"Invisible" Pollution? Examining Taiwan's High-tech Environmental Disputes from STS Perspective
Lecture
Speaker: Wen-Ling Tu, National Chengchi University, Taiwan
Moderator: S. Katharine Hammond, Environmental Health Sciences, School of Public Health, UC Berkeley
Date: January 22, 2015 | 12:00–1:00 p.m.
Location: 180 Doe Library
Sponsors: Institute of East Asian Studies, Center for Chinese Studies
Asia has become the major production base for electronic products since the late 1990s. Behind the booming of high-tech economy, however, it's been seldom noticed that the electronic production is a chemical-use intensive industry, and its manufacturing processes release hundreds of chemicals and constantly generate thousands of tons of wastewater per day. Taking the example of "Silicon Island" Taiwan, this talk discusses the arduous task to detect the pollution problems associated with electronic manufacturing and analyzes the current policy and regulatory framework for the management of hazardous substances in the electronic sector. The talk will emphasize "invisibility of pollution problems" from two perspectives. On the one hand, it implies that the pollutants released from the electronic manufacturing firms are often visually invisible and unregulated by the current environmental standards. On the other hand, the environmental risks caused by the electronic production are often underestimated or marginalized in the environmental decision making process under the political agenda of promoting information technology (IT) development. From the science, technology, and society (STS) perspective, this talk will also discuss the plight of the environment knowledge production in relation to Taiwan's electronics manufacturing industries; and endeavors to resolve the professional/information/resource monopoly as well as the structural constraint problems behind the high-tech environmental information production system. Despite the obstacles, the talk will highlight some positive impacts made by social advocacy for the responsible and sustainable high-tech industry, which brought the international precautionary perspectives and the information disclosure rules into the domestic policy framework to readdress the environmental and health safety issues associated with the electronic production.
Event Contact: ieas@berkeley.edu, 510‑642‑2809
The Phralak-Phralam, "a previous lifetime of the Buddha:" the Lao Ramayana at Vat Oub Mong and Vat Kang Tha (Vientiane), and Vat Keng (Vang Vieng)
Lecture
Speaker: Alan Potkin, Northern Illinois University/Digital Conservation Facility, Laos (DCFL)
Date: January 29, 2015 | 5:00–6:30 p.m.
Location: 180 Doe Library
Sponsor: Center for Buddhist Studies
Alan Potkin holds a Ph. D. (1989) from U.C. Berkeley's College of Environmental Design. In 1995, he founded the Digital Conservation Facility, Laos (DCFL) which has been affiliated since 2003 with Northern Illinois University, where he is now based. The focus of his work has always been on hypermedia and navigable visualization — especially virtual reality imaging — in ecological and cultural conservation; thence publishing the findings and outcomes as interactive eBooks. His projects in South and Southeast Asia have ranged from evaluating impacts of pharonic dams in the Mekong and Ganges-Brahmaputra basins; to devising aesthetic release regimes for waterfalls in the Sri Lanka tea country being exploited for hydropower; to surveying Theravada Buddhist landscapes, sites, and temple art while archiving waterfront urbanization in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and Thailand. The complete and faithful recent replication — by DCFL, in cooperation with the Faculty of Fine Arts, in 2012 — of the demolished Phralak-Phralam (or Rama Jataka) murals at Vat Oub Mong, in Vientiane will be leading topic of this presentation.
Event Contact: buddhiststudies@berkeley.edu, 510‑643#&8209;5104
Civil Society under Authoritarianism: the China Model
Colloquium
Speaker: Jessica Teets, Political Science, Middlebury College
Moderator: Peter Lorentzen, Political Science, UC Berkeley
Date: January 30, 2015 | 4:00–6:00 p.m.
Location: 180 Doe Library
Sponsor: Center for Chinese Studies
The speaker's book examines the puzzle of increasing civil society activity in China despite the authoritarian government's fears of civil society serving as a Trojan horse of democracy. The author argues that two decades of direct experience with these organizations has taught local officials that civil society also offers many benefits, such as delivering social services and improving governance, and has resulted in the construction of a consultative authoritarianism model attempting to balance the benefits and dangers of civil society.
Event Contact: ccs@berkeley.edu, 510‑643‑6321
Expanding Networks of Cooperation in East Asia
Colloquium
Date: February 4, 2015 | 12:00–1:00 p.m.
Speaker: T. J. Pempel, Political Science, UC Berkeley
Moderator: Peter Lorentzen, Political Science, UC Berkeley
Location: 180 Doe Library
Sponsor: Institute of East Asian Studies
For much of the period since the end of the Cold War, relations in East Asia became increasingly interdependent economically as well as more tightly enmeshed institutionally. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), formed in 1967, had long been the sole regional body and its membership and influence did not extend to its northern neighbors until rather recently. In the late 1980s, the United States joined with various regional partners in trans-Pacific institutions such as the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum (APEC) and the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF). But since the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997–98, and the U.S. preoccupation with wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a bevy of new and often competing institutions have emerged, most of them excluding the U.S. Despite limits on the powers of most of these new bodies they appeared to be fostering greater regional cooperation in the first several years of the new century, particularly in trade, finance and cross-border investment. Of particular note, China, Korea and Japan began a series of promising trilateral engagements. A key component of the Obama administration's so-called 'pivot' to East Asia has involved explicit efforts to join many of these bodies and to boster pan-Pacific ties, most recently with the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Professor Pempel's talk will explore this institutional expansion and examine the extent to which such institutions have in fact been reducing security tensions in the region or to which they are in fact reinforcing longstanding lines of state-to-state cleavage.
Event Contact: ieas@berkeley.edu, 510‑642‑2809
The Persistence of Cold War Regime in South Korea: The discourse of "chongbuk chwap'a"
Colloquium
Speaker: Namhee Lee, Associate Professor of Modern Korean History, UCLA
Date: February 6, 2015 | 4:00 p.m.
Location: 180 Doe Library
Sponsor: Center for Korean Studies
How might one explain the rise of the discourse of "chongbuk chwap'a" (a term commonly translated as "pro-North leftists") given South Korea's recent history of the democratization movement and the transition from a series of authoritarian regimes to a parliamentary democracy? In what ways does this discourse differ from the anticommunism of the authoritarian regimes of the earlier period? What are some of historical and political implications of the discourse in contemporary South Korea? These are some of the questions that I'm interested in exploring in this presentation. I do so by situating the discourse broadly within the context of the sociopolitical transformations of post-1987 South Korea and the discourse of failure of revolutionary experiences worldwide.
Event Contact: cks@berkeley.edu, 510‑642‑5674
From Landscape Theory to Media Theory: Metamorphosis of Cinema and Revolutionary Theory in the Early 70s Japan
Colloquium
Speaker: Go Hirasawa, Meiji Gakuin University/NYU
Date: February 9, 2015 | 4:00 p.m.
Location: 180 Doe Library
Sponsor: Center for Japanese Studies
Masao Matsuda (critic), Masao Adachi (director) and Takuma Nakahira (photographer) proposed "landscape theory" (Fûkeiron) as film/image and revolutionary theory during the end of 1960s and early 1970s in Japan. Joined by Takashi Tsumura (critic), they developed the theory into something that argues the metamorphosis from landscape theory to Media/reportage theory during that time. Go Hirasawa will shed light on the significance of such arguments presented in their writings and works in pioneering conceptual changes in how directors, photographers, artists, critics, and radical movements understood the influence of the state and capital conglomeration in everyday life at this time.
Go Hirasawa is a visiting scholar at NYU and a researcher at Meiji Gakuin University in Tokyo, Japan. He has coordinated a workshop on landscape theory at NYU and Ghent University and Goldsmiths. Hirasawa has organized a retrospective of Masao Adachi at The Cinématheque Française and The Harvard Film Archive, exhibitions of Wakamatsu and Oshima around the world. With Nicole Brenez at Paris 3, he edited "Le bus de la révolution passera bientôt près de chez toi" and has republished Masao Matsuda's "Fukei no Shimetsu" in Japan.
Event Contact: cjs-events@berkeley.edu, 510‑642‑3415
The Medicine Buddha Across Borders: Tibetan Buddhism and the Politics of Learning in Qing China
Colloquium
Speaker: Stacey Van Vleet, Center for Chinese Studies postdoctoral fellow
Discussant: Nicolas Tackett, History, UC Berkeley
Date: February 10, 2015 | 4:00–6:00 p.m.
Location: 180 Doe Library
Sponsors: Center for Chinese Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies
During the same period remembered today for the rise of science along mercantile-colonialist sea routes, an inland network of Tibetan Buddhist monastic medical colleges proliferated in tandem with the expansion of the Qing Empire over Inner Asia. These monastic medical colleges spread a framework for ordering bodies, cosmologies, and technologies, and played a crucial role in the propagation of Tibetan Buddhism from Lhasa to Urga to Beijing. At the same time, they encouraged the circulation of new ideas and practices between Buddhist and non-Buddhist contexts. How were the dual imperatives of system and innovation negotiated within this medical knowledge network? This talk will examine the role of the medical colleges' Medicine Buddha ritual practices as technologies for regulating physicians and substances, and for negotiating the boundaries of medical system and appropriate Buddhist knowledge.
Event Contact: ccs@berkeley.edu, 510‑643‑6321
Creative Buddhas, Gnosticism, and Pure Lands in Tibet: The Great Perfection Seminal Heart Tradition from the Unimpeded Sound Tantra to Longchenpa
2015 Khyentse Lecture
Speaker: David Germano, Department of Religious Studies, University of Virginia
Date: February 12, 2015 | 5:00–6:30 p.m.
Location: Alumni House, Toll Room
Sponsors: Center for Buddhist Studies and the Khyentse Foundation
The Great Perfection (rdzogs chen) is historically one of the most creative developments to emerge in Tibetan Buddhism and Bön religious traditions. In the Buddhist forms, the classical history runs from the ninth to thirteenth centuries and culminates in the fourteen century corpus of Longchenpa. A dramatic transformation occurred from the eleventh century onwards with the emergence of the Seminal Heart (snying thig) form of the Great Perfection with the radically innovative Unimpeded Sound Tantra (sgra thal 'gyur). The external markers of this transformation are clear: contemplative and ritual practices abound in a tradition previously marked by their absence, a plethora of new tantric themes, a complex set of new narrative traditions, and a systematic philosophical discourse ranging over a broad array of topics. These developments were elaborated in a body of visionary revelations in the twelfth century and then systematized in the fourteenth century writings of Longchenpa. This talk will examine the inner dynamic of this transformation and argue that at its heart is a model of divine creation modeled upon the efflorescence of pure lands from a divine Buddha's primordial gnosis (ye shes, jñāna). These innovations, while extensive and intrinsically Tibetan in character, are clearly just as deeply grounded in the minutiae of Indian Buddhist thought, practice, and narrative, and constitute probably the most interesting strand in the larger Tibetan fashioning of a philosophical tantra movement. We will look at nine different contexts — cosmogony through eschatology — in which this model is apparent.
Event Contact: buddhiststudies@berkeley.edu, 510‑643‑5104
Volunteer Tourism and Public Anthropology: In the Aftermath of the 3.11 East Japan Disaster
Colloquium
Speaker: Shinji Yamashita, The University of Tokyo/The UCLA Center for Japanese Studies
Date: February 13, 2015 | 4:00 p.m.
Location: 180 Doe Library
Sponsors: Center for Japanese Studies, Tourism Studies Working Group
On March 11, 2011, a mega-earthquake of 9.0 magnitude struck East Japan, followed by a huge tsunami and the meltdown of several nuclear reactors in Fukushima. This was a disaster of unprecedented complexity. The disaster left approximately 20,000 dead, including missing people, and it is said that the damage can be estimated at 17 trillion Japanese yen. However, what we should understand is that disaster is a long process. As of August 2014, more than three years after the disaster, there were about 250,000 evacuees and displaced people and the local economic situation is still shaky. In this situation, this paper first pays special attention to tourism that could play a positive role in the reconstruction of devastated communities. In particular, it examines the implications of "volunteer tourism," as a new form of tourism that emerged after the disaster and helped form kizuna or "social ties" between the devastated areas and the rest of the world. At the same time, the paper discusses new developments of anthropological practices in Japan in the post-disaster context. Reviewing what role anthropology can play in the process of reconstruction, I argue that anthropologists should engage in the public issues in pursuit of a new relationship of anthropology and society. In so doing, we could practice a kind of public anthropology that contributes to the understanding and solution of contemporary social issues. The East Japan Disaster is exactly the kind of challenge we have to respond to.
Shinji Yamashita is Emeritus Professor of Cultural Anthropology at the University of Tokyo, Professor of Tourism Studies at Teikyo Heisei University, Japan, and currently Terasaki Chair of the UCLA Center for Japanese Studies (until March 31, 2015). He was a former president of the Japanese Society of Ethnology (Japanese Society of Cultural Anthropology since 2004) 1996-98. His research focuses on the dynamics of culture in the process of globalization with a special reference to international tourism and transnational migration. His regional concern is with Southeast and East Asia, particularly Indonesia, Malaysia, and Japan. His books include Tourism and Cultural Development in Asia and Oceania (co-ed. with Kadir H. Din and Jerry S. Eades, Malaysia National University Press, 1997), Globalization in Southeast Asia: Local, National, and Transnational Perspectives (co-ed. with Jerry S. Eades, Berghahn Books, 2003), Bali and Beyond: Explorations in the Anthropology of Tourism (translated by J.S. Eades, Berghahn Books, 2003), The Making of Anthropology in East and Southeast Asia (co-ed. with Joseph Bosco and Jerry S. Eades, Berghahn Books, 2004), Kanko Jinruigaku no Chosen: "Atarashii Chikyu" no Ikikata [The Challenges of the Anthropology of Tourism: Transnational Lives on the "New Globe"] (Kodansha, Tokyo, 2009), and Wind over Water: Migration in an East Asian Context (co-ed. with David W. Haines and Keiko Yamanaka, Berghahn Books, 2012).
