, College of Architecture, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou — "Dwelling in Guangzhou:The Housing Design in Guangzhou's Central Business District—The Case of Liyanwan"
Chun Xie, Vice-Chair, Department of Urban Planning, College of Architecture, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou — "Taoism and Thoroughfare in the Design of Cities and Buildings of Ancient China"
Sponsoerd by the Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning
Artist's Talk by Mayumi Oda
Mayumi Oda, Artist
September 12, 2008
Center for Buddhist Studies, Center for Japanese Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies
Artist Mayumi Oda will give a walk-through of her work currently on display in the solo show "Goddesses: Prints by Mayumi Oda" at the IEAS Gallery, 2223 Fulton Street (6th Floor).
Korean Women Artists: Two Perspectives
Hyungmin Chung, Professor of Art History, Director of the Museum of Art, Seoul National University
Youngna Kim, Professor of Art History, Seoul National University
September 12, 2008
Center for Korean Studies
Hyung-Min Chung: "Being Artist-Woman at the Threshold of Modern-Age Korea"
The first half of the 20th century was a time when so-called "modern" social ideology and visual culture were imported to Korea. Subsequently, new perspectives towards history and contemporaneity were formulated and new visual forms were practiced. The ideology of "new woman" (sin yeoseong) was one of the products of this modernistic change in Korean society. Some woman artists were receptive to the new ideology, which adjusted according to historic necessity of society at large, and in due course a dichotomy was created between the social concept of sin yeoseong and what women conceived of and lived by. Other woman artists were more concerned with new forms. In this lecture, the development of sin yeoseong during the first half of the 20th century will be outlined, and the works of woman-artists will be discussed in the context modern historicity.
Youngna Kim: "Contemporary Korean Women Artists since 1960"
During the 1960s, as in many fields, it was challenging for women artists to succeed in the male-dominated art world in Korea. However, as several colleges of fine arts at universities began producing graduates, the number of women artists increased. The period after the 1960s was also significant because the Korean art world was then becoming more aware of international art trends in the United States and Europe. A serious investment in abstract art was no longer restricted to a select few as during the colonial period; there was great enthusiasm for Abstract Expressionism and L'Art Informel flourishing in the United States and Europe at the time.
In the 1980s, with the surge of Minjung Art (Art of the Masses), Western modernism was criticized and Minjung artists aimed at creating art forms which could be easily understood by the people. Notable women artists of the Minjung group painted women laborers, satirized dominant culture and mocked capitalists. It was only around 1990 that Korean art moved away from ideological issues and collective activities to freely expressing individual perspectives. As this new decade began producing an increasing number of nuclear families, parents were focused on educating all their children regardless of gender. As a result, women began actively entering society as professionals in every possible field imaginable. The emphasis shifted away from paintings to photography, video and installation art, plus the advent of feminism and feminist art practices gained prominence. Furthermore, as contemporary Asian art receives increasing international acclaim, Korean women artists are also being invited more and more to take part in international exhibitions and well-known museums.
Hyung-Min Chung is Professor of Art History and Director of the Museum of Art at Seoul National University. Youngna Kim is Professor of Art History at Seoul National University.
This event is offered in conjunction with "Places at the Table: Asian Women Artists and Gender Dynamics," a full-day conference at the Berkeley Art Museum on Saturday, September 13.
Mayumi Oda and Lisa Dalby: A Conversation
Mayumi Oda, Artist
Liza Dalby, Writer
September 12, 2008
Center for Japanese Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies
September 12 is the last day of the Mayumi Oda exhibit. Liza Dalby, the author of Geisha, will engage in a dialogue with Mayumi Oda as a finale of the Godesses exhibit. The two, artist and author, have taken a different approaches to celebrate women's beauty, power, intelligence and strength. The conversation will be an opportunity to hear about their backgrounds, how they were drawn to their field and developed their styles as they explored the relationship with the society, the environment, and the self. The conversation will be moderated by Beth Cary.
Still Life
Advance Tickets: (510) 642-5249
September 12, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Pacific Film Archive
Jia Zhangke (Hong Kong/China, 2006, Mandarin and Sichuan dialect with English subtitles, 108 mins.)
Advance Tickets: (510) 642-5249
Dong – Preceded by short: Our Ten Years
Advance Tickets: (510) 642-5249
September 12, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Pacific Film Archive
Dong
Jia Zhangke (China, 2006, Mandarin and Thai with English subtitles, 70 mins.)
Our Ten Years
Jia Zhangke (China, 2007, Mandarin with English subtitles, 8 mins.)
Advance Tickets: (510) 642-5249
Places at the Table: Asian Women Artists and Gender Dynamics
September 13, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Center for Korean Studies, Center for Japanese Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies, Mills College Art Department, UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Townsend Center for the Humanities, Korea Foundation
"Places at the Table: Asian Women Artists and Gender Dynamics," explores issues facing Asian women artists today. Speakers will seek to illuminate factors that foster and inhibit the creativity of Asian women artists from three perspectives: one, women whose art, implicitly or explicitly, serves an activist agenda; two, women who work within the framework of a traditional society and how they adapt to, challenge, or find their inspiration in its structures; and finally, the dynamics of participating in a global network of modern art as women artists.
Participants include Hung Liu, Honghee Kim, Margo Machida, Cheeyun Kwon, Midori Yoshimoto, Yong Soon Min, O Zhang, Youngna Kim, Mary-Ann Milford-Lutzker, Mayumi Oda, Linda Inson Choy, Hyungmin Chung, Sandra Cate, Joan Kee, Patricia Graham, Junghee Lee, Pamela Blotner, and Charlotte Horlyck.
The symposium, a collaboration between UC Berkeley and Mills College, will include discussions with artists represented in the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive exhibition "Mahjong"; the Mills College Art Museum exhibition, "The Offering Table: Korean Women Activist Artists"; and the solo show "Goddesses" in the Institute of East Asian Studies Gallery.
The afternoon prior to the conference, the Center for Korean Studies will host a special colloquium on Korean women artists at the Institute of East Asian Studies.
Following the symposium, attendees are welcomed to join a reception at the Mills College Art Museum.
Art, Censorship, and Politics
Uli Sigg, Former Swiss Ambassador to China, Art Collector
Orville Schell, Director, Center on US-China Relations, Asia Society
Museum Admission $3-$8. Programs free with museum admission.
September 14, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies, Berkeley Art Museum
Deliberative Democracy in China: A Deliberative Poll on Zegou Township's 2008 Budget
Alice Siu, PhD Candidate, Communication, Stanford University
September 17, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies
In the last five years, the local government of Zeguo Township has conducted four Deliberative Polls. Each of the Deliberative Polling® projects in Zeguo Township, Wenling City, gathered a scientific random sample of average citizens to deliberate about topics ranging from infrastructure projects, sewage and environmental projects to the entire 2008 proposed budget. The local government needed a venue for citizens to have an opportunity to openly deliberate, interact with policymakers, and reduce perceptions of corruption. This talk presents the Deliberative Polling projects conducted in Zeguo Township and in particular, discusses the results and impacts of the fourth Deliberative Poll conducted in February 2008.
Xiao Wu a.k.a. Pickpocket
Advance Tickets: (510) 642-5249
September 18, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Pacific Film Archive
Xiao Wu a.k.a. Pickpocket
Jia Zhangke (China/Hong Kong, 1997, Mandarin with English subtitles, 105 mins.)
Advance Tickets: (510) 642-5249
A Tale of Two Cities: Imperial Space and Commercial Space in Song-Dynasty Kaifeng, 960-1127
Christian DePee, Assistant Professor, History, University of Michigan
September 19, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies
Kaifeng was the first natural, commercial city to become the capital of a Chinese empire. Its infrastructure of roads and waterways bolstered the imperial government of the Song dynasty by affording supplies for its armies and government officials, yet this same infrastructure brought floods, epidemics, and enemy attacks, and created a commercial wealth that rivaled the splendor of the imperial palace. The mutual infringement of imperial space and commercial space in the streets of Kaifeng becomes visible in the textual geographies of edicts, memorials, poems, and memoirs.
Discussant: Robert Ashmore, Associate Professor, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, UC Berkeley
Xiao Shan Going Home – Preceded by short: In Public
Advance Tickets: (510) 642-5249
September 19, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Pacific Film Archive
Xiao Shan Going Home
Jia Zhangke, Youth Experimental Film Group (China, 1995, Mandarin with English subtitles, 58 mins.)
Preceded by short: In Public
Jia Zhangke, Youth Experimental Film Group (China, South Korea, 2001, Mandarin with English subtitles, 32 mins.)
Advance Tickets: (510) 642-5249
Prehistoric Jomon of Japan and Hunter-Gatherer Lifeways
September 19–20, 2008
Center for Japanese Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Henry Luce Foundation, Archaeology Research Facility
Friday, September 19
Session 1: Jomon Archaeology and Hunter-Gatherer Studies (9:00 am-12:00 pm)
Opening Remarks
Jomon Archaeology in the Context of Hunter Gatherer Studies — Junko Habu, UC Berkeley
Jomon as Sedentary Hunter-Gatherers — Peter Bleed, University Nebraska-Lincoln
Perspectives on North American Hunter-Gatherers — David Hurst Thomas, American Museum of Natural History
Jomon Stable Food and Environmental Management — Shuzo Koyama, National Museum of Ethnology, Japan
Q&A
Lunch Break
Session 2: Lifeways of Prehistoric and Early Historic Peoples in East Asia (1:00 pm-3:00 pm)
The Jomon in Early Agriculture Discourse — Gary W. Crawford, University of Toronto
Lifeways of Korun Period People — Tomokazu Onishi, International University of Kagoshima
Reconstructing Prehistoric Social Organization — Chihhur Chiang, UC Berkeley
Q&A
Saturday, September 20
Session 3: Jomon and East Asia: Approaches from Archaeology, Plant Biology and Bioarchaeology
Early Cultigens in East Asia: An Approach from Plant Genetics — Ikuo Nakamura, Chiba University
DNA Analyses of Jomon Plant Remains — Ryuji Ishikawa, Hirosaki University
Bone Maintenance and Remodeling: Potential Methods for Reconstructing Lifestyle and Health in the Jomon — Sabrina Agarwal, UC Berkeley
Population History of the Japanese From the Upper Palaeolithic to the Modern Age — Hisao Baba, National Museum of Nature nad Science, Tokyo
From Epi-Jomon to Ainu — Tetsuo Kikuchi, Waseda University
Lunch Reception
Co-sponsored by: JSPS/Luce Foundation/IEAS/ARF
China's Emerging Art
Hou Hanru, Curator and Critic, San Francisco Art Institute
Jane DeBevoise, Chair, Board of Trustees of Asia Art Archives
Ou Ning, Multimedia Artist
Museum Admission $3-$8. Programs free with museum admission.
September 21, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Berkeley Art Museum
In Conversation: Uli Sigg and Wen-hsin Yeh
Uli Sigg, Art Collector
Wen-hsin Yeh, UCB Professor, History
September 22, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies, UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
Uli Sigg, whose collection is to be on display in the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive exhibition "Mahjong," witnessed much of China's evolution from the Cultural revolution to the dynamic culture of today. In conversation with UCB History Professor Wen-hsin Yeh, Director of the Institute of East Asian Studies and a specialist in Modern Chinese History, Sigg will discuss not only his own collecting in China, but the history that unfolded before him.
Reception to follow.
Economic Growth and the Medium-long Cycles in Modern China
Yuru Wang, Institute of Economics, Nankai University
September 24, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies
What terms can be used to characterize the change of Chinese economy over the century between the Opium War in 1840 and the Communist take-over in 1949, growth, stagnation or decline? Were there distinctive periods or cycles? In this paper, the author provides a preliminary statistical analysis of the period 1880-1936. This paper consists of three parts. The first part provides a statistical profile of economic growth and industry structural change. The second part discusses the medium and long cycles. The last part is a short conclusion of this paper, which point about the general trend and three periods of economic development in modern China.
The Six Faces of Genji: Manga Versions of The Tale of Genji
Lynne K. Miyake, Japanese Studies, Women's Studies, and Asian American Studies, Pomona College
September 25, 2008
Institute of East Asian Studies, Japan Society, Mechanics' Institute, USF Center for the Pacific Rim
Manga has permeated every aspect of Japanese life, teaching people to bank, new employees how to make estimates for sewer repairs, and even young mothers how to develop networking strategies. The Tale of Genji, a one-thousand-year-old Japanese literary classic, has had a strong influence on Japanese society as well, with representations appearing in everything from ancient scrolls to modern yen notes. A visually evocative story about an elegant, romantic hero par excellence and his progeny, The Tale of Genji has spawned over 20 versions of the historical work—from instructional tomes for children to shôjo girls, ladies comics, and gag introductory manga. Dr. Lynne K. Miyake of Pomona College will introduce several of these graphic novels, exploring their richness, their special vision, and their contemporary "take" on a beloved tale.
Dr. Lynne K. Miyake is a professor of Japanese, Women's Studies, and Asian American Studies at Pomona College. Dr. Miyake works in Heian prose narratives dealing with issues of narration, gender, and cultural studies. She has published articles (in Japanese and English) on the manga versions of The Tale of Genji, the tale itself, and the impact of translation on the formulation of the canon of Japanese literature in the U.S., among other topics. She also is developing a book manuscript on the manga versions of The Tale of Genji. Dr. Miyake received her B.A. from the University of Southern California and her M.A. in Comparative Literature and Ph.D. in Japanese literature from the University of California at Berkeley.
China and the United States
James Fallows, National Correspondent, The Atlantic Monthly
September 25, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies, Institute of International Studies, Institute of Governmental Studies, International House, Osher Lifelong Learning Program
James Fallows, National Correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly, who has been living in China for several years, will analyze the factors driving the China U.S relationship and he will explore the implications of the relationship for the geopolitical environment of the 21st century. He has written that, "large-scale shifts in economic power have effects beyond the purely economic. Americans need not be hostile toward China's rise, but they should be wary about its eventual effects. The United States is the only nation with the scale and power to try to set the terms of its interaction with China rather than just succumb. So starting now, Americans need to consider the economic, environmental, political, and social goals they care about defending as Chinese influence grows."
Fallows book, 'Postcards from Tomorrow Square: Reports from China' is forthcoming in January, 2009.
Gallery Talk with Uli Sigg and Ai Weiwei
Uli Sigg, Former Swiss Ambassador to China, Art Collector
Ai Weiwei, Artist
Museum Admission $3-$8. Programs free with museum admission.
September 25, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies, Pacific Film Archive
How Can China and the US Work Together to Address Climate Change?
September 25, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS), Federation of American Scientists (FAS)
Useless
Advance Tickets: (510) 642-5249
September 26, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Pacific Film Archive
Useless
Jia Zhangke (China, 2007, Mandarin and Shanxi dialect with English subtitles, 80 mins.)
Advance Tickets: (510) 642-5249
Cultural Tourism Movements: Articulating and Problematizing Indigeniety
September 26–27, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies, Tourism Studies Working Group, Townsend Center for the Humanities, Department of Ethnic Studies, Chicano/Latino Studies Program, Native American Studies Program, Division of Social Sciences, Division of Arts and Humanities, Canadian Studies Program, Department of Rhetoric
Anime Masters and Masterpieces: Grave of the Fireflies (火垂るの墓)
September 27, 2008
Center for Japanese Studies, JETRO (Japan External Trade Organization)]
The Anime Masterpieces series premieres with Grave of the Fireflies, a 1988 anime feature film written and directed by Isao Takahata, which Roger Ebert calls "an emotional experience so powerful it forces a re-thinking of animation." Animation historian Ernest Rister compares the film to Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List and says, "it is the most profoundly human animated film I've ever seen."
Taking place toward the end of World War II in Japan, Grave of the Fireflies is the poignant tale of two orphaned children, Seita and his younger sister Setsuko, who try to survive amidst widespread famine and the callous indifference of their countrymen. Some critics consider it one of the most powerful anti-war movies ever made.
Panelists:
Susan Napier, author of Anime from Akira to Howl's Moving Castle
Frederik Schodt, author of Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics
Ian Condry, author of Hip-Hop Japan: Rap and the Paths of Cultural Globalization
Roland Kelts, author of Japanamerica
Dan O'Neill, UC Berkeley, Moderator
The box office will open at 1pm. The free tickets will be distributed day of show and are on a first come, first serve basis. Seating begins 20 minutes before the start time.
In Conversation: Ai Weiwei and Jeff Kelley
Ai Weiwei, Artist
Jeff Kelley, Art critic and curator
Museum Admission $3-$8. Programs free with museum admission.
September 30, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies, UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
Artist Ai Weiwei and critic and curator Jeff Kelley will discuss a range of issues pertaining to Chinese contemporary art, including the history and condition of artistic freedom in China today. Kelley, who taught theory and criticism for eleven years in UC Berkeley's Department of Art Practice, curated the exhibition Half-Life of a Dream: Contemporary Chinese Art from the Logan Collection, on view at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art through October 5.
Hedging Their Bets: Southeast Asian Responses to the Rise of China
John D. Ciorciari, National Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University
October 1, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Center for Southeast Asian Studies
During the Cold War, China was regarded with a mix of fear and loathing in many Southeast Asian capitals, primarily due to its ideological agenda and support for local communist movements. Moreover, until the "four modernizations" took hold, China's anemic economy and limited military capabilities gave it few carrots to offer Southeast Asian governments for cozying up to Beijing. Clearly, times have changed. After a few decades of relative pragmatism and explosive growth, China is now a major economic and diplomatic player in Southeast Asia. The PRC's limited military clout is also on the rise. To most Southeast Asian governments, China's growth is both a major opportunity and a potential menace.
This seminar will explore how Southeast Asian governments are "hedging their bets" as the PRC gathers steam. It will examine how they are engaging robustly with the PRC in commerce and diplomacy. However, it will also discuss how Southeast Asian governments are diversifying in those areas and preserving important fall-back security arrangements with the United States and others in case China becomes more threatening. The seminar will also touch upon the nuances of their hedging strategies by addressing the following questions: how do various Southeast Asian governments view China's intentions and capabilities? How have they engaged the United States and others to provide security without antagonizing Beijing? How do hedging strategies relate to multilateral diplomacy in ASEAN and related forums? How do they affect the overall "balance of influence" in the Asia-Pacific region? Lastly, what pitfalls could hedging strategies entail? These questions matter, because Southeast Asian reactions to China's rise will have a critical effect on the course of regional affairs for years to come.
Performance of a Book: The 'Yaolüe' chapter of Huainanzi as a Western Han Fu
Martin Kern, Professor, Department of East Asian Studies, Princeton University
October 2, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies
The "Summary of the Essentials" (Yaolüe) is the concluding twenty-first chapter of the Huainanzi and presents the entire book as the guide to sage rulership. Oscillating between poetry and prose, the text displays an all-encompassing spectacle of language to celebrate the totality of philosophical and political thought. A conspicuous exemplar of "poetic exposition" (fu), the "Summary of the Essentials"—a text that itself refers to the "twenty chapters" of the Huainanzi and was thus separate from the book proper—was most likely recited when Liu An, King of Huainan, formally presented the Huainanzi to Emperor Wu in 139 BCE. With its performance, Liu An offered the ultimate blueprint for imperial rule and positioned himself as the philosophical and literary paragon of his time.
The Increasing Significance of Guanxi in the Chinese Transitional Economy
Yanjie Bian, Professor, Sociology, University of Minnesota
October 3, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies
How do guanxi networks matter in Chinese transitional economy? Sociologist Yanjie Bian proposes a theoretical model in which the dynamism of guanxi networks is considered as social actors' behavioral response to the changing degrees of institutional uncertainty and market competition of the economy. Recent survey data on occupational mobility and enterprise development provide empirical support of this model.
Discussant: Aihwa Ong, Professor, Anthropology, UC Berkeley
Unknown Pleasures
Advance Tickets: (510) 642-5249
October 3, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Pacific Film Archive
Unknown Pleasures
Jia Zhangke (China/Japan, 2002, Mandarin with English subtitles, 155 mins.)
Advance Tickets: (510) 642-5249
Morning Sun (八九点钟的太阳)
Admission: $5 public; $3 member
October 3, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Chinese Culture Center SF
http://www.c-c-c.org/programs/c4/
Bridges Across the Taiwan Strait
Dr. Hung-mao Tien, President and Chairman of the Board, Institute for National Policy Research
October 3, 2008
Institute of East Asian Studies
With great changes taking place in China, Dr. Hung-Mao Tien discusses the effects on Taiwan's domestic politics, Taiwan's new policy initiatives toward China, and Beijing's response. Dr. Tien reviews cross-straits relations over the past two decades, and implications for future relations with China, Japan, and the US. Hung-mao Tien, Taiwan's former Foreign Minister and representative at the Court of St. James, has written and edited extensively on China and Taiwan, including such works as "Government and Politics in Kuomintang China, 1927-1937," "China Under Jiang Zhemin," "Mainland China, Taiwan, and US Policy," and Consolidating Third Wave Democracies."
The 2008 Beijing Olympic Games: A Springboard to a New Era of Entertainment Deal-Making in China
Kelly C. Crabb, Morrison & Foerster
Seagull Song, King & Wood (presently Arnold & Porter)
RSVP Required, 510/642-0532 or BCLBE@law.berkeley.edu
October 7, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Berkeley Center for Law, Business and Economy
The Beijing Olympic Organizing Committee (BOCOG) made a decision to use "international standards" in approaching entertainment and media contracts for the Beijing 2008 Games. Kelly C. Crabb, international counsel to BOCOG, and Seagull Song, who was with King & Wood's China office during the planning years, will discuss what this meant and the possible ramification to the development of the entertainment and professional sports industries in China. Specifically, how will the concepts of "chain of title" and the complexities of music royalties be dealt with in the post-Olympic world in China? How did the domestic and local legal firms address ambush marketing and unauthorized retransmission? Join us for this fascinating behind-the-scenes discussion.