Event Contact: cjs‑events@berkeley.edu, 510‑642‑3415
Annual Chinese New Year Banquet: Center for Chinese Studies
Social Event
Date: February 13, 2015 | 6:00–9:00 p.m.
Location: King Tsin Restaurant (厚德福), 1699 Solano Avenue, Berkeley (Albany), CA 94707
Sponsor: Center for Chinese Studies
Happy Lunar New Year!
Please join the Center for Chinese Studies for our annual celebration of the Chinese New Year. Let us welcome the Year of the Ram with great food, raffle prizes, and interesting conversations with new friends, old friends, and learn about the Center's activities and accomplishments.
$30 faculty and community, $15 students and UC staff. RSVP and prepayment required. Contact Angel Ryono at 510‑643‑6322.
Event Contact: ccs-vs@berkeley.edu, 510‑643‑6322
Download the menu here.
Korean Economic Development: Aid Dependence To Sustainable Development, Why Korea Succeeded
Colloquium
Speaker: Joon-Kyung Kim, President, Korea Development Institute
Date: February 20, 2015 | 4:00 p.m.
Location: 223 Moses Hall
Sponsors: Institute of East Asian Studies, Center for Korean Studies, Institute of International Studies
From war-torn ruin to economic juggernaut, South Korea has in less than a half-century moved to the forefront of international players. What made this possible? This talk focuses on one key aspect of Korea's strength: the Korean people. The behavioral evolution of the Korean population into an increasingly self-reliant and self-motivated work force is examined in the context of South Korea's remarkable postwar development.
Joon-Kyung Kim is President of the Korea Development Institute (KDI) School of Public Policy and Management. He served as Senior Vice President of KDI and Secretary to the President in Financial Policy. He was also an Assistant Professor at Virginia Tech; Visiting Professor at Columbia University and a World Bank Consultant. His recent research has focused on Sino-Korean economic integration, on restructuring and institutional reforms in Korea's financial and corporate sectors, and on the role of organizations in Korea's economic development. His has written number of research articles on Korean Economy. Kim has a Ph.D in Economics from the University of California at San Diego, and a B.S. in Computer Science and Statistics from the Seoul National University.
Event Contact: cks@berkeley.edu, 510‑642‑5674
Plastic China
Documentary Film
Speaker: Wang Jiuliang, independent filmmaker
Moderator: You-tien Hsing, Chair, Center for Chinese Studies; Professor, Department of Geography, UCB
Date: February 20, 2015 | 4:00–6:00 p.m.
Location: 180 Doe Library
Sponsor: Center for Chinese Studies
We live in a spotless, clean environment. The waste that we produce each day quickly disappears from our eyesight. But once the waste disappears from our eyesight, where does it go? Is it recycled properly as we imagine?
Plastic China is a story about how plastic waste from all around the world, including the United States, ends up in China. It is because of this plastic waste that water is no longer clean, air is no longer fresh, and food is no longer safe in many areas in China. People living in these polluted areas experience elevated rates of disease and mortality. This film reveals the shocking degree to which we all play a part in this problem. Nowadays, the connections among people around the world is ever closer, and China is in fact not that far from home.
Film screening (30 minutes) followed by a presentation by the filmmaker. Film has English subtitles. Presentation will be in Chinese, with interpretation.
Click here for more information about Wang Jiuliang.
Event Contact: ccs@berkeley.edu, 510‑643‑6321
Projectization of Nature in China's Agricultural and Pastoral Northwest
Colloquium
Speaker: You-tien Hsing, Geography, UC Berkeley
Moderator: Maximilian Auffhammer, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, UC Berkeley
Date: February 23, 2015 | 12:00–1:00 p.m.
Location: 180 Doe Library
Sponsors: Institute of East Asian Studies, Center for Chinese Studies
Based on her fieldwork in western Inner Mongolia and northern Gansu, Hsing will explore the question of the power of conservation. More specifically, she asks: how is nature understood and protected in arid NW China? and how is the culture of nature and the nature of culture produced by different actors in this borderland? While Hsing provides no definite answers, her fieldwork report will serve as a preliminary glimpse into the complexity of the questions.
Event Contact: ieas@berkeley.edu, 510‑642‑2809
Interpreting the flexibility in music meter of Japanese Noh drama
Colloquium
Speaker: Professor Takanori Fujita, Kyoto City University of Arts
Date: February 24, 2015 | 4:00 p.m.
Location: 180 Doe Library
Sponsor: Center for Japanese Studies
The music meter of Japanese Noh drama has attracted scholars because of its flexibility, which, according to Professor Takanori Fujita, is related to Noh's learning process. Faithful imitation of a teacher for life is the central moral in lesson community. In performance, players are taught not to synchronize too much with each other. Especially, singers are strictly kept ignorant of basic music meter that underlies songs. How do players, under such condition, coordinate with each other beat by beat and develop the flexibility of meter? Showing basic variants of the original 8 beats meter produced by drummers, Fujita will first demonstrate the range of flexibility in beats. Then he will introduce players' devices to allow for occasionally enormous flexibility in performance. The sound track no. 22 in Music in Japan (Bonnie Wade, 2004) will be focused on for analysis and explanation.
Professor Takanori Fujita (Ph.D.) teaches ethnomusicology in the Graduate School of Music and the Centre for Japanese Traditional Music, Kyoto City University of Arts. As a participant observer, he has developed unique historical studies on musical production of Japanese Noh drama and related folk ritual music and dances. His papers translated in English include "No and Kyogen: Music from the Medieval Theater," (The Ashgate Research Companion to Japanese Music, 2009), "Continuity and Authenticity in Japanese Traditional Music" (The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, Volume 7: East Asia, 2002).
Event Contact: cjs-events@berkeley.edu, 510‑642‑3415
Creativity Across the Disciplines: Stan Lai and Bruce Beasley in conversation
Panel Discussion
Speakers: Stan Lai, Playwright; Bruce Beasley, Sculptor
Moderator: Shannon Jackson, Theater, Dance & Performance Studies, and ARC Director, UC Berkeley
Date: February 24, 2015 | 5:00–6:30 p.m.
Location: Alumni House
Sponsors: Institute of East Asian Studies, Arts Research Center
Join ARC for a riveting public conversation with master artists and UC Berkeley alumni, sculptor Bruce Beasley (Art Practice, '62) and playwright Stan Lai (TDPS, '83), as they discuss creativity and the arts. ARC Director Shannon Jackson will moderate as the two artists explore the nature of creativity in both the visual and performing arts. We will consider how both Beasley's sculptures and Lai's theatrical work circulate — in the Bay Area, in the United States, in China, and around the world — in order to understand the techniques and creative impulses of two distinct global art practices.
Creativity Across the Disciplines: Stan Lai and Bruce Beasley in Conversation is a program of the Arts Research Center, UC Berkeley, with co-sponsoring funds from the Institute of East Asian Studies.
Event Contact: lauren.pearson@berkeley.edu, 510‑642‑4268
Dunhuang and the Silk Road: Imperial Archaeology to Digital Reunification
Global Chinese Studies Colloquium
Speaker: Susan Whitfield, curator, Central Asian manuscripts at the British Library; faculty member, The International Dunhuang Project: The Silk Road Online
Discussant: Patricia Berger, Art History, UC Berkeley
Date: March 2, 2015 | 4:00–6:00 p.m.
Location: 180 Doe Library
Sponsors: Center for Chinese Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies
The discovery in 1900 — and dispersal worldwide within little over a decade — of a Library Cave hidden for almost 1000 years in the Buddhist cave temples of Dunhuang was a catalyst for China's positioning itself as a key player in a pre-modern 'global' world, the Silk Road. Dunhuang, a UNESCO world heritage site, remains at the forefront of China's bid to consolidate this through the current international Silk Road nomination. In her talk, Susan Whitfield will introduce the collections, their discovery and dispersal and the role of China in the collaborative work of the past two decades to reunite the collections digitally, through the International Dunhuang Project.
Event Contact: ccs@berkeley.edu, 510‑643‑6321
Hong Kong: Where China and Global Advantages Converge
Lecture
Speaker: Clement C. M. Leung, JP, Hong Kong Commissioner to the United States, Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region
Moderator: Thomas B. Gold, Sociology, UC Berkeley
Date: March 3, 2015 | 12:00–1:30 p.m.
Location: 180 Doe Library
Sponsor: Institute of East Asian Studies
Hong Kong is a unique part of China where global business goes to grow. Being a separate member of the World Trade Organization and a separate customs territory, Hong Kong is the world's 9th largest trading entity and enjoys incomparable advantages under a free trade pact with Mainland China. Clement Leung, the Hong Kong Commissioner for Economic and Trade Affairs to the United States will share his insights into the fast changing economic landscape of Hong Kong, China and the Asia region; how Hong Kong is seizing new opportunities to become the launching pad of Chinese enterprises "going global; the challenges it faces in governance and in meeting fierce external competition; how Hong Kong positioning itself as the region's international financial, trading and logistical hub, as well as broadening and deepening its economic and trade ties with the U.S. and California.
Clement Leung was appointed on February 3, 2014 as Hong Kong Commissioner for Economic and Trade Affairs to the United States, the most senior representative of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government in North America.
As Commissioner, he directs the Hong Kong Government's efforts in promoting U.S.-Hong Kong economic and trade ties, and constituency-building activities in the United States. He also oversees the work of the three Hong Kong Economic and Trade Offices in Washington, D.C., New York and San Francisco.
Mr. Leung joined the Hong Kong Administrative Service in 1987 and served in a number of senior government positions, with responsibilities covering district administration, telecommunications, internal security, higher education and public finance. Prior to this appointment, he was Director of Food and Environmental Hygiene from 2010 to 2014, responsible for food safety and the delivery of a wide range of municipal and public hygiene services.
As Deputy Secretary of the Financial Services and the Treasury Bureau from 2007 to 2010, Mr. Leung was in charge of revenue and taxation policies, and investment in corporations. In that capacity, he was an Alternate Director on the Boards of the Hong Kong International Theme Park Ltd. (Hong Kong Disneyland), MTR Corporation Ltd. and the Hong Kong Airport Authority to represent the government's interest as the sole/majority shareholder.
While serving in the Trade and Industry Department as Deputy Director-General from 2003 to 2007, Mr. Leung's portfolio covered bilateral trade relations with the United States and the Mainland of China. He took part in negotiating and concluding the Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement, Hong Kong's free trade agreement with the Mainland of China.
Mr. Leung is a graduate of the Chinese University of Hong Kong and holds a master's degree in business management from Stanford University.
Event Contact: ieas@berkeley.edu, 510‑642‑2809
Video Screening: "Comfort Women Wanted"
Documentary Film
Featured Speaker: Chang-Jin Lee, Visual Artist (New York City)
Date: March 5, 2015 | 4:00 p.m.
Location: 180 Doe Library
Sponsors: Center for Korean Studies, Department of Ethnic Studies
The video is based on Chang-Jin Lee's interviews in 7 countries with Korean, Chinese, Taiwanese, Indonesian, Dutch, and Filipino "comfort women" survivors, as well as a former Japanese soldier.
COMFORT WOMEN WANTED brings to light the memory of 200,000 young women, known as "comfort women," who were systematically exploited as sex slaves in Asia during World War II, and increases awareness of sexual violence against women during wartime. The gathering of women to serve the Imperial Japanese Army was organized on an industrial scale not seen before in modern history.
The title is a reference to the actual text of Asian newspaper ads during the war. When advertising failed, young women from Korea, China, Taiwan, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, and the Netherlands were kidnapped or deceived and forced into sexual slavery. Most were teenagers, some as young as 11 years old, and were raped between 10 to 100 soldiers a day at military rape camps, known as "comfort stations." Girls were starved, beaten, tortured, and killed. By some estimates only 25%-30% survived the ordeal.
Historian Suzanne O'Brien has written that "the privileging of written documents works to exclude from history...the voices of the kind of people comfort women represent — the female, the impoverished, the colonized, the illiterate, and the racially and ethnically oppressed. These people have left few written records of their experiences, and therefore are denied a place in history."
The "comfort women system" is considered the largest case of human trafficking in the 20th century. In the 21st century, human trafficking has surpassed drug trafficking to become the second largest business in the world after arms dealing.
Despite growing awareness of the issue of trafficking of women and of sexual slavery as a crime against humanity, this particular history has gone largely unacknowledged. COMFORT WOMEN WANTED attempts to bring to light this instance of organized violence against women, and to create a constructive dialogue for the future by acknowledging their place in history.
Chang-Jin Lee is a Korean-born visual artist based in New York City.
This project has been presented internationally including as Public Art throughout New York City in Times Square, Lincoln Center, and Chelsea — in collaboration with The NYC Department of Transportation's Urban Art Program; as well as at Hauser & Wirth Gallery in New York; The Incheon Women Artists' Biennale in Korea; The Comfort Women Museum in Taiwan; 1a Space Gallery in Hong Kong; The Kunstmuseum Bonn in Germany; The State Museum of Gulag in Russia; Spaces Gallery in Cleveland; George Mason University Gallery in Washington DC; Wood Street Galleries in Pittsburgh; and The Boston Center for the Arts.
She is a recipient of numerous awards including The New York State Council on the Arts Grant, The Korean Ministry of Gender Equality Award, The Asian Cultural Council Fellowship, The Socrates Sculpture Park Fellowship, The Franconia Sculpture Park Jerome Fellowship, The Asian Women Giving Circle Grant, The Busan Sea Art Festival Award, and The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's MCAF.
Her artwork has been reviewed including in The New York Times, The BBC, Art Asia Pacific, The Huffington Post Arts & Culture, Time Out New York, Dazed & Confused London Magazine, The Daily News, Public Art, and The Associated Press.
She has been invited as a guest lecturer and panelist at Columbia University, The Korea Society, The City University of New York, Emory University, Georgia State University, The University of Southern California, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, The China Institute, and The Taipei Women's Rescue Foundation.
Event Contact: cksassist@berkeley.edu, 510‑642‑5674
The Field of Guanxi Studies
Conference
Dates: March 6–7, 2015 | 9:00 a.m.–6:00 p.m.
Locations: 180 Doe Library (Friday)
1995 University Avenue — IEAS Conference Room, Room 508 (Saturday)
Sponsors: Institute of East Asian Studies, Center for Chinese Studies
Even as China becomes an ever-more significant player on the world stage, its inner workings become ever-more intriguing. "Guanxi," the often complex, multi-layered network of personal relationships that shape life and labor from the humblest village to the pinnacle of power, continues to be key in understanding China today. Since the publication in 2002 of Social Connections in China: Institutions, Culture, and the Changing Nature of Guanxi, edited by Thomas Gold, Doug Guthrie and David Wank, a distinct "field of guanxi studies" has emerged involving scholars from the social sciences, business and area studies. This conference draws together more than a dozen experts from around the world to share their recent research and thinking about guanxi, its historical and cultural foundations and contemporary evolution along with China's reform and globalization.
For more details including the schedule, abstracts, bios, readings, and directions visit the conference website.
Event Contact: ieas@berkeley.edu, 510‑642‑2809
Sunflower Occupation (太陽‧不遠)
Documentary Film
Speaker: Chao-ti Ho, Producer
Moderator: Andrew F. Jones, East Asian Languages and Cultures, UC Berkeley
Date: March 10, 2015 | 4:00–6:00 p.m.
Location: 180 Doe Library
Sponsor: Center for Chinese Studies
120 minutes. In Mandarin with English subtitles. Followed by Q&A with the producer.
This collection of films connects the work of ten directors and nine themes but all concern the occupation of the Taiwan parliament by student activists in March 2014. They were protesting the passing of the Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement (CSSTA) by the Koumintang ruling party without sufficient review. After 24 days of occupation what did they change, and how were they changed by it?
本片藉由十個導演串起九個不同的主題，紀錄青年世代為何在2014年的三月佔領台灣的議會。在24天中，這些青年如何被改變？24天之後，他們又改變了什麼?
https://www.facebook.com/318doc
Event Contact: ccs@berkeley.edu, 510‑643‑6321
Download information about the director/producer here.
Transactional Reality and the Regimes of Truth
Lecture
Speaker: Sara McClintock, Associate Professor of Tibetan and Indian Buddhism, Emory University
Date: March 11, 2015 | 5:00–7:00 p.m.
Location: Stephens Hall, Geballe Room, 220
Sponsors: Berkeley Center for the Study of Religion, Center for Buddhist Studies
The premise of this talk is that knowledge is not something that we can discover but rather only something that we can produce. As such, each new instance of knowledge emerges transactionally through the interaction of configurations of materiality, discourse, and ideology — realities that are themselves the product of complex transactions. Drawing on theories from the Indian Buddhist epistemological tradition, this talk argues à la Foucault for the need to attend to structures of power in relation to knowledge so that we may recognize the nature of the regimes of truth in which we participate. The point is not to escape the regimes of truth but to better understand them so as to make them and ourselves more pliable. As truth is recognized to be itself a product and a transactional reality, the problem of finding a foundation for rationality is replaced by the problem of recognizing our responsibility for shaping the transactional fields in which knowledge is produced. The talk will end with a consideration of the implications of this recognition for the modern scientific study of Buddhist meditation and other contemplative practices.
Sara McClintock is Associate Professor of Religion at Emory University, where she teaches courses in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism and interpretation theory in the study of religion. She obtained her bachelor's degree in fine arts from Bryn Mawr College (1983), her master's degree in world religions from Harvard Divinity School (1989), and her doctorate in religion from Harvard University (2002). Her interests include narrative, philosophy, and contemplative practices, with particular focus on issues of rationality, rhetoric, reading, embodiment, emptiness, and ethics. She is author of Omniscience and the Rhetoric of Reason: Santaraksita and Kamalasila on Rationality, Argumentation, and Religious Authority (2010) and co-editor with Georges Dreyfus of The Svatantrika-Prasangika Distinction: What Difference Does a Difference Make? (2003). Recent writings include "Compassionate Trickster: The Buddha as a Literary Character in the Narratives of Early Indian Buddhism" (2011) and an article on the status of phenomenal content (akara) in cognition in Kamalasila's Tattvasamgrahapanjika (2013). She is co-translator with John Dunne of Nagarjuna's Ratnavali.
Event Contact: 510‑642‑1328
Kōmeitō: Politics and Religion in Japan
Colloquium
Speakers: Levi McLaughlin, NC State University; Steven Reed, Chuo University
Discussants: Mark Blum, UC Berkeley; T.J. Pempel, UC Berkeley
Moderator: Steven Vogel, UC Berkeley
Date: March 13, 2015 | 4:00 p.m.
Location: 180 Doe Library
Sponsors: Institute of East Asian Studies, Center for Japanese Studies
Levi McLaughlin and Steven R. Reed will discuss their new book, Kōmeitō: Religion and Politics in Japan, co-edited with George Ehrhardt and Axel Klein. The Soka Gakkai (the Value Creation Study Association), a lay Buddhist organization and Japan's largest collective of active religious participants, began supporting political candidates in 1955 and founded the Kōmeitō (Clean Government Party) in 1964. The Kōmeitō has been a significant player in Japanese politics since 1967. It has participated in coalition governments off and on since 1993, including the current ruling coalition since December 2014. McLaughlin and Reed will discuss the role of religious groups in politics in Japan, review the history of the party, and analyze the party's evolving strategies and roles.
T.J. Pempel and Mark Blum will serve as discussants.
Event Contact: cjs-events@berkeley.edu, 510‑642‑3415
The Cultural Economy of China's Cultural Revolution
Colloquium
Speaker: Pang Laikwan, Cultural and Religious Studies, Chinese University of Hong Kong
Discussant: Andrew F. Jones, East Asian Languages and Cultures, UC Berkeley
Date: March 17, 2015 | 4:00–6:00 p.m.
Location: 180 Doe Library
Sponsor: Center for Chinese Studies
This talk is separated into two parts. The first part is devoted to the general relationship between culture and economy during the Cultural Revolution. Although the Cultural Revolution "ascetic" society repressed consumption, the consumption of propaganda culture was fanatically promoted, because the propaganda arts was a direct embodiment of the official ideology, and the propaganda culture was given the duty of presenting a different reality from which the people could derive pleasure and meaning. In the second part we explore the logic and operation of the Maoist cultural economy through one specific type of cultural production — literature. We discuss how the concept of authorship was conceptualized then, and how this unique cultural economy was able to weave people's unsettled everyday lives together.
Event Contact: ccs@berkeley.edu, 510‑643‑6321
Polling, Public Opinion, and Political Responsiveness in Korea and Beyond
Colloquium
Speaker: Taeku Lee, Political Science, UC Berkeley
Moderator: T.J. Pempel, Political Science, UC Berkeley
Date: March 18, 2015 | 12:00–1:00 p.m.
Location: 180 Doe Library
Sponsors: Institute of East Asian Studies, Center for Chinese Studies>, Center for Korean Studies, Center for Japanese Studies
"Political responsiveness" is a foundation stone of modern democracies, entailing an expectation that governments will heed and reckon the interests and demands of their polities with some regularity. To date the political science study of responsiveness is largely the province of scholars of American politics and its presence sought by matching the timing of changes in public opinion (as measured by opinion polls) to the timing of legislative debate and decision. In this presentation, we extend the parameters of political responsiveness in several aspects. First, we examine responsiveness in non-U.S. contexts, beginning with South Korea and with focused comparison to Taiwan and Japan. Second, we examine the context in which electoral surveys are conducted, with a critical eye toward the contrasting uses of polling for the purposes of "manufactured publicity" and maintaining the status quo of political elites, contra the purposes of expanding the boundaries of the political and engendering greater democratic contestation. Third, rather than relying on the quantitative analysis of extant survey data, we draw primarily on an extensive set of in-depth qualitative interviews of pollsters, journalists, scholars, and party officials.
Event Contact: ieas@berkeley.edu, 510‑642‑2809
Merging Waters, Unifying Nations: Dimensions of Comparative Research on the Erie and China's Grand Canal
Lecture
Speaker/Performer: Thomas Hahn, Ph.D.
Date: March 19, 2015 | 4:00 p.m.
Location: 3335 Dwinelle Hall
Sponsors: Institute of East Asian Studies, Department of History
This presentation is based on about five years of fieldwork along the canal system of New York state and ca. four years of travels along the various branches of the Grand Canal in China. A number of observations and principles apply equally to these two waterways, but, not surprisingly, there are also numerous differences, most evidently in scale, function, administration and legacy mode. Historically speaking, my concern lies not so much with the early stages of the formation of these two communication corridors; instead, the main focus of my research begins around 1845 and extends into the present day. Significant topics covered in this talk will be industrialization, innovation, urbanization, overall impact and the stability of authority.
Event Contact: ieas@berkeley.edu, 510-642-2809
Korean Literature on the Global Stage: Musan Cho Oh-hyun (무산 조오현): Korean Sijo Poetry and Traditional Culture (한국 시조, 전통 문화)
Symposium
Featured Speaker: Cho Oh-hyun
Speakers:
• David McCann, Harvard University
• Heinz Insu Fenkl, SUNY New Paltz
Moderators:
• Youngmin Kwon, UC Berkeley
• Clare You, UC Berkeley
• Jiwon Shin, Arizona State University
Date: March 20, 2015 | 2:00–7:00 p.m.
Location: David Brower Center, Richard and Rhoda Goldman Theater, 2150 Allston Way, Berkeley
Sponsor: Center for Korean Studies
Please join us Friday, March 20th for a conversation with Musan Cho Oh-hyun.
Cho Oh-hyun, who writes under the Buddhist name Musan, was born in 1932 in Miryang, South Gyeongsang Province of Korea. He has lived in the mountains since he became a novice monk at the age of seven. In 2007, he received the Cheong Chi-yong Literary Award for his book Distant Holy Man. The lineage holder of the Mt. Gaji school of Korean Nine Mountains Zen, he is in retreat as the head of Baekdamsa Temple at Mt. Seoraksan.
A symposium celebrating Korean poetry and Cho Oh-hyun's works in particular has been organized by the Center for Korean Studies. The event will host a number of well known writers, musicians, academics, and scholars — a celebration of Korean Literature on the Global Stage.
Don't miss this rare opportunity to hear Cho Oh-hyun speak and get a book of his poetry autographed by the author, free.
PROGRAM
2:00–2:15
Opening Remarks
Clare You, UC Berkeley
2:15–3:30
Keynote Address
David McCann, Harvard University
Heinz Insu Fenkl, SUNY New Paltz
3:30–3:50
Coffee Break
3:50–5:10
A Dialogue with Cho Oh-hyun
Cho Oh-hyun
Youngmin Kwon, UC Berkeley
Interpreter: Jiwon Shin, Arizona State University
5:10–6:00
Reading and Performance
Reading:
Sung-ran Hong, Sijo Poet
Heinz Insu Fenkl, SUNY New Paltz
Performance:
Yookyung Lee, Singer/Performer
Jin Ho Khoe, Daegeum Player
Serin Hong, Gayageum Player
6:00–7:00
Reception
For more details click here to go to the symposium web site.
Open to all audiences.