To RSVP, or for more information: 510/642-0532 or BCLBE@law.berkeley.edu
Book Talk: Tradition, Treaties, and Trade Qing Imperialism and Chosôn Korea, 1850–1910
Kirk W. Larsen, History, Brigham Young University
October 8, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Center for Korean Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies
Introduced by Hong Yung Lee, Professor, Political Science, UC Berkeley.
Relations between the Choson and Qing states are often cited as the prime example of the operation of the "traditional" Chinese "tribute system." In contrast, this work contends that the motivations, tactics, and successes (and failures) of the late Qing Empire in Choson Korea mirrored those of other nineteenth-century imperialists. Between 1850 and 1910, the Qing attempted to defend its informal empire in Korea by intervening directly, not only to preserve its geopolitical position but also to promote its commercial interests. And it utilized the technology of empire—treaties, international law, the telegraph, steamships, and gunboats. Although the transformation of Qing-Choson diplomacy was based on modern imperialism, this work argues that it is more accurate to describe the dramatic shift in relations in terms of flexible adaptation by one of the world's major empires in response to new challenges. Moreover, the new modes of Qing imperialism were a hybrid of East Asian and Western mechanisms and institutions. Through these means, the Qing Empire played a fundamental role in Korea's integration into regional and global political and economic systems.
The World
Advance Tickets: (510) 642-5249
October 8, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Pacific Film Archive
The World
Jia Zhangke (China/Japan, 2004, Mandarin with English subtitles, 142 mins.)
Advance Tickets: (510) 642-5249
History Recycled: Photographs of Architectural Design by Deng Kunyan
October 8 – November 15, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies
Deng Kunyan, a Taiwanese architect living in Shanghai, was a pioneering figure in the movement to revitalize Shanghai's desolate industrial spaces for contemporary use. Deng first came to prominence as a designer in the Taipei of the 1980s. His Nostalgia Café (1985) and Apocalypse Now Bar (1985) helped forge a new kind of fashionable consumer space for the increasingly affluent younger generation in Taipei after the "take-off" of the Taiwanese economy. His juxtaposition of the vocabulary of modern design —clean, bright, transparent, and metal surfaces — with nostalgic elements like vintage bottled drinks, old fashioned snacks, and Taiwanese folk songs heralded a new postmodern style. And in the still politically oppressive political climate of the time, Deng's work seemed to presage the termination of Martial Law two years later.
Mr. Deng moved to Shanghai in 1990. He was fascinated by the culture and history of the city and spent many years losing himself in its labyrinthine lanes and alleyways. In 1997, Deng rented the warehouse overlooking the Suzhou Creek at 1305 South Suzhou Creek Road. The warehouse was built in 1933 and was rumored to have been owned by Du Yuesheng, head of the "Green Gang," and Shanghai's underworld boss in the 1930s. Deng renovated this space as his design studio, and became the first person to rediscover the beauty and utility of Shanghai's abandoned industrial heritage. The success of the warehouse project sparked an artistic renewal of the surrounding industrial district and helped spare many old factories from demolition.
Mr. Deng subsequently switched his focus from Suzhou Creek to the Huangpu River, where he redeveloped a 1920s GE factory into a "Creative Shanghai Park" to nurture Shanghai's emerging cultural industries. The Park opened in 2004, the same year Deng won the UNESCO Asia-Pacific Heritage Awards for Culture Heritage Conservation. The citation noted that "the innovative adoption of the warehouse for reuse as a design studio demonstrated the feasibility of recycling industrial buildings and the practicability of rehabilitating such heritage structures for modern uses" and cited "the large scale impact that an individual, pioneering restoration project can have in focusing public attention and policy making on new conservation agendas, in this case, Shanghai's industrial history."
Deng's work is in this sense not merely "design," but a form of social action, initiating a remapping of Shanghai spaces and its urban legacy from the bottom up.
Raw Encounters: Labor Relations in Africa's Chinese Enclaves
Ching Kwan Lee, Professor, Sociology, UCLA
October 9, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Center for Labor Research and Education, Center for African Studies
China's return to Africa in recent years has attracted much media and political attention worldwide. Join us for a presentation and discussion with Ching Kwan Lee, who will report on her recent fieldwork in Zambia's Copperbelt and Tanzania's textile mills, where she saw first-hand the impact of China's investment in Africa. She will focus primarily on labor relations, including a discussion of encounters between Chinese managers and African workers and how these encounters impact local societies.
Information: Andrea Buffa, andreabuffa@berkeley.edu, 510-642-6371
Reunification: Building Permanent Peace in Korea
Bruce Cumings, University of Chicago
Selig Harrison, Center for International Policy and Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
Christine Ahn, Korea Policy Institute
John Feffer, Foreign Policy in Focus
Martin Hart-Landsberg, Lewis and Clark College
Thomas P. Kim, Korea Policy Institute and Scripps College
Karin Lee, The National Committee on North Korea
Gi-Wook Shin, Stanford University
Jae-Jung Suh, Johns Hopkins University
Philip W. Yun, The Asia Foundation
Seung Hye Suh, Scripps College
Ramsay Liem, Boston College
October 10, 2008
Center for Korean Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies, Korea Policy Institute, International and Area Studies
In partnership with U.C. Berkeley's International and Area Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies, and Center for Korean Studies, the Korea Policy Institute will hold a national summit on the reunification of Korea and the role of the United States in this historic peace process. Held at the U.C. Berkeley Alumni House, the conference will bring together scholars, policy experts, and community advocates from the United States to exchange ideas, network, and establish a U.S.- Korea policy agenda for the post-Bush administration era.
Holding China Accountable?: Strategies for Protecting Consumers in a Globalized World
October 10, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Department of Political Science, Center for the Study of Law & Society, School of Public Health, The Commonwealth Club
Haruki Murakami in Conversation
Haruki Murakami, Writer
October 11, 2008
Center for Japanese Studies, Cal Performance
Claiming a global readership and internationally recognized as Japan's leading novelist, writer, and translator, Haruki Murakami is winner of the Yomiuri Prize for his critically acclaimed The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. The author's numerous works, which have been translated into 36 languages, lead the reader along the interstices between the mundane and the sublime. Murakami's reading and lecture in Japanese and English will be followed by a conversation with Roland Kelts (Tokyo University lecturer and author of Japanamerica) and a question and answer period with the audience.
Click here for other events featuring Haruki Murakami and his work.
Haruki Murakami: Japanese Literature on the Global Stage
October 12, 2008
Center for Japanese Studies, East Asian Languages & Cultures, Townsend Center for the Humanities
Panel:
"Crazed Translator Gives Japanese Author Excedrin Headache" — Jay Rubin (Harvard Univ.), translator of Murakami's Norwegian Wood and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, author of Murakami Haruki and the Music of Words
"Lost in Translation? Murakami Haruki and the Japanization of the English Language" — Rebecca Suter (Univ. of Sydney), author of The Japanization of Modernity: Murakami Haruki between Japan and the United States
"A Spatial Odyssey or, It's All Greek to Me: East Meets West in Murakami Haruki's Kafka On the Shore" — Matthew Strecher (Winona State Univ.), author of Dances with Sheep: The Quest for Identity in the Fiction of Murakami Haruki and Haruki Murakami's Wind-up Bird Chronicle: A Reader's Guide
"Are There Any More Like You at Home? Cloning Murakami Haruki for the US Market" — Stephen Snyder (MiddleburyCollege), translator of novels by Natsuo Kirino, Kenzaburo Oe, and Ryu Murakami
Moderated by H. Mack Horton (UC Berkeley) and Alan Tansman (UC Berkeley)
Free and Open to the Public
MURAKAMI BOOK SIGNING at Book Inc. in San Francisco (601 Van Ness) at 3pm, Oct. 12, 2008
Click here for other events featuring Haruki Murakami and his work.
Platform
Advance Tickets: (510) 642-5249
October 15, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Pacific Film Archive
Platform
Jia Zhangke (Hong Kong/China, 2000, Mandarin with English subtitles, 155 mins.)
Recycling Shanghai's Industrial Heritage
Deng Kunyan, Architect
October 16, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies, Center for Global Metropolitan Studies
Deng Kunyan, an architect in Shanghai, is best known for his conversion of an abandoned 1930s warehouse along the banks of Suzhou Creek. The success of that project sparked an artistic renewal of the surrounding industrial district, saving old factories from demolition, and winning him the UNESCO Asia-Pacific Heritage Awards for Culture Heritage Conservation in 2004. Mr. Deng is currently working on the conversion of an old GE factory along the Huangpu River into a cultural industrial park. Mr. Deng will talk about his various projects in Shanghai and how he integrates Daoist and Buddhist philosophy to lend modern spaces an atmosphere reminiscent of ancient Chinese traditions.
Images of Deng Kunyan's work will be on display in the IEAS Gallery.
Lecture in Chinese with English translation.
China Transformed: Artscape/Cityscape
October 17–18,2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Division of Arts and Humanities, Department of History of Art, UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
China is the epicenter of rapid urbanization, provoking responses from artists, photographers, and filmmakers whose focus ranges from optimistic expansiveness to radical dislocation. In this two-day international symposium, leading curators, critics and scholars will look at artists working in different mediums as they react to the new Chinese megacity.
The keynote speaker will be the international authority on classical and contemporary Chinese art Wu Hung. Other participants include Julia Andrews, Hou Hanru, Wendy Larson, William Schaefer, Kuiyi Shen, Jerome Silbergeld, Pauline J. Yao, Deng Kunyan, Bérénice Reynaud, and Zheng Shengtian.
Organized by Department of History of Art, Institute of East Asian Studies, Center for Chinese Studies, and the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. For information, please contact the Institute of East Asian Studies at 643-6492 or email ieas@berkeley.edu.
Exhibition viewing and reception follows the Friday 4 pm keynote address.
Still Life
Advance Tickets: (510) 642-5249
October 17, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Pacific Film Archive
Still Life
Jia Zhangke (Hong Kong/China, 2006, Mandarin and Sichuan dialect with English subtitles, 108 mins.)