Event Contact: cksassist@berkeley.edu
The Sixth International Ryūkoku Symposium on Buddhism and Japanese Culture
Symposium
Speakers:
• Yukio Kusaka, Professor of the Department of Japanese Literature,
Ryukoku University
• Sei Noro, Lecturer of the Department of Buddhist Studies, Ryukoku
University
• Jijun Yoshida, Adjunct Lecturer of the Department of Buddhist Studies,
Ryukoku University
• Takahiko Kameyama, Former Postdoctoral Research Fellow of Institute
of Buddhist Studies
• "Tatsuo" Florian Saile, Buddhist Studies Graduate Student, UC Berkeley;
Koufukuji Temple Monk
• Mark Blum, Buddhist Studies and Shinjo Ito Distinguished Professor in
Japanese Studies, UC Berkeley
Date: March 21, 2015 | 9:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Location: Jodo Shinshu Center, 2140 Durant Avenue, Berkeley, CA 94704
Sponsors: Center for Japanese Studies, Institute of Buddhist Studies, Ryukoku University
SCHEDULE
Each talk will last 50 minutes, followed by 10 minutes of Q&A
Morning Session | 9:00a.m.–12:00p.m. (conducted in Japanese)
1. 真宗の唱道勧化本について
日下幸男氏（龍谷大学文学部教授）
Revealing the Teachings: Popular Sermons (shōdō kange bon 唱道勧化本) in Shin Buddhism
Yukio Kusaka
(Professor of the Department of Japanese Literature, Ryukoku University)
2. 日本華厳における「論義」について
野呂 靖氏（龍谷大学文学部専任講師）
"Doctrinal Debate" (rongi 論義) in Kegon School
Sei Noro
(Lecturer of the Department of Buddhist Studies, Ryukoku University)
3. 初期日本天台における他宗との論争
吉田慈順氏（龍谷大学文学部非常勤講師）
Early Tendai Buddhist Disputes with Other Schools
Jijun Yoshida
(Adjunct Lecturer of the Department of Buddhist Studies, Ryukoku University)
BREAK
Afternoon Session | 2:00–5:00p.m. (conducted in English)
4. 中世真言密教における「信」
亀山隆彦氏（前IBS博士研究員）
The Significance of "Faith" in Medieval Shingon Buddhism
Takahiko Kameyama
(Ex-Postdoctoral Research Fellow of Institute of Buddhist Studies)
5. 日本中世の法相教学の展開―法相論義における「一乗」の解釈を中心として―
The One or the Three, the One and the Three, and/or the One as the Three: Observations on the Evolution of the Relationship between the 'Single Vehicle' and the 'Three Vehicles' in Medieval Japanese Hossō Thought
"Tatsuo" Florian Saile
(Buddhist Studies Graduate Student, UC Berkeley; Koufukuji Temple Monk)
6. 講演: Contextualizing Posthumous Kaimyō Ritual in Japan: Indian and Chinese Precedents for Renaming the Dead.
Mark Blum
(Buddhist Studies and Shinjo Ito Distinguished Professor in Japanese Studies, UC Berkeley)
Event Contact: cjs-events@berkeley.edu, 510‑642‑3415
2015 International Workshop on Nuclear Safety
Workshop
Organizers:
• Joonhong Ahn, Department of Nuclear Engineering, UC Berkeley
• Franck Guarnieri, Centre for Research into Risks and Crises,
MINES ParisTech
Dates: March 23-24, 2015
Location: Boalt Hall
Sponsors: Berkeley Nuclear Engineering, Center for Japanese Studies, Instiute for Resilient Communities, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, MINES ParisTech
This international workshop was organized and hosted by Prof. Joonhong Ahn, Nuclear Engineering and CJS, UC Berkeley, and Prof. Franck Guarnieri, Mines ParisTech, with the funding support from the France Berkeley Fund and CJS. The aim of the workshop was to develop research questions and plans for establishing scientific bases for understanding resilience and for making a society resilient as a new paradigm of nuclear safety.
The consequences of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident in March 2011 sparked a debate about the nuclear safety. While releases of large amounts of radioactive materials resulted in no casualties due to radiation, the impact particularly on local communities is substantial and manifold. Although local communities want to be ensured that effective actions are being taken to allow them to go back to their normal life as early as possible, the lack of understanding for the transport of radioisotopes in the environment and eventually the uptake in humans as well as in the biological effects of low dose radiation has made it difficult for various stakeholders to develop concerted efforts to accelerate recovery. These challenges are compounded by the eroded public trust for government and operators. In order to achieve a resilient society, society's exogenous and endogenous conditions and needs prior to, during, and following a disaster must be appropriately responded while monitoring changes in conditions and varied needs for resilience born by different stakeholders with a suite of appropriate performance measures. Public participation and feedback must be implemented not only for determining a right set of measures but also in planning engineering design and risk management.
In this workshop, on the first day, we shared various observations about "damages" in a severe nuclear accident. Then, on the second day, three roundtable sessions were arranged to identify and discuss future research questions.
Click here to visit the workshop website for detailed information about the proceedings.
What We Know: Writing on North Korea Today
Panel Discussion
Speakers: Blaine Harden, The Washington Post; Adam Johnson, Stanford University; Joseph Kim
Date: March 24, 2015 | 6:00–7:30 p.m.
Location: Asia Society Northern California, 500 Washington Street, San Francisco
Sponsors: Institute of East Asian Studies, Center for Korean Studies, Asia Society Northern California
"What We Know: Writing on North Korea Today" will take place in San Francisco on Tuesday, March 24, 2015. This event will feature Blaine Harden, former journalist for The Washington Post and the author of Escape from Camp 14; and The Great Leader and The Fighter Pilot; Adam Johnson, Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Orphan Master's Son and Professor of English, Stanford University; Joseph Kim, North Korean defector, speaker and activist and the writer of a forthcoming book, Under the Same Sky. The program brings together top-level writers and journalists and will ask about the craft and process of writing about North Korea: How can authors, journalists and long-time observers of North Korea know what is "real" and what is "true" about this secretive and repressive country?
China Worker Wellness Project: Building a Healthy Workforce and Productive Economy
Colloquium
Speaker: Linda Neuhauser, Public Health, UC Berkeley
Moderator: Xin Liu, Anthropology, UC Berkeley
Date: April 2, 2015 | 12:00–1:00 p.m.
Location: 180 Doe Library
Sponsor: Institute of East Asian Studies
China is undergoing the largest demographic transition in history as about 200 million rural residents (migrants) come to urban areas for work — especially in the new economic development zones. Strikes, suicides, high abortion rates and other problems have created a crisis situation.
For the past three years, a collaboration has been underway to adapt the "UC Berkeley Participatory Model" to support migrant workers and businesses. UC Berkeley, factories, government and Nanjing You-Dian University are assessing the strategies and results in this novel worker-engaged project. In this talk, we will discuss the approach, successes and challenges to date.
Event Contact: ieas@berkeley.edu, 510‑642‑2809
Two Talks on Tantric Rituals
Lecture
Featured Speakers:
• Phyllis Granoff, Yale University
• Koichi Shinohara, Yale University
Date: April 2, 2015 | 5:00–7:00 p.m.
Location: 180 Doe Library
Sponsor: Center for Buddhist Studies
Mulling over Mantras: Views from Story Literature and Philosophers
In this paper I explore how certain tantric rituals, particularly mantra recitation and mandala rituals, were viewed in stories and philosophical literature. It is well known that in Sanskrit literature a certain group of Tantric practitioners were seen as lascivious drunkards. These practitioners belong to the more extreme end of Tantric practice. But what about the average individuals who might have made use of tantric rituals? What did they think about mantra recitation or mandala rites? I turn to more stories to answer this question. The stories I have chosen suggest that there was a pervasive anxiety about all these ritual technologies. Often humorous and always bordering on the fantastic, the stories tell us that tantric practices made people nervous for a host of reasons. In the second part of the paper I look at a philosopher's concern about these ritual technologies. The century Jain philosopher Amṛtacandra found in mantras a particular challenge to his understanding of the relationship of the soul to the material world. Mulling over mantras, people in medieval India found much to ponder.
Stories of Esoteric Buddhist Rituals: Examples from the Shasekishū
Sources preserved in Chinese translation enable us to trace how Esoteric Buddhist rituals evolved from the recitation of spells to include image worship and finally maṇḍala initiations that eventually incorporated elaborate visualization practices. Anxiety over the ritual's efficacy drove this evolution. Ritual manuals, often secret, and stories about Esoteric masters follow different narrative strategies. But the anxiety revealed in the ritual manuals with their need to demonstrate the efficacy of their rituals shaped the formation of these stories as well. The paper illustrates this pattern with a few examples taken from the Japanese story collection Shasekishū compiled by Mujū (1226–1312).
Event Contact: buddhiststudies@berkeley.edu, 510‑643‑5104
Inventing Silk Road Studies
Colloquium
Speaker: Tamara Chin, Comparative Literature, Brown University
Discussant: Michael Nylan, History, UC Berkeley
Date: April 3, 2015 | 4:00–6:00 p.m.
Location: 180 Doe Library
Sponsors: Center for Chinese Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies
Since the 1980s, the term Silk Road has had a popular and academic appeal, suggestive of an era of premodern globalization in which China played a central role. Silk Road books, journals, exhibitions, conferences, and institutes are increasingly commonplace across Asia, North America, and Europe. The talk introduces the modern idea of the Silk Road as a term first coined by a German geographer in 1877. It sketches the early translation and circulation of the term in colonial geography, before its re-appropration in diplomatic discourses after the 1955 Bandung Conference and Nixon's 1972 visit to China. The talk then addresses the idea of Silk Road studies as an academic field. Despite a general familiarity with what now falls under Silk Road studies (e.g., Central Asian art; Dunhuang manuscripts; contemporary Chinese geopolitics), insufficient attention has been paid to its potential parameters or usefulness. I ask: as what kind of heuristic device has the Silk Road served, and in which disciplines? Is a more defined or institutionalized field of Silk Road studies desirable? If so, which model should it follow, and which other fields should it position itself with or against (e.g. Area Studies, postcolonial studies, comparative literature)?
Event Contact: ccs@berkeley.edu, 510‑643‑6321
Documentary Screening: Us and Them: Korean Indie Rock in a K‑pop World
Documentary Film
Discussants: Timothy Tangherlini, Professor, Department of Asian Languages and Cultures, University of California, Los Angeles; Stephen Epstein, Programme Director, University of Wellington, Victoria
Date: April 6, 2015 | 4:00 p.m.
Location: 180 Doe Library
Sponsor: Center for Korean Studies
The spread of South Korean popular music, or K‑pop, has been a striking global phenomenon. In 2012 PSY's viral sensation "Gangnam Style" became the most viewed video on YouTube ever, generating over a billion hits and scores of imitations. But Korean music is not only idol groups and viral videos. There is also a vibrant indie and punk scene that has been active for the past two decades.
A lot of the energy driving the scene has come in opposition to mainstream Korean music. Yet, just as K‑pop is becoming more well-known internationally, bands from the Korean underground are now touring overseas and have become more professional in their own pursuit of global connections.
The documentary follows several of Korea's most well-known indie bands as they embark on their first US tours in 2011. The spotlight lands in particular on Crying Nut, the endearing godfathers of Korean underground rock; the stylish RockTigers, Korea's most successful rockabilly band; and Whatever That Means..., a melodic punk band led by a married couple — bass player Trash and her American guitarist husband. The documentary's compelling portrait of the Korean indie scene offers sharp insights into a society that is in the midst of frequently dizzying change. The film is narrated by noted Korean-American musician Mike Park of Skankin' Pickle and the B. Lee Band and the founder of DIY label Asian Man Records.
Event Contact: cks@berkeley.edu, 510‑642‑5674
Contradictions in Textual Narrations and Confusion in Visual Art: Revisiting the Seven Weeks after the Enlightenment of the Buddha
Lecture
Speaker: Osmund Bopearachchi, Numata Visiting Professor of Buddhist Studies, UC Berkeley
Date: April 9, 2015 | 5:00–7:00 p.m.
Location: 180 Doe Library
Sponsor: Center for Buddhist Studies
The aim of this talk is to discuss an important relief belonging to the Andhra school of art recently discovered in Sri Lanka, adding to the growing body of archaeological evidence indicating brisk exchanges between the Buddhists of Sri Lanka and their co-religionists in the Krishna valley. The relief depicts the events that took place during the first seven weeks immediately following the Sambodhi of the Buddha Gautama. Looking at its style, and the fact that is was carved out of hard limestone, it is quite possible that it was made in Andhra and brought to the island by a pious trader or a monk, or sculpted on the island by an Andhra artist. In spite of its bad state of preservation most of the scenes can be identified, enabling us to answer many questions regarding the apparent contradictions between the literary evidence and visual representation. According to the Mahāvastu and the Lalitavistara, the Buddha spent seven weeks after his enlightenment near the Bodhi tree, yet four weeks according to the Vinaya-Piṭaka. Sri Lankan artists of the later periods, particularly in mural painting, preferred to depict the seven-week account and the sculpture under discussion, dating to the 4th or the 5th century C.E., is the oldest document confirming the popularity of this version on the island. Furthermore, the "seven weeks" motif depicted in this relief follows the chronological order given in the Nidānakathā and Mahābodhi-Vaṁsa of the Pāli tradition.
Osmund Bopearachchi currently serves as the Numata Visiting Professor of Buddhist Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and is Emeritus Director of Research at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS-ENS, Paris). Osmund Bopearachchi holds a B.A. from the University of Kelaniya (Sri Lanka), and B.A. honors, (M.A.), M.Phil., Ph.D. from the Paris I‑Sorbonne University, and a Higher Doctorate (Habilitation) from the Paris IV-Sorbonne University.
As the Trung Lam Visiting Scholar in Central Asian Art and Archaeology at the University of California, Berkeley, Prof. Bopearachchi is working on a new catalogue of Graeco-Bactrian and Indo-Greek Coins, as well as the publication of a selection of hitherto unknown masterpieces of Buddhist art from Gandhāra and Greater Gandhāra dispersed in museums and private collections in Japan, Europe, Canada and United States of America.
For the last twenty years, he has been the director of the Sri Lanka-French Archaeological Mission, and has recently launched a joint project focusing on Sri Lanka's role in ancient maritime trade in the Indian Ocean. In collaboration with the Department of Archaeology (Sri Lanka), the Institute of Nautical Archaeology (Texas A & M University), the University of California at Berkeley, and the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris (CNRS), he is currently excavating the most ancient shipwreck in the Indian Ocean dating back to the 2nd century B.C.E.
Osmund Bopearachchi has authored ten books, edited six volumes, and published 150 articles in international journals.
Event Contact: buddhiststudies@berkeley.edu, 510‑643‑5104
Screening of Our Homeland and Q&A with filmmaker Yang Yonghi
Feature Film
Speaker: Yonghi Yang, Filmmaker
Discussants: John Lie, UC Berkeley; Byung Kwang Yoo, UC Davis
Date: April 10, 2015 | 2:00–6:30 p.m.
Location: Sutardja Dai Hall, 310 Banatao Auditorium
Sponsors: Center for Japanese Studies, Center for Korean Studies
The Center for Japanese Studies is proud to present a screening of Our Homeland followed by a Q&A sessions with the director, Yonghi Yang. The film screening will start at 4:00 pm.
Preceding the film will be a round table discussion of "zainichi," or Ethnic Koreans, in Japan. The discussion will be led by Professor John Lie and will include Director Yonghi Yang, and Professor Byung Kwang Yoo from UC Davis. This discussion will take place from 2:00-4:00 pm.
Zainichi
Ethnic Koreans in Japan (often called "Zainichi") have experienced struggles for recognition in and by mainstream Japanese society as well as over loyalty to and identification with the divided Koreas. Zainichi writers have produced a library of outstanding writings, many of them about Zainichi struggles, but Zainichi cinematic expressions and representations have been scant. The discussion will seek to place Director Yang's oeuvre against the backdrop of Zainichi life in general and Zainichi visual representations in particular.
Our Homeland
One hot summer day, Rie, a 31-year-old second-generation Korean born and raised in Japan was looking forward for her brother Sungho's return. Sungho, 10 years her senior, was relocated to North Korea in the 1970's under the "repatriation program." After 25 years, he was finally allowed to return to Japan for three months to get medical treatments. The night that the family reunites, Rie realizes how difficult his life must have been in North Korea. In this trip, Sungho recognizes the dramatic differences of the town that he grew up in. Also, he reunites with his old friends and his first love. This gathering brings up mixed emotions among the friends. When a North Korean surveillance agent, Yang, asked Sungho to give a "job" to his beloved sister Rie, everyone reprimands Sungho. Despite the conflict among the family, Sungho's medical test result comes out... Will the family and friends be able to make up for the 25 years' lost time?
Director Yang Yonghi is a second generation Korean resident in Japan who was born in Osaka to a family of activist parents belonging to Chongryon (General Association of Korean Residents in Japan). Her film Our Homeland is fiction, with an original script that was loosely based on the director's real-life experiences. It is the story of a beloved brother who never had choices in life and the younger sister who always enjoyed freedoms. There exist heartrending emotions that are universal to all, regardless of any differences in individual ideals or values.
In Yonghi's work as a visual artist devoted to challenging traditional stereotypes, her imagery is never overwhelming; rather, it captivates audiences in a uniquely gentle, non-intrusive manner. Our Homeland is a tale of the unbreakable bond and deep love of one family, bridged across two countries.
Click here to visit the official film website (Japanese only).
Event Contact: cjs-events@berkeley.edu, 510‑642‑3415
Contemporary Tibetan Poetry Composed by Modernist Buddhist Lamas
Colloquium
Speaker: Jann Ronis, East Asian Languages and Cultures, UC Berkeley
Moderator: Jake Dalton, South and Southeast Asian Studies, UC Berkeley
Date: April 13, 2015 | 12:00–1:00 p.m.
Location: 180 Doe Library
Sponsor: Institute of East Asian Studies
Modern Tibetan literature has emerged in recent decades as one of the chief venues for the elaboration of social commentary and intellectual exchange among Tibetans on the Plateau. While the corpus of Tibetan fiction and memoir is voluminous, poetry has the widest readership and base of authors. During the term of my IEAS fellowship I have been researching modern poetry composed by monks and lamas with an eye towards their development of a modern religious aesthetic and ethical voice. This presentation features the poetry of Tenzin Gyatso (b. 1968), a high ranking lama at the Larung Buddhist Academy in eastern Tibet, a remarkably innovative center of Buddhist learning and community formation. Tenzin Gyatso is widely traveled throughout Asia and beyond and he frequently writes about cultures and geographies that would be exotic to the average Tibetan.
I will offer close readings of several poems from his 2005 collection entitled Fleeting Thoughts Betwixt Nirvana and Samsara ('khor 'das bar gyi rtog 'gyu). My argument is that his poems employ an innovative aesthetic and ethical mode of representation of strange and even morally challenging situations; one that is both cosmopolitan and deeply Buddhist. Among the poems I have selected for discussion include a truly original piece about the author's trip to a katoey cabaret show in Bangkok followed immediately by a visit to a Buddhist temple in the vicinity of the theater. Another poem I will present on recalls a rapturous stroll along the beach in tropical southern China, a landscape utterly dissimilar to highland Tibet. Yet another poem is a supplication intimately addressed to the patron saint of Tibet — Padmasambhava — written with an agnosticism not found in traditional works of this type.
Event Contact: ieas@berkeley.edu, 510‑642‑2809
Japan as a "Silver Democracy"
Colloquium
Speaker/Performer: John Creighton Campbell, Professor Emeritus, University of Michigan
Date: April 14, 2015 | 4:00 p.m.
Location: 180 Doe Library
Sponsor: Center for Japanese Studies
It is often argued that Japan is the world's leading example of a "silver democracy." It provides generous benefits to older people because there are so many of them, they vote at such a high rate, and they often live in over-represented rural areas. On closer examination, this depiction of Japanese old-age policy does not stand up to comparisons with other advanced nations; moreover, the timing of policy changes indicates that older people did better when they were fewer. The old-age vote does have policy implications but these are much narrower than implied by "silver democracy" as an analytic hypothesis — it is better understood as a motto for conservative politicians.
John Creighton Campbell is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Michigan and is currently a faculty member at the Institute of Gerontology, Tokyo University. He is the author of How Policies Change: The Japanese Government and the Aging Society (Princeton, 1992) and recently has been studying Japan's Long-Term Care Insurance system as well as social policy more generally.
Event Contact: cjs-events@berkeley.edu, 510‑642‑3415
Stanford-Berkeley Graduate Student Conference on Premodern Chinese Humanities
Conference
Dates: April 16-18, 2015 | Th: 2:30-5:10 | Fr: 8:30-4:30 | Sa: 9:30-12:35
Location: 1995 University Avenue — IEAS Fifth Floor Conference Room
Sponsor: Center for Chinese Studies
The Stanford-Berkeley Graduate Student Conference on Premodern Chinese Humanities brings together young scholars from across the U.S. and beyond to present and discuss innovative, dissertation-level research on the cultures of premodern China. This year's papers include but are not limited to the traditional disciplines of history, literature, religion, art, social sciences, and thought. Each presentation will be discussed briefly by a faculty member in the field, after which the conversation will be opened up to the floor.
THURSDAY, APRIL 16, 2015
2:30–2:45
Paula Varsano — Introductory Remarks
2:45–3:30
Jesse Chapman (Berkeley): Unwholesome Bodies: Reading the Sign of the Amputated Foot in Early China
Discussant: Zhou Yiqun (Stanford)
3:35–4:20
Lucia Tang (Berkeley): The Autocrat at the Altar: The Fengshan Sacrifices in Early Imperial China and the Augustan Secular Games
Discussant: Carlos Noreña (Berkeley)
4:25–5:10
Luke Waring (Princeton): Ritual, Recitation, and Readership: Odes Quotations in the Zuozhuan and the Guoyu
Discussant: Mark Csikszentmihalyi (Berkelely)
FRIDAY, APRIL 17, 2015
8:30–9:15
Nicholas Constantino (Berkeley): Goodness through Discontinuity: The Role of Wei (偽) in Xunzian Ethics
Discussant: Eric Hutton (Utah)
9:20–10:05
Fu Yang (Cambridge): Status and Well-being: Thinking about Labor in the Spring and Autumn Period
Discussant: Michael Nylan (Berkeley)
10:05–10:20
Coffee break
10:20–11:05
Hong Shuxin (Washington U., St. Louis): Mind, Mirror, and Metaphor in Xiyou bu
Discussant: Paula Varsano (Berkeley)
11:15–Noon
Ye Qing (Oregon): The Private, Metaphor, and Masculinity: Reading the Mid-Qing Novel Guwangyan (Preposterous Words)
Discussant: Ling Hon Lam (Berkeley)
Noon–1:00
Lunch break (lunch not provided)
1:00–1:45
Kou Lu (Harvard): A Full-blooming South: Chen Dynasty (557–89) Court Poetry and its Survival
Discussant: Ling Hon Lam (Berkeley)
1:50–2:35
Chen Yu-chuan (Stanford): Carving a Pilgrimage: Zhu Xi's Cultural Enterprise in/of the Wuyi Mountains
Discussant: Deborah Rudolph (Berkeley)
2:35–2:50
Coffee break
2:50–3:25
Liu Chen (Harvard): The Unburned Letters: Textual Variants and Epistolary Culture in Northern Song China
Discussant: Ronald Egan (Stanford)
3:45–4:30
Mai Huijun (Harvard): Su Shi's Post-trial Poetic Sequence as a Structure of Self-surveillance and Self-presentation
Discussant: Paula Varsano (Berkeley)
SATURDAY, APRIL 18, 2015
9:30–10:15
Hua Kaiqi (UC Merced): The White Cloud Sect and Local Activism in Jiangnan in the Song-Yuan Transition
Discussant: John Kieschnick (Stanford)
10:20–11:35
Cuma Ozkan (Iowa): Liu Zhi's Islamification of Confucianism through Kaozheng (Evidentary) Scholarship in Qing China
Discussant: Snjezana Akpinar (GTS, Berkeley)
11:40–12:35
Anna Pawlowski (Stanford): Reassembling Tradition: Wu Bin's (c. 1543–1626) Transformations of Painted Luohan Handscrolls and the Late Ming Anxiety over Images
Discussant: Patricia Berger (Berkeley)
Click here to go to the conference website.
Event Contact: ccs@berkeley.edu, 510‑643‑6321
When Modernity Hits Hard: Redefining Buddhism in Meiji-Taisho-Early Shōwa Japan
Conference
Speakers:
• Mark Blum, UC Berkeley
• Melissa Curley, University of Iowa
• Jessica Main, University of British Columbia
• John Maraldo, Indiana University
• Ama Michihiro, University of Alaska Anchorage
• Yoshinaga Shin'ichi, Maizuru National College of Technology
• George Tanabe, University of Hawai'i
Discussants:
• Jim Heisig, Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture
• Richard Jaffe, Duke University
Date: April 17–18, 2015 | Fr: 7:00–9:00 | Sa: 9:30–7:00
Location: Jodo Shinshu Center — 2140 Durant Avenue, Berkeley, CA 94704 Sponsors: Center for Japanese Studies, Center for Buddhist Studies, BDK America
This conference aims to present new research on the turbulent period between the Meiji Restoration and the onset of full-scale warfare in 1931 when the central government of Japan expressed open hostility toward Buddhism for the first time since its introduction in the 6th century. These papers explore various efforts made in response to powerful pressures to redefine Buddhism's place in a redefined Japanese society.
FRIDAY 4/17
7:00–7:15pm — Introductory Remarks
Mark Blum (UC Berkeley)
George Tanabe (University of Hawai'i)
7:15–7:55pm — The Creation and Impact of the Journal, New Buddhism (Shin Bukkyō), Published 1900-1915
Yoshinaga Shin'ichi (Maizuru National College of Technology)
8:00–9:00pm — Shakyamuni for Modern Japan, Hawaii and California
George Tanabe (University of Hawai'i)
SATURDAY 4/18
9:30–10:30am — Kurata Hyakuzō's Priest and His Disciple
Melissa Curley (University of Iowa)
10:30–11:30am — Shinran as "Other": Revisiting Priest and His Disciple
Michihiro Ama (University of Alaska Anchorage)
11:30–11:45am — BREAK
11:45am–12:45pm — To Myth or Not to Myth—Introducing the Concept of Myth into Japanese Buddhhist Discourse 1897–1925
Mark Blum (UC Berkeley)
12:45–2:30pm — BREAK
2:30–3:30pm — Pure Fire, A Revolutionary Play by Saikō Mankichi
Jessica Main (University of British Columbia)
3:30–4:30pm — D.T. Suzuki and Inter-War Ecumenicalism: The Genesis of Zen and Its Influence on Japanese Culture
Richard Jaffe (Duke University)
4:30–5:00pm — BREAK
5:00–6:00pm — Kuki Shūzō's Fourfold Conversion of Pure Land Buddhism
John Maraldo (Indiana University)
6:00–7:00pm — Nishida's search for Philosophical Equivalents of Enlightenment and No-Self
Jim Heisig (Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture)
Event Contact: cjs-events@berkeley.edu, 510‑642‑3415
Media and Transmission: UC Berkeley Japan Studies Graduate Student Conference
Conference
Date: April 17–18, 2015 | Fr: 2:00–3:45 | Sa: 10:30–4:45
Locations: Friday — Stephens Hall, Geballe Room, Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities
Saturday — Faculty Club, Heyns Room / Howard Room
Sponsor: Center for Japanese Studies
This conference will bring together graduate students from all disciplines in the field of Japanese Studies to explore the past and present role of media in Japan. What can the examination of various media (including images, texts, discourses, objects, and anything else that functions as a medium of transmission) tell us about the formation and transmission of culture and knowledge in Japan?