Advance Tickets: (510) 642-5249
Forbidden City, U.S.A. (美国紫禁城)
Admission: $5 public; $3 member
October 17, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Chinese Culture Center SF
http://www.c-c-c.org/programs/c4/
Inaugural Khyentse Foundation Lecture in Tibetan Buddhism — Rethinking Tibet's Dark Age: Demons, Tantras, and the Formation of Tibetan Buddhism
Jacob Dalton, Assistant Professor, UC Berkeley
October 21, 2008
Khyentse Foundation
With the collapse of the Yarlung empire around 842 C.E., Tibet descended into its so-called "dark age." As for Europe's own dark ages, few documents survived the period, and what little we do know is usually filtered through traditional historical narratives that portray the age as one of religious corruption and decay. In this talk, Dalton will suggest that such traditional accounts have obscured the more positive aspects of the period. Freed from the watchful eyes of the imperial court and the monastic orthodoxy, Tibetans of the late ninth and tenth centuries were able to make Buddhism their own. The themes, the imagery, and the strategies they developed during these inchoate years formed the cultural foundations upon which Tibetan Buddhism would be built. Only by excavating these foundations and shedding some light on this "dark age" can we gain a clear appreciation of the Tibetan adaptation of Buddhism.
For Fun
With director Ning Ying in-person
October 23, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Pacific Film Archive
For Fun
Ning Ying (China/Hong Kong, 1992, Mandarin with English subtitles, 98 mins.)
Advance Tickets: (510) 642-5249
Japan's Political Climate
Masaki Taniguchi, University of Tokyo
October 23, 2008
Center for Japanese Studies, Consul General of Japan, IEAS Shorenstein Program
In this talk, Prof. Taniguchi will Offer an in-depth explanation of the current situation of Japanese politics. He will update the audience on the "Divided Diet" in which different parties are in control of the Upper and Lower Houses; the Fukuda Cabinet resignation after only one year; and the situation of the Liberal Democratic Party and the Democratic Party of Japan as they gear up for the upcoming general election.
He will propose some predictions for the elections and examine the future prospects of Japanese politics.
Masaki Taniguchi is Associate Professor of Japanese Politics at the Graduate Schools for Law and Politics, the University of Tokyo. He is a member of the National Committee for the Management of Political Funds, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, and the Study Group on the Replacement Candidacy, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications.
Prof. Taniguchi's recent publication include: Changing Media, Changing Politics (co-edited with Samuel Popkin and Ikuo Kabashima), Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, forthcoming; Electoral Reform in Japan, Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 2004; Politics and Democracy (co-edited with Arihiro Fukuda), Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 2002; Representatives and Money: A Report of National Political Funding Research (co-edited with Takeshi Sasaki, Shin'ichi Yoshida, and Shuji Yamamoto), Tokyo: Asahi Shimbun, 1999.
On the Beat
With Director Ning Ying in-person
Advance Tickets: (510) 642-5249
October 24, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Pacific Film Archive
On the Beat
Ning Ying (China, 1995, Mandarin with English subtitles, 96 mins.)
Advance Tickets: (510) 642-5249
The Emergence of New Media in Premodern China
October 24, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Luce Foundation
The "New Media in China" Colloquia are a year-long series of programs sponsored by the Luce Foundation that will bring outstanding scholars, visual artists, writers, and documentarians from around the world to address various aspects of media in China, from the emergence of new media in early China, to modern print culture, the impact of the internet on journalism, and the use of new media to document contemporary social and cultural transformations.
This workshop will provide an intimate and focused forum for the sustained discussion of 'new media' in premodern China—by which we indicate media in the moment of their historical emergence. We are interested, in other words, in exploring how these 'new' media (be they oracle bones, cast bronzes or other inscribed surfaces, new systems of writing or image-making, or forms of print culture) have arisen, and how they have worked to transform preexisting cultural and social institutions and systems of cultural production and signification, addressing both individual case studies, as well as the larger methodological issues involved in thinking through the question of media studies in a premodern context.
Bonnie Cheng, Assistant Professor, Art History, Oberlin College
"Set in Stone: New Media or New Interpretations?"
Stone as a medium in China conjures immediate associations of ancient Confucian shrines or steles bearing lengthy inscriptions, yet a passage from the History the Wei on the use of stone as material for a pagoda in Pingcheng marvels at its use in late fifth century construction. My presentation will examine the atmosphere in which stone was perceived as an innovative medium in early medieval China by tracking funerary structures (e.g. coffins or sarcophagi) that adopt stone both as a surface for decoration and material for construction. Typically examined as hybrid objects built for foreigners who lived in north China and broken up into disparate "traditions," I will explore how artistic and cultural traditions are imbricated in the stone medium and examine the various conduits of the material's reconfiguration, including the rise of cultural exchange along the Silk Road and the presence of Turkic rulers and other non-Chinese with new belief systems in the north China terrain.
Mark Csikszentmihalyi, Associate Professor, Chinese and Religious Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison
"Travel Documents and Talismans in the Han Dynasty"
Personal or institutional authority does not travel well. With the emergence of complex forms of bureaucratic authority &8211; both spiritual and earthly &8211; in the Han Dynasty, the need for authenticating authority spurred innovation in both texts and media. When a person left the center for the periphery, the existence of an unambiguous way to distinguish authentic travel documents from forgeries could be a matter of life or death.
Today, when we need to authenticate authority we use a plastic card with a magnetic strip, currency with intricate ink designs printed on special paper, or a unique letterhead, watermark, signature or "PIN number." Similar impulses were in part behind the use of elaborate conventional language and scarce media in the pre-imperial period for contracts and sumptuary vessels. In addition, the label "tally, talisman" (fu ?) was applied to objects that carried with them institutional authority, and that were, through words or media, self-authenticating. In the early empire, several linked genres trace the quest for self-authenticating documents across both texts and media. This paper will examine formal similarities between excavated "letters to the underground" (gaodi shu 告地書) and "tomb-quelling texts" (zhenmu wen 鎮墓文), and their relationship to contemporaneous protective talismans and tomb steles. Central to the function of these genres was their invocation of a higher spiritual authority to quell spirits and demons lower on the status continuum. By examining the genres that were around during the formative period for the important Daoist genre of talisman, the choice of both media and simulated seals may be seen in part as a result of the quest for self-authentication.
Yuming He, Assistant Professor, East Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago
"Books and Barbarians in Ming China and Beyond"
From the 15th to 18th centuries, one particular genre of woodblock publication in China—pictorial accounts of foreign countries and peoples—was particularly popular. These publications not only enjoyed an enthusiastic Chinese readership, but also circulated in book markets that were trans-regional, and at times even global, in scope. The producers and consumers of these pictorials included emperors, princes, and diplomats, as well as local officials, literati, commoners, commercial publishers, and professional woodblock illustrators. This study attempts to recover some of the lost history of this publishing genre, and to explore its broader significance in the heyday of mass production of woodblock texts that took place from the late 16th to early 17th centuries.
Oliver Moore, Lecturer, Chinese Art History, Leiden University
"Graphic Inventions and New Visions: The early history of photography in China"
This contribution to a workshop on new media in China explores the significance of photography during the first sixty years of its practice in China, ca. 1840-1900, looking at three related themes of history, epistemology and vision. It will consider China as yet another locus for a new technological and social project that provincializes the most commonly rehearsed—and hitherto privileged—accounts of photography's history in certain parts of Europe and north America. The history of photography proposed here will consider the medium in China not only as a (foreign) introduction but as an (indigenous) invention. To argue the notion of invention, the second part of the paper turns to the earliest 19th-century Chinese discourse that employed Chinese epistemes and experience to define photography as the outcome of long-observed optical principles and a knowledge of chemistry organized quite differently from this branch of science in the West. Finally, considering photography (before the ascent of digital photography) as an intercrossing of optics, chemistry and language, Part 3 addresses various expressions of language that mediated what photography was, most especially in terms of its distinct contributions to vision, its rupture and consonance with antecedent forms of visuality, and its addition to the 19th-century's broadening range of reprographic media. This last task will lead the discussion back to history and the conclusion that photography, although an increasingly universal medium throughout the 19th century, gave rise in China to form and content whose social and representational significance can only be understood within China's local economy of visual media.
Hajime Nakatani, Assistant Professor, Art History and Communication Studies, McGill University
"The Unwieldy Hand of Early Chinese Calligraphy"
Historians of Chinese calligraphy usually trace the beginning of the art back to the century or two following the collapse of the Han dynasty, when the post-imperial aristocrats, propelled by their heightened aesthetic sensibility, began to explore the artistic possibilities offered by paper—a more delicate and responsive surface of inscription than either silk or bamboo and wood strips. A reexamination of the available data, however, suggests a more heterogeneous and fragmented scriptural environment than such a teleological narrative of aesthetic coming-of-age would allow. In my presentation, I hope to trace the broad outlines of this early medieval "ecology" of writing, one whose failure to establish an orthodox style of inscription was compounded by the virtual absence of orthography and the proliferation of curious decorative styles of writing that calligraphy as we know it would be hard-pressed to accommodate.
Christopher A. Reed, Associate Professor, History, Ohio State University
"China's Gutenberg Revolution: Its Place in China's Modern National Narrative"
In 1996, the China Printing Museum opened in suburban Beijing. More recently, the Zhang Yimou-scripted opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics included a dramatization of China's invention of movable type. Why are the Chinese apparently so keen to inform the world about their contributions to printing and publishing technology? This short talk will look at China's late-Qing and Republican Gutenberg revolution in order to suggest that part of China's modern self-narrative can be traced to a nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Western "progress ideology" in which Johann Gutenberg and moveable-type printing played prominent roles. Although Gutenberg is no longer central to the Western self-narrative (suggesting why many non-Chinese, ignorant of the roles that key technologies such as printing have played in various national narratives, misunderstood the Chinese types to be mahjong tiles!), technological revolutions are important to Chinese, suggesting why China's national elites both before and after 1949 have felt compelled to create a Chinese version of the Gutenberg narrative.
Koryo Saram: The Unreliable People: Film Screening and a Conversation with the Directors
Y. David Chung, Professor of Art and Design, University of Michigan
Matt Dibble, Documentary Filmmaker
October 24, 2008
Center for Korean Studies, Walter H. Shorenstein Fund
In 1937, Josef Stalin began a campaign of massive ethnic cleansing, forcibly deporting everyone of Korean origin in Far East Russia to the steppe country of Central Asia, 3700 miles away. Y. David Chung, Matt Dibble and Meredith Woo's documentary charts the extraordinary untold history of the Koryo Saram (the Soviet Korean phrase for Korean person), dubbed "The Unreliable People" by Stalin. Through never-before-seen historical footage and emotional personal accounts from the original Koryo Saram, a lost history is pieced together, one that survived Stalin's mandate to eradicate the Korean language and tradition. In Kazakh, Korean or Russian, the film asks questions that all immigrants can relate to: how to hold onto one's traditions, and how to save one's culture from being overwhelmed.
Film running time is 60 minutes. Please visit the film's website at www.koryosaram.net for more details.
The Gaia Arts Center is located at 2120 Allston Way, between Shattuck Avenue and Oxford Street (close to the CKS office).
This program is funded in part by a gift from the Walter H. and Phyllis J. Shorenstein Foundation.
I Love Beijing
With Director Ning Ying in-person
Advance Tickets: (510) 642-5249
October 25, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Pacific Film Archive
I Love Beijing
Ning Ying (China, 2001, Mandarin with English subtitles, 80 mins.)