FRIDAY 4/17
MEMORY: SUBJECTS, OBJECTS, AND OBJECTIVES (2:15-3:45p)
Sebastian Peel
Tiger Hunting and Long Sleeved Courtiers: Historical Memory and Toyotomi Hideyoshi's Invasions of Korea
Lisa Reade
Mori Ogai's Archive Fever
Pedro Bassoe
Invisible Bridges and Empty City Centers: Izumi Kyōka, Komura Settai, and the Art of Nihonbashi
Daryl Maude
Queerly Remembered: Historical Mediations of Mishima Yukio
Keynote: Professor Susan Burns (Department of History, University of Chicago)
Marketing Health, Marketing Modernity: Advertising Pharmaceuticals in the Japanese Empire
SATURDAY 4/18
Opening Remarks (10:30am-10:45am)
Saturday Room #1
FAMILY AND EMPIRE (10:45am-12:00pm)
Andrea Horbinski
A Children's Empire: The Club Magazines and the Prewar "Media Mix"
Alison Miller
Mass Media Monarchy: The Image of Empress Teimei in Taishō Period Newsmedia
Emily Barrass Chapman
The imperial household as a family photographed
BODIES (12:15pm-1:30pm)
Marguerite V. Hodge
Mediating the Body: Anatomical Models and Images in Early Modern Japan
Shelby Oxenford
Encountering the War in Postwar Japan: Ōe Kenzaburō's "Lavish Are the Dead"
Caitlin Casiello
Drawing Sex: Pages, Bodies, and Sighs in Japanese Adult Manga
IMAGINARIES AND COMMODIFICATION (2:00pm-3:15pm)
Irene González
Imaging Prostitution in Post-Occupation Japanese Melodrama (1952-1964)
Saeedeh Asadipour
Beato, Photography of Japanese Woman and Nineteenth Century Commodity Culture
Michelle Ho
Black Face, Bihaku Skin: Consuming Femininity and Racial Otherness in Japanese Advertising
PERFORMING THE SUPERNATURAL (3:30pm-4:45pm)
Michael E. Crandol
Hello Kitty from Hell: Vernacular Modernism in Prewar Japanese Horror Film
Jon Pitt
Supernatural Subversions of Pre-Modern Nostalgia: Ichikawa Kon's Taketori monogatari and Takahata Isao's Kaguya hime no monogatari
Matthew Chudnow
Female-Spirit Noh and 'The Lotus Sutra': 'Tamakazura' and 'Bashō'
Saturday Room #2
SILENCE AND SOUND (10:45am-12:00pm)
Noémie Adam
Drumming out resistance in Japan: How the Burakumin identity is erased through policy-making and written back through music
Edwin K. Everhart
Yamaura's Kesen: nation, class, and Tōhoku language in/as media
Mia Lewis
Rumble, Race, and Crash: Space and Movement through Sound Effects in Akira, American Flagg, and Tsubasa
DICHOTOMIES AND DIALECTICS (12:15pm-1:30pm)
Margi Burge
Re-Negotiating Literary Boundaries: The Wa-Kan Dialectic in the Shinsen Man'yōshū
Christopher Lowy
The Architecture of Script: Rethinking Ruby and Its Relationship to Written Japanese
Matthew Mewhinney
The Burden of Female Talent: The Kanshi of Ema Saikō
PUBLIC OPINION (2:00pm-3:15pm)
Oana Kuznetov
The impact of Civil Society Organizations on Foreign Policy in Japan Case study: Japan's Foreign Policy toward North Korea
Joonbum Bae
Impossible Allies? — Korean views of Japan in a Changing World Order
Joshua A. Williams; Douglas Miller
Netizens Decide 2014? A Look at Party Campaigning Online
ATMOSPHERE (3:30pm-4:45pm)
Magdalena Kolodziej
Between Shinkyo and Tokyo: Maeda Seison's Viewing Painting and the Fine Arts of the Japanese Empire
Nora Usanov-Geissler
Depicting Transport in a Transportable Medium: The Politics of Patronage in Japanese nanban byōbu
Stephanie M. Hohlios
Picture-Storytelling: Heroes of Disruption in Kurama Ko-tengu and the Postwar Japanese Public Sphere
Event Contact: cjs-events@berkeley.edu, 510‑642‑3415
Writing on the Left in Colonial Korea: New Perspectives and Future Directions
Colloquium Speaker: Sunyoung Park, Associate Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures, University of Southern California
Date: April 17, 2015 | 4:00 p.m.
Location: 180 Doe Library
Sponsor: Center for Korean Studies
During the 1910s through the 1940s, Korea developed a vibrant and diverse leftist literary culture. Upon their introduction to Japan's largest colony, socialist ideas attracted the attention of local intellectuals, inspiring not only the Marxist writers of the KAPF (Korea Artista Proleta Federatio: 1925–1935) but also a few anarchist groups, a contingent of leftist nationalists, a group of socialist women writers, and other unaffiliated writers and critics. This presentation will offer a brief historical outline of the movement, a critical reassessment of its significance, and some suggestions for its future study. The central question to be raised will concern all-important issues of translation and appropriation. How did the Korean leftist writers appropriate the doctrines of socialism for their use within their specific colonial historical conditions? And how did those doctrines translate within the context of a rapidly modernizing colonial society? My aim throughout will be to make a case for an often neglected and misunderstood historical cultural movement, demonstrating that the influence of socialism on modern Korean culture was more pervasive and fertile than has been generally assumed within subsequent anti-communist as well as nationalist critical paradigms.
Sunyoung Park is associate professor of East Asian languages and cultures and gender studies at the University of Southern California. Her research focuses on the literary and cultural history of modern Korea, which she approaches from the varying perspectives of world literature, postcolonial theory, and transnational feminism and Marxism. Her first scholarly monograph, The Proletarian Wave: Leftist Literature in Colonial Korea 1910–1945 (Harvard University Asia Center, March 2015), examines the origins, development, and influence of socialist literature in Korea during the colonial period. She is also the editor and translator of On the Eve of the Uprising and Other Stories from Colonial Korea (Cornell East Asian Series, 2010). Her current research interests center on science-fictional and fantastic imaginations in South Korean literature and visual culture from the 1960s through the 2010s.
Event Contact: cks@berkeley.edu, 510‑642‑5674
China's Carbon Emissions from Fossil Fuels and Market-Based Opportunities for Control
Colloquium
Speaker: Maximilian Auffhammer, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, UC Berkeley
Moderator: David Roland-Holst, Departments of Economics and Agricultural and Resource Economics, UC Berkeley
Date: April 20, 2015 | 12:00–1:00 p.m.
Location: 180 Doe Library
Sponsor: Institute of East Asian Studies
In this paper we first review the history of Carbon Dioxide Emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels for the People's Republic of China (PRC). As Chinese regulators have announced efforts to directly regulate the emissions of CO2, we review the history of institutions charged with climate regulation in the PRC. Next we review China's existing market based approaches to emissions control in the form of the world's largest effluent fee system for air and water pollutants as well as seven pilot carbon markets. We conclude with a discussion of the issues and challenges ahead in adopting market based instruments to regulate CO2 emissions in the PRC.
Event Contact: ieas@berkeley.edu, 510‑642‑2809
The Twenty-first Century Italy-China Silk Road and its National Legacies
Colloquium
Speakers:
• Lisa Rofel, Anthropology, UC Santa Cruz
• Sylvia Yanagisako, Anthropology, Stanford University
Date: April 20, 2015 | 4:00–6:00 p.m.
Location: 180 Doe Library
Sponsors: Center for Chinese Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies
Since China's entry into the WTO, Italian textile, garment and fashion firms have moved a large part of their production to China. While it might appear to be a sufficient analysis to examine Italy's investments solely in the context of the contemporary moment, a discussion of the distinctive historical trajectories that have led Italian entrepreneurs to China and that have shaped Chinese entrepreneurs' encounters with them highlights the need for culturally and historically specific analyses of transnational capitalism.
Event Contact: ccs@berkeley.edu, 510-643-6321
Korean Diaspora
Colloquium
Speaker: John Lie, Sociology, UC Berkeley
Moderator: Wen-hsin Yeh, History, UC Berkeley
Date: April 22, 2015 | 12:00–1:00 p.m.
Location: 180 Doe Library
Sponsor: Institute of East Asian Studies
The lecture will offer a conspectus of Korean diaspora and discuss the central concepts of diaspora and nation/homeland. In particular, it will stress the sheer diversity of diasporic trajetories across Eurasia.
Event Contact: ieas@berkeley.edu, 510‑642‑2809
Unwilling to Work under a 'Zombie': Mass Dictatorship and Normative Voluntarism in Japan and North America during WWII
Colloquium
Speaker: Takashi Fujitani, University of Toronto
Date: April 24, 2015 | 4:00 p.m.
Location: 180 Doe Library
Sponsor: Center for Japanese Studies
During the Second World War "zombies" were said to be taking part in the Canadian war effort, but in ways that the mainstream population and press mocked as cowardly and insufficiently patriotic. Above all, these strange beings apparently lacked the will to fight. In fact, these were not the undead but real live men who had been drafted into the military but who were labelled zombies because they did not step forward to volunteer for overseas duty. This talk takes the figure of the zombie — the soulless and enslaved monstrosity of popular culture dating from the 1930s — as an allegory of the insufficient national subject (hikokumin) during wartime. It attempts to show that both the Allied and the Japanese wartime regimes insisted that the mindless cooperation of its people, including colonial subjects and minorities, was not enough — that everyone should actively participate in the war effort as conscious and self-reflexive subjects. The talk addresses the tension between coercion and volunteerism by thinking critically about "freedom" and what might be called normative volunteerism during wartime. The talk's primary examples come from North America and Japan, and aims to disrupt the usual binary categories through which we often find comfort and complacency such as fascist/non-fascist, freedom/enslavement, and liberal democracy/totalitarianism.
Takashi Fujitani is a Professor of History and the the Dr. David Chu Chair in Asia Pacific Studies. Professor Fujitani's research focuses especially on modern and contemporary Japanese history, East Asian history, Asian American history, and transnational history (primarily U.S./Japan and Asia Pacific). His major works include: Race for Empire: Koreans as Japanese and Japanese as Koreans in WWII (2011), the runner-up for the 2012 American Studies Association's John Hope Franklin Prize, Perilous Memories: The Asia Pacific War(s) (2001, co-edited), and Splendid Monarchy (1996).
Event Contact: cjs-events@berkeley.edu, 510‑642‑3415
Global Higher Education Seminar Series: Chinese Universities in the Xi Jinping Era
Seminar
Speakers:
• William C. Kirby, T. M. Chang Professor of China Studies and Spangler
Family Professor of Business Administration, Harvard University
• Wen-hsin Yeh, Richard H. and Laurie C. Morrison Chair Professor in the
Department of History, University of California, Berkeley
Date: April 27, 2015 | 4:00–5:00 p.m.
Location: 820 Barrows Hall
Sponsors: Center for Studies in Higher Education, Institute of East Asian Studies
In the month of April, the Center for Studies in Higher Education and the Institute of East Asian Studies at UC Berkeley will co-sponsor an important seminar. Professor Kirby, Harvard University, will outline Chinese accomplishments in higher education since 1998 and offer a critical evaluation of recent developments. Professor Yeh, UC Berkeley, will respond by presenting a "best" and a "worst" possible reading of Chinese universities of today from a longerterm historical perspective. Join us for this unique seminar featuring Chinese Universities of past and present.
William C. Kirby is T. M. Chang Professor of China Studies and Spangler Family Professor of Business Administration at Harvard University, where he is concurrently Chairman of the Harvard China Fund and Faculty Chair of the Harvard Center Shanghai. He is the former Dean of the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
Wen-Hsin Yeh is the Richard H. and Laurie C. Morrison Chair Professor in the Department of History at the University of California at Berkeley and Senior Faculty China Advisor to the Chancellor. She has written extensively on this history of China in the twentieth century.
Event Contact: 510‑642‑7703
The Buddha's Golden Footsteps and Burmese National Identity
Colloquium
Speaker: Don Stadtner, Co-curator, "Buddhist Art of Myanmar," Asia Society, New York
Date: April 30, 2015 | 12:00 p.m.