Advance Tickets: (510) 642-5249
Perpetual Motion
With Director Ning Ying in-person
Advance Tickets: (510) 642-5249
October 26, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Pacific Film Archive
Perpetual Motion
Ning Ying (China, 2005, Mandarin with English subtitles, 90 mins.)
Advance Tickets: (510) 642-5249
Railroad of Hope
Preceded by shorts: In Our Own Words and Looking for a Job in the City
With Director Ning Ying in-person
Advance Tickets: (510) 642-5249
October 26, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Pacific Film Archive
Railroad of Hope
Ning Ying (China, 2001, Mandarin with English subtitles, 53 mins.)
Preceded by shorts: In Our Own Words and Looking for a Job in the City
Ning Ying (China, 2001, Mandarin with English subtitles, 30 mins. / China, 2003, Mandarin with English subtitles, 15 mins.)
Advance Tickets: (510) 642-5249
Master Class with Ning Ying
Ning Ying, Director & Pacific Film Archive Artist in Residence
October 27, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Pacific Film Archive, Center for Asian American Media, Consortium for the Arts
Writing and Censorship During the Japanese Colonial Period: The Strange Case of Yi Sang's Poetry
Kwon Youngmin, Professor of Korean Literature, Seoul National University
October 28, 2008
Center for Korean Studies
Korean title: 일본 식민지 시대의 글쓰기와 검열: 시인 이상의 경우
Kim Hae-kyŏng, better know by his pen name Yi Sang (李箱), was born in Seoul in 1910. He attended Kyŏngsŏng Engineering High School, where he studied architecture. He then worked in the architectural division of the Japanese Government-General as an assistant engineer, and showing a talent for art, thought about becoming a painter. Yi Sang's literary activities began in 1930 with the serialized publication of his only full-length vernacular Korean novel, December 12, in the magazine Chosŏn. With the publication of his Japanese language poems such as "Strange Reversible Reaction" in Chōsen to kenchiku in 1931 and 1932, as well as his vernacular Korean work "A Map's Darkroom" in the magazine Chosŏn, he demonstrated the dual-language nature of his literary talent. He was diagnosed with tuberculosis at this time, however. In 1933, Yi Sang resigned his position as assistant engineer at the Government-General and returned to Seoul, bringing with him a kisaeng named Kumhong. The two of them, living together, opened a tea shop called The Swallow. Yi Sang became friendly with those at the center of the literary coterie called the Group of Nine, and published two Korean vernacular poems, "Flowering Tree" and "A Poem Like This," in Catholic Youth, a magazine edited by Chŏng Chi-yŏng. The Swallow eventually ran into financial difficulties and was forced to close its doors, while Yi Sang ended his relationship with Kumhong. In 1936, Yi Sang found work at Ch'angmunsa, a publishing company, editing the Group of Nine's journal Poetry and Fiction. In addition, he published a number of short stories, including the celebrated "Wings." After formally marrying a woman named Pyŏn Tong-rim in the summer of 1936, he left for Japan in November of that year. In 1937, Yi Sang was arrested as an "illegal Korean." His health deteriorated rapidly in prison and the Japanese authorities admitted him to Tokyo University Hospital. He was not able to recover his strength, however, and died on April 17, 1937.
Professor Kwon Youngmin of Seoul National University, a world-renowned Korean literature scholar, discusses censorship during Japanese rule of Korea, with particular attention to Yi Sang's 1932 poem "Publications Law" (Shuppanhō; 出版法). As a parody of the censorship of a special edition of the newspaper and its typographic conventions, the poem creates a unique poetic space. By means of a witty parody, it conceals a critique of the political reality in colonial Korea and the control the Japanese exerted over newspapers and print media in Korea.
Book Talk — Cold War Island: Quemoy on the Front Line
Michael Szonyi, John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Humanities, Asian Languages and Civilization, Harvard University
October 29, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies
Introduded by Wen-hsin Yeh, Richard H. and Laurie C. Morrison Professor of History and Director, Institute of East Asian Studies.
Fifty years ago, during the height of the Cold War, the small island of Quemoy (Jinmen) in the Taiwan Strait was the front line in the military standoff between Chiang Kai-shek's Republic of China on Taiwan and Mao Zedong's People's Republic. As a result, Quemoy became one of the most highly militarized societies in history, a place where daily life was inexorably connected to international geopolitics. Family life, the farm economy, and even religion became tied to decisions in far-off places: Taibei, Beijing, Washington, and beyond. Cold War Island: Quemoy on the Front Line explores the impact of global politics on the lives of ordinary people. It offers a new approach to the social history of the Cold War, one that shows how geopolitics shaped individual lives and communities.
New Perspectives in Cross-Straits Relations
October 31 – November 1, 2008
Institute of East Asian Studies
This workshop is closed to the public. For information, please contact Caverlee Cary (ccary@berkeley.edu).
The Kawakita Film Series
November 1 – December 17, 2008
Center for Japanese Studies, Pacific Film Archive
Saturday, November 1, 2008
6:30: Stray Dog / Nora-inu (Akira Kurosawa, 1949)
9:00: Enjo [a.k.a. Conflagration](Kon Ichikawa, 1958)
Sunday, Nov. 2
3:00: Rashomon (Akira Kurosawa, 1950)
5:00: A Full-Up Train / Man'in densha (Kon Ichikawa, 1957)
Wednesday, Nov. 5
7:00: Ikiru (Akira Kurosawa, 1952)
Friday, Nov. 7
6:30: Naked Island (a.k.a.The Island) / Hadaka no shima (Kaneto Shindo, 1960)
8:30: Branded to Kill / Koroshi no rakuin (Seijun Suzuki, 1967)
Sunday, Nov. 9
3:00: Into the Picture Scroll: The Tale of Yamanaka Tokiwa / Yamanaka Tokiwa (Sumiko Haneda, 2004)
Friday, Nov. 14
6:30: The Yellow Handkerchief of Happiness / Kofuku no kiiroi hankachi (Yoji Yamada, >1977)
8:35: Vengeance is Mine / Fukushu-suru wa ware ni ari (Shohei Imamura, 1979)
Sunday, Nov. 16
3:00: Akiko &8211; Portrait of a Dancer /Akiko &8211; Aru dansa no shozo (Sumiko Haneda, 1985)
Sunday, Nov. 23
2:00: Ode to Mt. Hayachine / Hayachine no fu (Sumiko Haneda, 1982)
Friday, Nov. 28
8:40: Her Brother / Ototo (Kon Ichikawa, 1960)
Saturday, Nov. 29
5:00: Zigeunerweisen (Seijun Suzuki, 1980)
Sunday, Nov. 30
3:00: Tora-san's Sunrise and Sunset / Otoko wa tsurai yo:Torajiro yuyake-koyake (Yoji Yamada, 1976)
Wednesday, December 3
7:00: The Ceremony / Gishiki (Nagisa Oshima, 1971)
Friday, December 5
9:00: Boy / Shonen (Nagisa Oshima, 1969)
Sunday, Dec. 7
2:00: Black Rain / Kuroi ame (Shohei Imamura, 1989)
4:30: Onibaba (Kaneto Shindo, 1964)
Friday, Dec. 12
6:30: Tokyo Drifter / Tokyo nagaremono (Seijun Suzuki, 1966)
8:20: Violence at Noon / Hakuchu no torima (Nagisa Oshima, 1966)
Sunday, Dec. 14
2:00: A Last Note / Gogo no yuigonjo (Kaneto Shindo, 1995)
4:15: Where Spring Comes Late / Kazoku (Yoji Yamada, 1970)
Wednesday, Dec. 17
7:00: Intentions of Murder / Akai satsui (Shohei Imamura, 1964)
Co-sponsored by: Pacific Film Archives
510-642-5249 / PFA Theater Box Office
Information: 510-642-1412; see BAM/PFA Art + Film Notes available October 22
The Government Role in (E)Quality of Higher Education in China
Zhou Zuoyu, Professor of Higher Education, Institute of Higher Education — Beijing Normal University
November 3, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies, Center for Studies in Higher Education
Professor Zhou is currently a Fulbright visiting scholar at Stanford University, directs a College Students Learning Survey in China, and is pursuing research on the evaluation of higher education in that nation's rapidly growing education system. He is also the Director of Humanities and Social Sciences and Executive Deputy Director of the Institute of Higher Education at Beijing Normal University.
http://cshe.berkeley.edu/events/index.php?id=265
Bridges Across the Taiwan Strait
Dr. Hung-mao Tien, President and Chairman of the Board, Institute for National Policy Research
November 3, 2008
Institute of East Asian Studies
With great changes taking place in China, Dr. Hung-Mao Tien discusses the effects on Taiwan's domestic politics, Taiwan's new policy initiatives toward China, and Beijing's response. Dr. Tien reviews cross-straits relations over the past two decades, and implications for future relations with China, Japan, and the US. Hung-mao Tien, Taiwan's former Foreign Minister and representative at the Court of St. James, has written and edited extensively on China and Taiwan, including such works as "Government and Politics in Kuomintang China, 1927-1937," "China Under Jiang Zhemin," "Mainland China, Taiwan, and US Policy," and Consolidating Third Wave Democracies."
The View from the Riverbank: Pluralization without Democratization in China's Rural West
Kristen McDonald, Director, China Rivers Project
November 5, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies
China's increasingly pluralistic development process opens up new arenas for public controversy and to some degree, dissent. But vulnerable populations continue to be left out of development decision making, particularly in ethnic, rural regions of the country. A proposal to build 13 dams on the Nu River in western Yunnan Province has resulted in a public debate that pits the region's cultural and biological diversity against China's needs for clean energy for sustainable growth. This talk will present field research showing that local opinion on the dams diverges significantly from the terms of this debate, yet is critical to reaching a satisfactory outcome. Local communities' opinions of the dams—both favorable and unfavorable—are built on long standing relations with each other, the local government, and the natural resources they depend upon, while local officials are largely concerned with increasing government revenue. The talk will conclude that while the people of the Nu River valley have long been subject to the will of more powerful
neighbors, it is their own prefecture government's "dams as poverty alleviation" agenda that may trigger increased civil unrest.
Curriculum Design and Objectives of Chinese Language Pedagogy汉语教学的目的与教材编写
Li Xiaoqi (李晓琪), Director, International College for Chinese Language Studies, Peking University (对外汉语教育学院院长)
November 5, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, National Center for K-16 Chinese Language Pedagogy, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures
Lecture will be conducted in Chinese.
从理论上来说，二语教学的目的与教学法之间有着密切的联系，不同的教学目的又会受到不同的教学法的影响和制约，而教学法的产生和发展又直接影响到教学目的和二语学习教材的编写，汉语教学发展的过程印证了这种规律。
本讲座在回顾二语教学法的基础之上，重点讨论在汉语教学大发展的今天，任务型教学法对教材编写的影响以及系列商务汉语教材编写情况介绍
2008-2009 Numata Lecture — Searching for a Better Return: "Preparatory Cultivation" [逆修, yuxiu 預修] and the Economy of Salvation in East Asian Buddhism
James Robson, Associate Professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University
November 6, 2008
Center for Buddhist Studies
It is commonly understood that Buddhist death rituals, which transfer merit from the living to deceased ancestors, exemplify the importance of filial piety in East Asia. In this talk Prof. Robson discusses a variety of Chinese and Japanese sources that suggest that some people were in fact uneasy about placing their post-mortem fate in the hands of surviving relatives. His talk will explore the development of a ritual of "preparatory cultivation," which involves accruing merit for oneself while alive that is transferred to oneself after death. These pre-mortem rites were propagated by Buddhist institutions and became a widespread phenomena in East Asia. How does an understanding of the development of these practices force us to rethink commonly held notions about East Asian conceptions of death and the afterlife?
James Robson is an Associate Professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University. He specializes in the history of Medieval Chinese Buddhism and Daoism and is particularly interested in issues of sacred geography, local religious history, talismans, and the historical development of Chan/Zen Buddhism. He is the author of "Buddhism and the Chinese Marchmount System [Wuyue]: A Case Study of the Southern Marchmount (Mt. Nanyue)" in John Lagerwey, ed. Religion and Chinese Society: Ancient and Medieval China (Hong Kong: The Chinese UP and École Française d'Extrême-Orient, 2004) and "A Tang Dynasty Chan Mummy [roushen] and a Modern Case of Furta Sacra? Investigating the Contested Bones of Shitou Xiqian," in Bernard Faure, ed. Chan Buddhism in Ritual Context (London: Routledge Curzon, 2003). He is presently completing a book manuscript entitled Power of Place: The Religious Landscape of the Southern Sacred Peak [Nanyue 南嶽] in Medieval China (forthcoming, Harvard Asia Center). He has also been engaged in a long-term collaborative research project with the École Française d'Extrême-Orient studying local religious statuary from Hunan province and what they can tell us about the local religious history of that region.
Revalorizing Gendered Self-Worth in China's New Age of Private Property
Li Zhang, Chancellor's Fellow & Associate Professor, Anthropology, UC Davis
November 7, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies
This lecture explores how the privatization of home ownership and a rising material culture of consumerism reconfigure the intimate realm of self-worth, love, and marriage in urban China. Through several ethnographic cases, my research shows how owning a private house has gradually become the decisive factor in considering marriage and a focal point of contention in dissolving that relationship. In this context, I suggest that self-worth has become more and more individualized and materialized through the idiom of property possession. After thirty years of economic reform, the socially embedded nature of the self that was once at the heart of a moral economy is being eclipsed by an individual-centered, materialistic determinism nurtured by a market economy. This social reconfiguration however is a gendered process. While the meanings of masculinities have shifted toward one's ability to make money, possess desirable material goods, or gain political power, the construction of self-worth among women tends to focus on the body and physical appearance, which serve as the material foundation for constructing femininities.
Discussant: You-tien Hsing, Associate Professor, Geography, UC Berkeley
Maritime Customs in the 1880s: A New Look at Korea's "Chinese Decade"
Wayne Patterson, Professor of History, St. Norbert College
November 7, 2008
Center for Korean Studies
When discussing Korea's "Chinese Decade," roughly defined as the dozen or so years prior to the Sino-Japanese War of 1894&8211;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. Several scholars have looked at this topic and this period, including Koh Byong-ik, Lew Young Ick, Lee Yur-Bok, Kirk Larsen, and Kim Dal-Choong, who have outlined the roles and actions of some of the key players such as Sir Robert Hart, Li Hung-chang, Henry F. Merrill, and Paul Georg von Mollendorff. Using the recently-discovered correspondence of the first commissioner of customs in Pusan, William Nelson Lovatt, a British citizen who occupied that position between 1883 and 1886, this talk will discuss some heretofore unknown aspects of this attempted takeover by China.
Wayne Patterson, Professor of History, has been a member of the faculty at St. Norbert College since 1977, specializing in the history of East Asia. His undergraduate degree in History is from Swarthmore College. He holds two masters degrees—one in History and one in International Relations—both from the University of Pennsylvania. His Ph.D., also from the University of Pennsylvania, is in International Relations, with a concentration in modern East Asian history. The recipient of four Fulbright Fellowships, Dr. Patterson has authored or edited twelve books on modern Korea and Japan, and is the recipient of the Donald B. King Outstanding Scholar Award. He has been a visiting professor at a number of universities in the U.S. and abroad.
Crossing the Line
Nicholas Bonner, Co-Producer
November 8, 2008
Center for Korean Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Film Department, Asian Cultural Studies Working Group
In 1962, a U.S. soldier guarding the Korean Demilitarized Zone deserted his unit, walked across the most heavily fortified border on earth, and defected to North Korea. His name was James Joseph Dresnok. He became a coveted star of the North Korean propaganda machine, and found fame acting in films, typecast as an evil American. He uses Korean as his daily language. He has three sons from two wives. He has now lived in North Korea twice as long as he has in the U.S. Crossing the Line goes inside North Korea to tell the story of this fascinating man, known as "Comrade Joe."
This program includes a post-screening discussion led by the documentary's co-producer Nicholas Bonner, who will talk about Dresnok, North Korea, and the experience of filming a documentary there. The filmmakers of Crossing the Line were allowed unprecedented access by the North Korean authorities to the subject of their documentary. They were permitted not only to interview Dresnok extensively, but also to follow him through his daily life in Pyongyang. This film adds an important new perspective to their two previous award-winning documentaries on North Korea, The Game of Their Lives and A State of Mind.
This presentation is part of a ten-campus screening tour of Crossing the Line organized by The Korea Society. Film running time is 94 minutes. For more details, or contact cjhong@berkeley.edu or cks@berkeley.edu.
A talk and book-signing by Amitav Ghosh, author of "Sea of Poppies"
Amitav Ghosh, Author
November 10, 2008
Institute of East Asian Studies, Center for South Asia Studies, Department of English, Department of Comparative Literature, Department of History, Department of Anthropology, Center for British Studies, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Townsend Center for the Humanities, SACHI
Amitav Ghosh was born in Calcutta in 1956. He grew up in Bangladesh (then East Pakistan), Sri Lanka, Iran and India. After graduating from the University of Delhi, he studied Social Anthropology at Oxford University where he received a D.Phil. in 1982. Ghosh published his first novel, "The Circle of Reason", in 1986, followed by "The Shadow Lines" (1988), "The Calcutta Chromosome" (1996), "The Glass Palace" (2000), "Incendiary Circumstances" (2006) and "The Hungry Tide" (2004). He has reported for Granta and the New Yorker and his writing has won many literary awards including the Prix Medici Etranger, one of France's top literary awards; the Sahitya Akademi Award and the Crossword Prize, two of India's most prestigious literary prizes; the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the Pushcart Prize and the Premio Grinzane Cavour.
The Image of China in the American Classroom
Ban Wang, Professor, Asian Languages and Comparative Literature, Stanford University
November 12, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies
Emotivism is a doctrine that evaluates all judgments, and especially moral judgments as nothing but expressions of preference, of private attitude or feeling. Consensus in moral judgment is not to be secured by rational discussion, persuasion or investigation of real states of affair. Rather it is to be secured by producing certain effects on the emotions or attitudes of those who disagree with one. In emotivism, the moral question of human purpose in culture or historical experience is turned into a theatrical, aesthetical matter, a media event, a visual titillation or an array of effects. Those who can marshal the techniques and deploy the rhetoric of emotional manipulation will prevail over those who disagree with me.
What does this emotive stance have to do with the study of China or other cultures? If we extend the Kantian maxim "to treat someone as an end" and say we should "treat a nation or country as an end," this would mean treating each sovereign nation and people as striving to achieve their own ends and as the master of their own fate. It would mean treating their culture, history, and growth not as an instrument of my private purposes, of my nation's self-interest, with a view to my profits and pleasure. This talk will reflect how individualistic-egoistic assumptions about culture and globalization give rise to the pitfalls in presenting China in the American classroom. Focusing on how the emotivist, self-serving attitude ignores historically nuanced and complex pictures of China, the talk will explores global, geopolitical factors and liberal thinking that encourage students and scholars to see China as "my space."
Sadako Ogata and Japan's International Relations
November 14, 2008
Center for Japanese Studies, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Consulate General of Japan, San Francisco
Keynote Speech: US-Japan: Global Responsibility and Development Assistance — Sadako Ogata, Former United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and President, Japanese International Cooperation Agency; Cal class of '63, Ph.D
Introduced by Steve Vogel (UC Berkeley) and Robert Scalapino (UC Berkeley)
Symposium: Japan's International Relations: Diplomacy and Foreign Aid
Panelists:
T.J. Pempel (UC Berkeley), author of Regime Shift: Comparative Dynamics of the Japanese Political Economy
Shinichi Kitaoka (Univ. of Tokyo), former permanent representative of Japan to the United Nations
Takatoshi Ito (Univ. of Tokyo), author of The Japanese Economy and The Political Economy of Japanese Monetary Policy
Moderated by Steve Vogel
Light reception to follow.
This event is free and open to the public
What is Laozi's Ziran (naturalness): From Ancient text to Modern Implication
Xiaogan Liu, Professor, Philosophy, City University of Hong Kong
November 14, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies
It is a well-settled that Ziran, (Tzu-jan, or Naturalness as its token in English) is an essential concept in the Laozi or Daoism. However, the meaning of Laozi's ziran is less clear. Does it refer to the natural world? Or does it characterize the biological world? Is it a description of biophysical nature? Or the Primitivist state? Perhaps it is Thomas Hobbe's"state of nature"? Or is it opposed to human civilization? Or is it useful for improving human social life? Could we accept all of these ideas as an equally "creative" understanding or interpretation of Laozi's ziran? This lecture tries to present a new interpretation based on close textual analyses of the Laozi, including comparison of the received versions and recently excavated bamboo and silk versions of the text. In addition to textual and historical approaches, the lecture will also discuss its possible implication and application of the concept of Laozi's ziran in modern society, a world full of value conflicts.
Recovering Afghanistan's Past: Cultural Heritage in Context
See conference website for list of participants
November 14-15, 2008
Center for Buddhist Studies, See conference website for complete list of sponsors.
The "Recovering Afghanistan's Past: Cultural Heritage in Context" conference will focus on Afghanistan's cultural heritage in its past and present contexts and bring together scholars from various disciplines to address, among others, the following issues:
- The recovered objects from the National Museum
- Recent research and preservation/renovation projects
- Challenges of cultural heritage protection
- The complexities of 'targeted' heritage
- Cultural heritage and identity
This conference is organized in conjunction with the "Afghanistan: Hidden Treasures from the National Museum, Kabul" exhibit which will be on display at several venues in the United States in 2008-2009, including the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, October 24, 2008 – January 25, 2009. This exhibit highlights the objects thought to have been looted from the National Museum of Afghanistan, but later rediscovered in the vault of the Presidential Palace. The exhibit centers on three major collections — Ai Khanum, Tillya-tepe, and Begram — which represent important archeological discoveries that have informed our understanding of the development of ancient Afghan cultures.