Location: 180 Doe Library
Sponsors: Institute of East Asian Studies, Center for Buddhist Studies, Center for Southeast Asia Studies
Myanmar's long international isolation has in recent years shown signs of change. Seizing opportunities for engagement, diplomatic overtures have been complemented by cultural initiatives, including a pathbreaking exhibition, "Buddhist Art of Myanmar," at the Asia Society, NY, an exhibition which includes works never before seen in the West.
Don Stadtner, an art historian and co‑curator of the exhibition, will present a talk on Buddhist footprints, offering context for an important work in the exhibition, a cloth painting featuring the Buddha's footprint. A key foundation myth for Burmese in Upper Burma centers on the Buddha impressing two footprints in stone, one for a hermit and another for a snake-king. The site of the two footprints, known as the Shwesettaw, near Magwe, is a major pilgrimage destination for common folk and top military leaders alike.
The myth's first extant recording dates to the early sixteenth century, but the myth itself drew upon much earlier Pali commentaries; by contrast, altogether different foundation legends evolved among the Mon by the 15th century in Lower Burma. Sri Lanka and Thailand also developed myths surrounding the Buddha's footprint but revealing differences emerge.
The image is from the exhibition "Buddhist Art of Myanmar," Asia Society, New York.
Event Contact: ieas@berkeley.edu, 510‑642‑2809
China, Taiwan, and Rising Asia
Conference
Dates: May 1–2, 2015 | 9:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m. | Doe Library, 180 on May 1; IEAS, 1995 University Avenue, Suite 510 on May 2 Locations: 180 Doe Library (Friday)
1995 University Avenue — IEAS Conference Room, Room 508 (Saturday)
Sponsors: Institute of East Asian Studies, Center for Chinese Studies, Asia Society of Northern California
China's "economic miracle," arms buildup, and diplomatic initiatives have all profoundly reshaped its position vis a vis Taiwan. In the wake of shifting power relations, and after more than a decade of escalating cross-Strait polarization fed by growing nationalism on either side of the Strait, there has been since the late 2000s an historic rapprochement between Taiwan and mainland China. A selection of the most outstanding scholars in the world engaged in these issues will meet to reexamine the current state of China-Taiwan relations and the role of US strategies and commitments in the complicated and often contentious cross-Straits relationship.
CHINA, TAIWAN, AND RISING ASIA
I. Taiwan Strait Détente and its Strategic Implications
Wu Yu-Shan, Academia Sinica
Pivot, Hedger, or Partner: Strategic Choice by Lesser Powers Caught between Hegemons
Huang Jing, National University of Singapore
Box Taiwan in a Strategic Framework of Reunification: China's Taiwan Policy Under Xi Jinping
Scott Kastner, University of Maryland
A Relationship Transformed? Rethinking the Prospects for Conflict and Peace in the Taiwan Strait
Samuel C.Y. Ku, National Sun Yat-sen University
China's Expansion and Taiwan's Survival Strategies in Southeast Asia: A Comparative Perspective
II. The Political Economy of Cross-Strait Détente
Leng Tse-Kang, Academia Sinica
Cross-Strait economic relations in the context of China's grand strategy
Liou Chih-shian, National Cheng-Chi University
State Capitalism in China and Taiwan: A Comparative Perspective
Tsai Chung-min, National Cheng-Chi University
The Transition of Taiwanese Investment in China 2000-2014
Hsing You-tien, University of California/Berkeley
Social Networks Across the Straits: Social Entrepreneurialism of Post-Developmental State Taiwan
III. National Identity under Détente (Location: 1995 University Avenue, Suite 510, IEAS Conference Room)
Shu Keng, School of Public Econ. & Admin., Shanghai Univ. of Finance and Economics
Why Taiwanese Communities Could Easily Blend in But Refuse to Be Melted in the Chinese Society?
Lin Gang, Shanghai Jiaotong University
Chinese National Identity in Reconstruction
Jean-Pierre Cabestan, Hong Kong Baptist University
Changing Political Identities in Taiwan under Ma Ying-jeou
For more details including the schedule, abstracts, bios, and directions visit the conference website.
Event Contact: ieas@berkeley.edu, 510-642-2809
An observation of the Kinetic Movement in Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris
Colloquium
Speaker: Hsin-yi Wu, Doctoral Candidate, Institute of Applied Arts, National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan Moderator: Anne Nesbet, Associate Professor, Slavic Language and Literature/Film and Media, UC Berkeley Date: May 5, 2015 | 4:00 p.m.
Location: 1995 University Avenue — IEAS Fifth Floor Conference Room
Sponsor: Institute of East Asian Studies
Solaris (1972) is a science fiction film directed by Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky (1932-1986). Tarkovsky is well-known for his vertical tracking and dolly shots, which builds a significant film space, opening up or extending into deep backgrounds through camera mobility. This talk explores the film's kinetic qualities in relation to human consciousness.
Event Contact: ieas@berkeley.edu, 510‑642‑2809
Personalized Hotel Recommendation Using Text Mining and Mobile Browsing Tracking
Colloquium
Speaker: Chia-yu Lai, PhD Candidate, Management of Information System, National Sun Yat-Sen University, Taiwan
Moderator: Guan-Cheng Li, Staff Researcher, Fung Institute for Engineering Leadership, College of Engineering, UC Berkeley
Date: May 5, 2015 | 4:45 p.m.
Location: 1995 University Avenue — IEAS Fifth Floor Conference Room
Sponsor: Institute of East Asian Studies
Tracking and mining browsing history is commonplace on your computer, but ever more advanced mobile devices can further track a shopper's behavior based on physical location, neighborhood, and other relevant data. This study is focused on text mining hotel recommendations in creating a new APP that traces and follows each person's interest in order to predict their preference.
Event Contact: ieas@berkeley.edu, 510‑642‑2809
Dignāga's Investigation of the Percept: A Tale of Five Commentaries
Colloquium
Speaker: Jay Garfield, Yale-NUS College, Singapore
Date: May 7, 2015 | 5:00&38211;6:30 p.m.
Location: 3335 Dwinelle Hall
Sponsor: Center for Buddhist Studies
A team of scholars has been editing, studying and translating Dignāga's Ālambanaparīkṣā and its Indian, Tibetan and Chinese commentaries. This talk will focus on the Indian and Tibetan side of that project and on some of the intriguing developments in the understanding of this short text in its extended commentarial tradition.
Jay Garfield is Kwan Im Thong Hood Cho Temple Professor of Humanities and Head of Studies in Philosophy at Yale-NUS College, Professor of Philosophy at the National University of Singapore, Recurrent Visiting Professor of Philosophy at Yale University, Doris Silbert Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Philosophy at Smith College, Professor of Philosophy at Melbourne University and Adjunct Professor of Philosophy at the Central University of Tibetan Studies.
Garfield's most recent books include Engaging Buddhism: Why it Matters to Philosophy (Oxford 2015), Madhyamaka and Yogācāra: Allies or Rivals? (edited, with Jan Westerhoff, Oxford 2015) and The Moon Points Back: Buddhism, Logic and Analytic Philosophy (edited, with Yasuo Deguchi, Graham Priest and Koji Tanaka Oxford, 2015.
Event Contact: buddhiststudies@berkeley.edu, 510‑643‑5104
Kanji, Katakana, and Hiragana: 「漢字・片仮名と平仮名」
Colloquium
Speaker: Yuichiro Imanishi, Professor, Director General of the National Institute of Japanese Literature
Date: May 8, 2015 | 3:00–5:00 p.m.
Location: 180 Doe Library
Sponsor: Center for Japanese Studies
This talk will be given in Japanese.
日本語は、漢字、片仮名、平仮名という3つの文字体系の混在した、世界でも珍しい言語である。しかし、その3つは、最初から対等な文字だったわけではない。2種類の仮名は「仮名」ということばが示しているように、もともとは「仮」すなわち、かりそめの文字、本当の文字ではない文字、であり、漢字に対して価値の劣る文字であった。前近代においては、「文字を知っている」ということは、「漢字」を知っているということを意味した。
また、同じ仮名でも片仮名と平仮名との間にも優劣があった。片仮名は漢文訓読から生まれた学術的文字であり知識階層が使用した文字、それに対し、平仮名は漢字を極端に簡略にし、漢字を使用できない階層の人々も使用できる平易な文字として、片仮名より低く見られた文字であった。文字にも身分があったのである。平仮名が使用され始めた平安時代中期には、平仮名は「女手（おんなで）」、すなわち女性文字と見なされていたのである。
そのような文字観のもとで、学問や宗教、歴史といった知的な書物は漢文や漢字片仮名交じりで書かれ、読み物や啓蒙的な書物は平仮名で書かれるというのが基本であった。
しかし、その基本は必ずしも厳密に守られたわけではない。読書人口の増加とともに、また宗教の分野では女性信者を対象として、本来は片仮名で書かれていた書物が、徐々に平仮名でも出版されるようになる。そして、平仮名の持つ啓蒙性は、その理解を助けるために多くの場合挿絵を取り入れることになった。
このような日本古典籍の表記の移り変わりを、江戸時代の版本を例に見ていきたい。
Event Contact: cjs-events@berkeley.edu, 510-642-3415
Soseki's Diversity: A Workshop
Workshop
Speakers:
• Reiko Abe Auestad, University of Oslo
• Brian C. Dowdle, University of Montana
• Sarah Frederick, Boston University
• Andre Robert Haag, University of New Mexico
• Sayumi Harb, Cornell University
• Brian Riley Hurley, UC Berkeley
• Ken Ito, University of Hawaii
• Seth Jacobowitz, Yale University
• Stephen Poland, Yale University
• Kristin Sivak, University of Toronto
• Robert Tuck, University of Montana
• Leslie Winston; Hitomi Yoshio, Florida International University
Discussants:
• Alan Tansman, UC Berkeley
• Keith Vincent, Boston University
• Chris Weinberger, San Francisco State University
Dates: May 21–23, 2015
Location: Stephens Hall, The Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities
Sponsors: Institute of East Asian Studies, Center for Japanese Studies, Townsend Center for the Humanities, Boston University
Soseki's Diversity: A Workshop, is a three day workshop event in which 16 scholars who have written essays on various aspects of the work of the novelist Natsume Sôseki gather to closely read and critique one another's work. This follows upon a conference held in 2014 at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
THURSDAY, MAY 21
4:00–7:00p.m. — GENDER
4:00–5:00p.m.
Robert Tuck, University of Montana, Doubled Visions of Desire: Gender Ambiguity, Homosociality, and Fujimura Misao in Kusamakura
5:00–6:00p.m.
Sayumi Harb, Cornell University, Penning the Mad Man in the Attic: Women Writers and Imperial Subjects in Soseki's Fiction
6:00–7:00p.m.
Seth Jacobowitz, Yale Univeristy, In the Key of Minor Literature: Mortification in the Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas and Kokoro
FRIDAY, MAY 22
9:00a.m.–Noon — INDIVIDUAL PAPERS
9:00–10:00a.m.
Hitomi Yoshio, Florida International University, National Literature, Authorship, and the New Woman in Sôseki's Kusamakura
10:00–11:00a.m.
Kristin Sivak, University of Toronto, Domestic Servants and the Narration of Character in Natsume Sōseki's Higan sugi made
11:00a.m.–Noon
Leslie Winston, Modernity, Boredom, and Decadence in Natsume Sôseki's Sorekara and Mon and the Exorcising/Exercising of Morality
2:00–5:00p.m. — KOKORO
2:00–3:00p.m.
Ken Ito, University of Hawaii, Kokoro in the High School Text
3:00–4:00p.m.
Reiko Abe Auestad, University of Oslo, Affect that disorients Kokoro
4:00–5:00p.m.
Brian Riley Hurley, UC Berkeley, Kokoro Confidential:Literary Language in the Conservative Mind of 1930s Japan 1950s America
SATURDAY, MAY 23
10:00a.m.–Noon — SOSEKI AND MEDIA
10:00–11:00a.m.
Sarah Frederick, Boston University, Arriving in Sōseki's Kyoto: A Digital Humanities Approach in Sōseki?"
11:00a.m.–Noon
Brian C. Dowdle, University of Montana, Judging Books by Their Covers 表紙を見た目で評価している：夏名漱石と書物の描写表現
1:00–4:00p.m. SOSEKI AND ASIA
1:00–2:00p.m.
Matthew Mewhinney, UC Berkeley, The Poetics of Suspension in Omoidasu koto nado
2:00–3:00p.m.
Stephen Poland, Yale University, I Am A Dog: Toward a Deimperial Reading of Natsume Sōseki's Here & There in Manchuria and Korea
3:00–4:00p.m.