See http://ieas.berkeley.edu/afghanconference2008 for a full conference agenda.
Wind Over Water: An Anthropology of Migration From an East Asian Setting
November 18, 2008
Institute of East Asian Studies, Wenner-Gren Foundation, George Mason University
Developing an inclusive, integrative anthropology that bridges national, cultural, and linguistic divides is a difficult process, but one that promises a far broader intellectual and practical platform from which anthropology can engage with truly global social issues. As a test case of that kind of inclusive anthropology, and building on a two-year series of international panels, workshops, and conferences in Canada, China, Japan, and the United States, this session examines the dynamics, trends, and meanings of East Asian migration, with particular attention to the ways an understanding of migration grounded in Asian experience and Asian thought can complement and challenge a body of migration research, theory, policy, and practice that has been largely based on the North American and European experiences and on North American and European ways of viewing those experiences.
- Anthropology as an Integrative and Comparative Discipline — David W. Haines (George Mason University)
- Linking Local, National, and World Anthropologies: With Reference to Transnational Migration Studies in East Asia — Shinji Yamashita (University of Tokyo)
- An Anthropology of Migrants, Citizenship, and Civil Society — Keiko Yamanaka (UC Berkeley)
- Wind through the Woods: Writing a Multiscalar Ethnography of Migration — Xiang Biao (Oxford University)
- Mothers on the Move: Transnational Child-Rearing by Japanese Women Married to Pakistani Migrants — Masako Kudo (University of Tokyo)
- Hong Kong/Chunking Mansions as Hubs of Global Migration — Gordon Mathews (Chinese University of Hong Kong)
Patterns of Interaction in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean Painting
James Cahill, UC Berkeley Professor Emeritus
November 19, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies, History of Art
Put together as an opening "keynote address" for a symposium in Seoul titled "Beyond Boundaries: An International Symposium on Chinese and Korean Painting," this talk attempts some large observations about cross-cultural borrowings of styles and motifs between the three great East Asian cultures: how the attractions that foreign styles hold for artists in a culture may differ from the judgments that its critics and book-writers may make of them, so that the borrowings can be recognized only visually, not through textual research; how the prestige of Chinese painting has led until recently to constructions of its interrelationship with Japanese painting that were not truly two-way; and how the same is still true of Chinese and Korean painting, a situation we should begin trying to remedy.
James Cahill, UC Berkeley Professor Emeritus, received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. In 1956 joined the staff of the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., where he served as Curator of Chinese Art until joining the UC Berkeley History of Art faculty in 1965. His many publications include the widely-read and much-reprinted Chinese Painting (Skira, 1960) and many other books and exhibition catalogs, in addition to numerous articles on Chinese and Japanese painting. He was joint author of The Freer Chinese Bronzes, vol. I (1967), and undertook a five-volume series on later Chinese paintings, of which three volumes were published: Hills Beyond a River: Chinese Painting of the Yuan Dynasty (1976); Parting At the Shore: Chinese Painting of the Early and Middle Ming Dynasty (1978); and The Distant Mountains: Chinese Painting of the Late Ming Dynasty(1982). He has also published An Index of Early Chinese Painters and Paintings (1980, reprinted 2003), and, as a computer database, and began a similar index for Ming painting. Professor Cahill retired from UC Berkeley in 1994.
The State of the Chinese Lexicon in the Recent Era: 新时期的汉语词汇状况
Shi Dingguo (石定果), Professor, Humanities Institute, Beijing Languages University (北京语言大学人文学院教授)
November 19, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, National Center for K-16 Chinese Language Pedagogy, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures
Lecture will be conducted in Chinese.
现代汉语词汇概况
二． 新时期以来汉语词汇的发展
三． 现代汉语词语的流通度
四．现代汉语词汇的整理与规范
词汇是与时俱进的，最及时地反映出现实社会的变化与人民心态的变化。新时期，即改革开放以来的三十年间，中国超常规的跨越式发展，所获得的成就以及所存在的问题，都可借由汉语词汇的种种新现象来考察。而且，这些新现象也使得汉语充满生生不息的活力
A Great Wind: China and the Era of Revolution — Posters from the Hok Pui and Sally Yu Leung Collection
November 19, 2008 – February 12, 2009
Center for Chinese Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies
In posters, the propagandistic function of art under Mao is most clearly revealed. Widely distributed and cheaply available, the posters produced during the Cultural Revolution era address (or elide) problems and goals, instruct viewers on everything from army conduct to birth control, and celebrate the revolutionary spirit in the lives of the people and in the person of Chairman Mao.
The posters on view offer a sampling of this revolutionary vision from 1969 to 1978, with one final poster from 1985 illustrating the change in the post-Cultural Revolution era. They range from starkly propagandistic to later, more conciliatory images in the post-Mao era. Styles range from socialist realist vigor to an almost folk art simplicity to the increasing lyricism of later works, as evocation of the natural world, so strongly associated with Chinese art prior to the Revolution, begins to creep back into the artists' idiom.
The poster in China did not begin with the Revolution, nor were posters the only form of artistic expression. Additional panels discuss art in China under the communist regime.
The Institute of East Asian Studies would like to express appreciation to Hok Pui and Sally Yu Leung for the generous loan of posters displayed in this exhibition.
Making an Interactive Anthropology in Asia and Beyond
November 19, 2008
Institute of East Asian Studies, Wenner-Gren Foundation, George Mason University
"Anthropologies" (in the plural form) throughout the world have different practices with different historical backgrounds. Under the name of anthropology, anthropologists may be doing different things. In this context, "interactive anthropology" is a term to create a space in which different anthropologies can meet and interact. The necessity for transnational interaction is becoming more and more urgent, especially after the rapid development of anthropology in Asia in the latter half of the 20th century. Yet, Asian anthropologists do not necessarily know what kind of anthropology their Asian colleagues are doing. This session is intended to make a step toward the development of an interactive anthropology. Its major goal is to create a forum in which anthropologists of different backgrounds can interact to formulate theoretical models and explore methods of ethnographic fieldwork. It should be emphasized, however, that this session is not a case of the periphery striking back. Instead, it is intended to enlarge the anthropological horizon. By assembling anthropologists from the three regions—Asia, Europe and the Americas, this session seeks to find "global anthropological commons" within the paradigm of what Arturo Escobar and Eduardo Restrepo call a "world anthropologies framework."
This session was originally planned for the International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnographical Sciences (ICAES), July 2008 in Kunming, China. It is our pleasure to present this panel to the Berkeley community and beyond in conjunction with an open workshop session: "Wind Over Water: An Anthropology of Migration from an East Asian Setting," 3-5 PM, Nov. 18, Institute of East Asian Studies, Conference Room, 6F, 2223 Fulton Street.
Coordinator: Shinji Yamashita (U Tokyo, Japan)
Panelists:
- Shinji Yamashita (U Tokyo, Japan) — "Making an interactive anthropology in Asia and beyond: An introduction"
- Ulf Hannerz (U Stockholm, Sweden) — "Flat world and the Tower of Babel: Reflections on the practices of a global anthropology"
- Gustavo Lins Ribeiro (U Brasilia, Brazil) — "Anthropologies go Global: Pluriversality in world anthropologies"
- Blai Guarne (Pompeu Fabra University, Spain) — "(Re)Searching at the margin: Challenges and imbalances in the production of anthropological knowledge"
- Jianxin Wang (Sun Yat-sen U, China) — "Linking Chinese anthropology in Asia"
- Joy Hendry (Oxford Brookes U, UK) — "Anthropologists, natives and native anthropologists: A globo-graphical view"
Music and organology of the Chinese bamboo flute
November 21, 2008
Music Department
November 21 — 4:30-6 p.m.
128 Morrison Hall
Music and organology of the Chinese bamboo flute
A colloquium presentation by Professor Lindy Mark
Department of Music
Sponsored by the Department of Music
Inside/Outside: The Great Wall of China
Michael Meyer, Author
David Spindler, Historian
Museum Admission $3-$8. Programs free with museum admission.
November 23, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies, Berkeley Art Museum
Crafting Cultural Heritage in South Korea
Roger Janelli, Visiting Professor, UC Berkeley
December 2, 2008
Center for Korean Studies
Cultural heritage has gained increasing attention throughout the world in recent years, spurred by nostalgia, issues of identity and community, tourism, the pursuit of prestige and power, the promotional efforts of national and local governments, and official recognition by UNESCO. This increasing attention has been accompanied by shifts in the conceptualization of cultural heritage, from objects or practices and their meanings created in the past to those created in the present, and from fixed to malleable in nature. This colloquium will analyze these shifts in conceptualization and examine their relevance to intangible heritage preservation and declaration at various social levels in South Korea.
Roger Janelli is Professor Emeritus of Folklore and Ethnomusicology and of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Indiana University. He is also currently a Visiting Professor at UC Berkeley.
Book Talk: Negotiating Islam and "Matriarchy" in Indonesia
Jeffrey Hadler, Assistant Professor, Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies, UC Berkeley
December 3, 2008
Institute of East Asian Studies, Center for Southeast Asia Studies
Introduced by Penny Edwards, Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies, and Chair, Center for Southeast Asia Studies
Muslims and Matriarchs is a history of an unusual, probably heretical, and ultimately resilient cultural system. The Minangkabau culture of West Sumatra, Indonesia, is well known as the world's largest matrilineal culture; Minangkabau people are also Muslim and famous for their piety. In this book, Jeffrey Hadler examines the changing ideas of home and family in Minangkabau from the late eighteenth century to the 1930s.
Minangkabau has experienced a sustained and sometimes violent debate between Muslim reformists and preservers of indigenous culture. During a protracted and bloody civil war of the early nineteenth century, neo-Wahhabi reformists sought to replace the matriarchate with a society modeled on that of the Prophet Muhammad. In capitulating, the reformists formulated an uneasy truce that sought to find a balance between Islamic law and local custom. With the incorporation of highland West Sumatra into the Dutch empire in the aftermath of this war, the colonial state entered an ongoing conversation.
These existing tensions between colonial ideas of progress, Islamic reformism, and local custom ultimately strengthened the matriarchate. The ferment generated by the trinity of oppositions created social conditions that account for the disproportionately large number of Minangkabau leaders in Indonesian politics across the twentieth century. The endurance of the matriarchate is testimony to the fortitude of local tradition, the unexpected flexibility of reformist Islam, and the ultimate weakness of colonialism. Muslims and Matriarchs is particularly timely in that it describes a society that experienced a neo-Wahhabi jihad and an extended period of Western occupation but remained intellectually and theologically flexible and diverse.
Master Plans and Model Communities: Rationalities of Planning in Contemporary Urban China
David Bray, Senior Lecturer in Chinese Studies, University of Sydney
December 3, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies, Department of City and Regional Planning
Noon, Wednesday, Dec. 4, 2008 — 3401 Dwinelle Hall
Master plans and model communities: rationalities of planning in contemporary urban China
Dr. David Bray, Senior Lecturer in Chinese Studies, University of Sydney
The demise of the planned economy in China has been accompanied by an increase in the influence of town planners, architects and urban designers. In part this is due to the dramatically enhanced wealth of city governments. But it also speaks to an alignment of governmental and professional commitment to purposefully shape the urban environment.
Under the influence of city "master plans" and highly standardized policies on residential development, the spatial structure of the Chinese city has been significantly reconfigured as it has been rebuilt over recent years. However, while many observers have focused on the negative impacts of redevelopment few have sought to document or understand the social and political implications of new urban formations.
What are the governmental rationales which underpin contemporary transformations of urban China? What kinds of cities and types of communities do governments, planners and architects think they are creating?
Co-sponsored by the Department of City and Regional Planning
New Media in China: The Documentary Impulse
December 5, 2008
Center for Chinese Studies
New Media in China: The Documentary Impulse
The "New Media in China" Colloquia are a year-long series of programs sponsored by the Luce Foundation that will bring outstanding scholars, visual artists, writers, and documentarians from around the world to address various aspects of media in China, from the emergence of new media in early China, to modern print culture, the impact of the internet on journalism, and the use of new media to document contemporary social and cultural transformations.
In recent years, documentary has emerged as one of the most artistically vibrant, and socially engaged forms of cultural production, on both sides of the Taiwan straits. Drawing on the expertise of several of the most innovative documentarians currently working in contemporary China and Taiwan, this workshop will explore the possibilities and problems represented by new and alternative modes of documentary work, including digital, on-line, and sonic media. We will chart the emergence and significance of a powerful documentary impulse in contemporary China across various media, ask how new media might differ from old media, how artists can utilize new forms of 'small-screen' visuality, and how a medium such as sound recording might provide a means of registering the profound social and spatial changes of recent years.
Agenda
Friday, December 5, 2008
10:00 a.m. &8211; 12:30 p.m. — Location: Sproul Room, International House
Panel I: Sound as a Documentary Medium
Moderator: Andrew Jones, Associate Professor, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, UC Berkeley
Words and Sound in New Taiwan Documentary
Guo-Juin HONG, Assistant Professor, Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, Duke University
Stereo Worlds as Everyday Art
YAN Jun, Sound Artist and Poet
China Sound Unit: Theory After Praxis
YAO Dajuin, Artist
2:00 p.m. &8211; 4:30 p.m. — Location: Sproul Room, International House
Panel II: Visual Documentary
Moderator: Andrew Jones, Associate Professor, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, UC Berkeley
Ceci n'est pas un documentaire: Truths, Lies and Online Videos
Paola VOCI, Senior Lecturer, Department of Languages and Cultures, University of Otago, New Zealand
The Moving Image between Theater and Gallery
Jean MA, Assistant Professor, Department of Art and Art History, Stanford University
The Practice and Politics of Documentary Film in Taiwan
Mickey CHEN, Documentary Film-maker
5:30 p.m. &8211; 7:30 p.m. — Location: Nestrick Room, 142 Dwinelle Hall
Documentary Screening and Discussion with the Director
Memorandum on Happiness
Director, Mickey CHEN
"Fourth Wave" on the Korean Peninsula: The U.S. Role toward a New Vision for Peace in Northeast Asia
Chung Dong-Young, Former Minister of Unification of South Korea; 2007 Democratic Presidential Candidate of South Korea; Visiting Scholar, Public Policy, Duke University
December 5, 2008
Center for Korean Studies
The urgent task in Northeast Asia is to overcome ongoing Cold War tensions and to work toward reunification of the divided Koreas. The new U.S. administration will play a decisive role in bringing about denuclearization of the Korean peninsula and to usher in a new "Fourth Wave" of cooperation in the region. The "Fourth Wave" in Korea signifies a transformation of the current state of opposition between the North and the South toward a new era of peace for the region and for U.S.—Northeast Asia relations.
U.S.-Japan Baseball Symposium: History and Prospects (Part I)
December 6, 2008
Center for Japanese Studies, Yomiuri Shimbun, Department of Ahletics
Film Screening: (9:00 am – 10:30 am) — "The Zen of Bobby V." (ESPN Documentary, 2008, 86min)
Symposium (10:30 am-11:30 am)
Panel Discussion moderated by Jack Sakazaki (President of Japan Sports Marketing. Cal class of '71)
Featured Speakers:
William Kelly, (Yale Univ.) author of The Hanshin Tigers and Professional Baseball in Modern Japan (forthcoming)
Warren Cromartie, former Yomiuri Giants player and MVP of Japan's Central League, a former Major Leaguer with the Montreal Expos and Kansas City Royals, author of Slugging It Out in Japan
Andrew Gordon, (Harvard Univ.) author of The Unknown Story of Matsuzaka's Major League Revolution (in Jspanese)
Masanori Murakami, Japan's 1st MLB player and pioneer, former San Francisco Giants pitcher, currently Director of the All Japan Baseball Foundation.
Light Reception to follow
This event is free and open to the public. Please note that the time of the event has been changed. (Originally the afternoon program but switched to the morning starting from 9:00 am)
U.S.-Japan Baseball: History and Prospects (Part II)
A screening of American Pastime
December 7, 2008
Center for Japanese Studies, Yomiuri Shimbun
Screening of American Pastime (Warner Brothers, 2007, 106 min) — a film on baseball in the WWII Japanese American internment camps — will be followed by a discussion with the associate producer of the film, Kerry Nakagawa (also author of Through a Diamond: 100 Years of Japanese American Baseball)
Free and open to the public.
The North Korean Nuclear Issue: Recommendations for the Obama Administration
Lee Jong Seok, Former Minister of Unification; Senior Fellow, Sejong Institute; Visiting Scholar, Stanford University
December 9, 2008
Center for Korean Studies
Former Unification Minister Lee Jong Seok argues that the North Korean nuclear issue has reached a "moment of truth." In order to assess the North Korean government's true intentions, the U.S. must proceed with greater concentration and more time devoted to the nuclear issue. Minister Lee has four main suggestions for the Obama administration: clarify the policy goals and frame of reference; keep the policy consistent; establish firm positions about the form of the negotiation and policy prioritization; and pursue a tailored negotiation strategy.
CANCELLED: Korean Youth, Nationalism, and Transnationalism
Katharine H. S. Moon, Professor of Political Science, Wellesley College
December 12, 2008
Center for Korean Studies
In recent years, Korean youth have been "blamed" for a resurgence of nationalist sentiments. With respect to the U.S., the youth and the "generation gap" were deemed responsible for the decline in the alliance relationship. But such views offer only a partial and misleading understanding of the fast-changing landscape of Korean society and politics. The generation gap needs to be understood in the context of broader socio-cultural trends and political opportunities, which include counter-nationalist identity formation and politics.
We apologize that this event has been cancelled. We hope to host Professor Moon again in the near future. Please check the CKS website in 2009 for details.
The Global Financial Crisis: Implications for Asia
Kim Yong-Duk, Former Governor of Financial Supervisory Service; Former Economic Advisor to the President; Visiting Scholar, UC Berkeley Department of Economics
December 15, 2008
Center for Korean Studies
According to Eichengreen and Bordo (2002), a total of 139 financial crises hit 56 different countries in a span of 23 years between 1974 and 1997 (44 times in advanced countries and 95 times in developing countries). Despite its frequency and the severity of its impact, the truth is that we are still about searching without a suitable solution.
The currency crisis that started in Asia almost 10 years to the day had spread its tentacles of hardship and pain to as far away as Russia and Mexico. After the Asian Financial Crisis, the Financial Stability Forum (FSF) and G-20 were created by the G7, and the major emerging market economies, along with the IMF. For almost 10 years, they have protracted discussions on a New International Financial Architecture in the interests of preventing and orderly resolving financial crises.
In spite of these efforts, we find ourselves faced once again with these present predicaments exactly 10 years after the break-out of the Asian Currency Crisis. This present Crisis is unprecedented, however, already having made its way to the advanced financial markets in Europe and impacting the emerging market economies including Asia after getting its start in a country that could be said to be the heart of world finance, America. It has now spread to the real economy forecasting gloom for the global economy. What is more is that the United States, the country that the world looks to for leadership and order in the international financial system, is in government transition, adding further to the prevailing uncertainties.
In this presentation, I will analyze the root causes of the present crisis and the impact it is expected to have on the world and Asian economies. As well, I will explore the kinds of initiatives and complimentary measures, both international and Asian in scope, that will go towards overcoming and preventing such crises from happening again.
Asia is a region where the financial crisis is expected to have a disproportionate impact since most Asian economies are fully integrated with the world economy, and even the slightest movements in US and other financial markets are reflected in real time in Asia's free and open stock and foreign exchange markets. A slowing world economy will also affect exports, which constitute a significant component in many of the economies in Asia, and directly lead to the slowing of economic growth. Many capital and foreign exchange markets in Asia have already been hit harder by the current global financial crisis than the markets in the advanced countries.
But Asian countries still do not have in place a tangible framework for regional financial cooperation to protect themselves from this kind of external shocks. Although the Chiang-mai Initiative of inter-central banks' SWAP arrangements and other cooperative financial mechanisms were set up after 1997, their effect is still negligible and its usefulness unproven.
The present global financial crisis offers Asian countries a great deal of insight and perspective. As the new engine for growth in the global economy, Asia should take hands in hands to prevent further deterioration of their own economies and in so doing the global economy as well. They have to cooperate to jointly counter the external shocks of this crisis. The financial crisis will, more than anything else, provide Asia with the impetus to establish a sounder and more stable financial framework for regional cooperation. Also they have to actively participate in the discussions of global financial reform.
A Conversation with Jo Kyung Ran
Jo Kyung Ran, Daesan Foundation Writer-in-Residence at the Center for Korean Studies
December 19, 2008
Center for Korean Studies
Jo Kyung Ran was born in Seoul in 1969. She earned her undergraduate degree in Creative Writing from Seoul Institute of the Arts, debuting with The French Optician (불란서 안경원, 1996), which won the Donga-Ilbo Prize. That same year, her novel Time for Baking Bread (식빵 굽는시간, 1996) won the first Literary Community New Writer's Award. Ms. Jo received the Today's Young Artist Prize from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism in 2002, and her novella A Narrow Gate (좁은 문, 2003) won the 48th Contemporary Literary Prize in 2003. Her recent works include Tongue (혀, 2007) and I Bought a Balloon (풍선을 샀어, 2008). Tongue will be released in English translation next year, and Ms. Jo recently received the prestigious Dongin Literary Prize for I Bought a Balloon. The Center for Korean Studies is honored to host her as the third Daesan Foundation Writer-in-Residence, following novelist Kim Yeonsu and poet Kim Ki-taek.