Andre Robert Haag, University of New Mexico, Why Was He...Well, Killed? — Natsume Sōseki Between Empire, Nation and (Anti-) Colonial Violence
Event Contact: cjs-events@berkeley.edu, 510‑642‑3415
Cross-Currents Forum: Intra-Asian Mobility Past and Present
Conference
Dates: June 23 – 25, 2015
Location: 1995 University Avenue — IEAS Fifth Floor Conference Room
Sponsors: Institute of East Asian Studies, Center for Korean Studies, Center for Chinese Studies, Center for Japanese Studies, Center for Buddhist Studies
TUESDAY, JUNE 23
9:30a.m. — Opening Remarks
Kevin O'Brien (Director, Institute of East Asian Studies, UC Berkeley)
Wen-hsin Yeh (Co-editor, Cross‑Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review)
9:45a.m. — Session 1. The Movement of Intellectuals in and out of Modern East Asia
Chair and discussant: John Lie, Professor of Sociology, UC Berkeley
"Mobility of Knowledge and Policy: American Behavioral Sciences and Family Planning Programs in Taiwan and South Korea in the 1960s"
Yu-Ling Huang, Project Assistant Professor of Sociology, National
Taiwan University
"Russian Revolutionaries in Japan and China, 1880s to 1900s: A Focus on Nikolai Sudzilovsky-Russel"
Vladimir Tikhonov, Professor of Culture Studies and Oriental
Languages, University of Oslo
"Richard E. K. Kim and His Ontology of Exile: Focusing on Lost Names"
Jooyeon Rhee, Lecturer in East Asian Studies, The Hebrew
University of Jerusalem
"Internal Diaspora: Kang Hang's Japan Experience and Intellectual Isolation in Joseon"
Ingyu Oh, Professor, Research Institute of Korean Studies, Korea
University (co-authored with Sang Soon Kang, Associate Professor,
Research Institute of Korea Studies, Korea University)
12:30p.m. — Lunch
2:00p.m. — Session 2. War, Diaspora, and Border Crossers: Chosŏn Korea and Its Neighbors in the Sixteenth to Seventeenth Centuries
Chair: Nam-lin Hur, Professor of Asian Studies, University of British Columbia
Discussant: Kyung Moon Hwang, Assoc. Prof. of History, University of Southern California
"A Korean Spectacle in Sixteenth-Century Fujian: The Story of No In
(1566–1622)"
Christina Han, Assistant Professor of History, Wilfrid Laurier
University
"The Imjin War (1592–1598), War Captives, and the Slave Trade"
Nam-lin Hur, Professor of Asian Studies, University of British
Columbia
"Deserters and the Righteous Militias: The Zhejiang Deserters in Kyŏngsang Province during the Imjin War"
Adam Bohnet, Asst. Prof. of History, King's University College,
University of Western Ontario
"The Life of a Transfrontiersman: Manchu-Korean Translator Gulmahun Chŏng Myŏngsu"
Seonmin Kim, Associate Professor, Research Institute of Korean
Studies, Korea University
4:45p.m. — Refreshments
6:30p.m. — Welcome Reception and Dinner, Berkeley City Club
2315 Durant Avenue between Dana and Ellsworth
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 24
9:30a.m. — Session 3. Mobile Medicines: Body, Health, and Cosmologies Across Asia
Chair: Ruth Rogaski, Associate Professor, Dept. of History, Vanderbilt University
Discussant: Timothy K. Choy, Associate Professor of Anthropology, UC Davis
"Ryodoraku (良導絡) in New China: The 1957 Sino-Japanese Medical Exchange and the Role of Machines in East Asian Medical Modernity"
Ruth Rogaski, Associate Professor of History, Vanderbilt University
"Housewives as Kitchen Pharmacists: Dr. Zhuang Shuqi, Gendered Identity, and Traditional Medicine in East Asia"
Sean Hsiang-lin Lei, Research Associate, Institute of Modern
History, Academia Sinica
"The Yellow Emperor and the Medicine Buddha: Twentieth-Century Negotiations of Chinese and Tibetan Medical Cosmologies"
Stacey Van Vleet, PhD, Columbia University
"Materializing Bodies: Acupuncture, Counterculture, and Classical Chinese Medicine through China and Japan"
Mei Zhan, Associate Professor of Anthropology, UC Irvine
12:15p.m. — Lunch
1:45p.m. — Session 4. The Korean Diaspora in the Colonial and Post-Colonial Eras
Chair: Byungwook Jung, Professor, Research Institute of Korean Studies,
Korea University
Discussant: Kyu Hyun Kim, Associate Professor of History, UC Davis
"Migrant Labor and Ethnic Conflicts: A Comparison of the 1923 Massacre of Koreans and Chinese during the Great Kanto Earthquake and the 1931 Anti-Chinese Riots in Colonial Korea"
Byungwook Jung, Professor, Research Institute of Korean Studies,
Korea University
"Migrants, Spies, and Homeland Security: The Transnational History of the 'East Berlin Affair' between the Federal Republic of Germany and South Korea, 1967–1970"
You Jae Lee, Junior Professor of Korean Studies, University of
Tübingen
"North Koreans in South Korea: Hierarchical Nationhood and Ethnicized Citizenship"
Jin Woong Kang, Assistant Professor, Research Institute of Korean
Studies, Korea University
4:00p.m. — Refreshments
4:15p.m. — Optional Tour of the UC Berkeley Campus
6:30p.m. — Forum Dinner, Hong Kong East Ocean Seafood Restaurant
Hosted by the Center for Korean Studies, UC Berkeley
3199 Powell Street, Emeryville
THURSDAY, JUNE 25
9:30a.m. — Session 5. East Asian Waters in the Chosŏn/Qing Era: The Emergence of a Maritime Order
Co-chair and discussant: Wen-hsin Yeh, Professor, Dept. of History, UC Berkeley
Co-chair: Yongchul Choe, Professor of Chinese Literature, Korea University
"Koreans' Experience with China during the Chosŏn Dynasty in P'yohaerok"
Yongchul Choe, Professor of Chinese Literature, Korea University
"Encounters with Foreign Ships and the Ongoing Debate over Ship Design in the Late Chosŏn"
Moon-yong Kim, Associate Professor, Research Institute of Korean
Studies, Korea University
"Traders, Captives, Renegades, and Shipwreckers: Overseas Chinese Informants at the Time of Toyotomi Hideyoshi's Invasion of Korea"
Kuo-tung Ch'en, Research Fellow, Institute of History and Philology,
Academia Sinica
"The Limits of Japanese Sovereignty in Transmarine East Asia, 1894–1904"
Catherine L. Phipps, Associate Professor of History, University
of Memphis
"Drifting and Migration between Vietnam and Two Islands of Taiwan: Kinmen and Penghu"
Yi-yuan Chen, Distinguished Professor in Chinese Literature,
National Cheng Kung University
12:30p.m. — Lunch
2:00p.m. — Closing Roundtable Discussion
Kyeong-Hee Choi, Assoc. Professor of Modern Korean Literature & EALC, University of Chicago
Kuo-tung Ch'en, Research Fellow, Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica
Ruth Rogaski, Associate Professor of History, Vanderbilt University
Hue-Tam Ho Tai, Professor of History, Harvard University
Wen-hsin Yeh, Professor of History, UC Berkeley
Spirituality in Our Time: An Introduction to Korean Son Buddhist Meditation
Colloquium
Speaker: Dharma Master Hwansan Sunim
Date: September 8, 2015 | 4:00 p.m.
Location: 180 Doe Library
Sponsor: Center for Korean Studies
The word "spirituality" is often used these days, but rarely specifically defined. What do "spirituality" and "spiritual practice" actually mean? In this day and age when institutional religion has become such an object of intellectual mistrust, it's become fashionable to think of "spirituality" and "religion" as two distinct but related cultural phenomena or personal experiences. There's a tendency among modern people to think of spirituality as the essence of religious feeling, one that can be extracted and held in our heart apart from what are now considered the unnecessary trappings of religion, i.e. doctrine, ritual, custom, and so forth. But divorced from traditional religious standards, the term "spirituality" becomes vague and almost anything can be called a "spiritual experience" from drinking tea and painting pictures through jogging and surfing to falling in love.
The Korean Son Buddhist meditative tradition has its own approach to the issue of "spirituality." One that is not at odds with scientific findings or the ethical principles of modern democracy and human rights. One that is also neither ethnocentric, sexist, homophobic, nor restricted to the privileged few. The Son Buddhist understanding of "spirituality" has highly specific standards of definition, but remains flexible enough for personal innovation and improvisation. From the Son Buddhist standpoint, "spirituality" is something that we come to fully understand and grasp in the practice of Son meditation.
This doesn't mean that you have to join a monastery and devote yourself to years of meditation to discover your own spirituality. One lesson is enough and after that the rest is up to you. You are invited to explore the Dharma teachings of the Korean Son Buddhist meditative tradition.
Dharma Master Hwansan Sunim graduated from Harvard University in 1987 with a B.A. in The Comparative Study of Religion. In 1990, he received sramanera (novice) monastic precepts at Yongwasa Monastery as a disciple of Son (Korean Zen) Master Songdam, who is the most venerated Son master in Korea. In 1995, he received bhikku (senior) monastic precepts at Beomeosa monastery. From 1999-2001 Hwansan Sunim attended New York University, studying clinical psychology in the MA program. In 2003, he was appointed as the personal attendant to Son Master Songdam.
In 2013, Dharma Master Hwansan Sunim was appointed as Dharma Guidance Master for both the Seoul National University Buddhist Students Association and the Korea (Koryo) University Buddhist Students Association, where he conducts a weekly Dharma Assembly and weekend meditation retreats. In the same year, he was also appointed director of the Yonghwasa International Son Meditation Templestay Program. This program is now called the International Living Phrase Son Meditation Program (국제 활구참선법 청년 프로그램).
Dharma Master Hwansan Sunim has been the host of Korea's first weekly Son meditation instruction TV program, Buddhist Television Network's (BTN) "Son Meditation in English with Hwansan Sunim" since 2013. Now called "Hello, This Is Hwansan Sunim", the program videos are available for public viewing on the YouTube channel, "Hwansan Sunim: Son Meditation for the Modern World."
For the past three years, Dharma Master Hwansan Sunim has conducted numerous meditation workshops, lectures, retreats, weekly programs, and Dharma Assemblies in both English and Korean for the VA Hospital in Palo Alto, Sejong Cultural Center Special International Art Exhibition in Commemoration of the 70th Anniversary of Korean Independence, Korean National Assembly True Enlightenment Association & Korean National Assembly Buddhist Employees Association, International Living Phrase Son Meditation Program at BTN Studio, Seoul National University Law School Buddhist Students Association, Seoul National University Buddhist Students Association, Korea (Koryo) University Buddhist Students Association, Korea (Koryo) University Buddhist Alumni Association, Dongguk University Jeongkakweon International Dharma Assembly Program, Dongguk University International Son Center, Girls Middle School of Dongguk University College of Education, Dankook University Buddhist Students Association, Ewha Women's University Buddhist Students Association, Dongdeok Women's University Buddhist Students Circle, Yeongsan Son Meditation Center International Dharma Assembly Program, Korean Buddhist Youth Education Association of New York (뉴욕 청소년 한국불교문화 체험단연구원), and the City of Los Altos Grant Park Seniors Program in California.
Dharma Master Hwansan Sunim is a regular contributor of blog articles and videos to The Huffington Post and was featured in an interview on the "HuffPost Live" program of The Huffington Post in April 2014. Hwansan Sunim was also the exclusive guest on the Buddha's Birthday Special Edition of "The INNERview" Arirang TV program in May 2014 and was featured in an interview article published in the Joongang Ilbo (Korean daily newspaper) and the YTN Korean TV station (Yonhap Television Network) Global Guest Spotlight Interview in June 2014.
Event Contact: cksassist@berkeley.edu, 510‑643‑9787
The South China Sea, US Pivot, and Regional Security in Northeast Asia
Lecture
Speaker: David Kang, International Relations and Business, Director of USC Korean Studies Institute and Director of USC East Asian Studies Center, University of Southern California
Moderator: Laura Nelson, Department of Gender and Women's Studies and Chair, Center for Korean Studies
Date: September 11, 2015 | 4:00 p.m.
Location: 180 Doe Library
Sponsors: Institute of East Asian Studies, Center for Korean Studies, Center for Chinese Studies, Center for Japanese Studies, Institute of International Studies
Are many East Asian nations feeling increasingly threatened, especially from China? It certainly appears so, and numerous observers see rising tensions in which war is possible and perhaps imminent. Over the last few months, North Korea has tested missiles and threatened the United States with nuclear war. China spars regularly with Japan over ownership of a group of disputed islands, and with several Southeast Asian countries over other sparsely inhabited rocks in the South China Sea. Furthermore, the US "rebalance" to Asia has been justified as being central to continued stability in the region. But at the same time, none of these rivalries have broken out into actual military conflict, the Chinese military has not fired a shot since 1988 and the Japanese have not been involved in any combat since 1945. This talk will explore the current regional security dynamics and make an argument that — despite unresolved disputes — the region is more stable than at any time in the past half-century.
David C. Kang is Professor of International Relations and Business at the University of Southern California, with appointments in both the School of International Relations and the Marshall School of Business. At USC he is also director of the Korean Studies Institute. Kang's latest book is East Asia Before the West: Five Centuries of Trade and Tribute (Columbia University Press, 2010). Kang is also author of China Rising: Peace, Power, and Order in East Asia (Columbia University Press, 2007); Crony Capitalism: Corruption and Development in South Korea and the Philippines (Cambridge University Press, 2002); and Nuclear North Korea: A Debate on Engagement Strategies (coauthored with Victor Cha). A regular consultant for U.S. government agencies, Kang has also written opinion pieces in the New York Times, Financial Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times, and appears regularly in media such as CNN, BBC, and NPR. He received an A.B. with honors from Stanford University and his Ph.D. from Berkeley.
Event Contact: ieas@berkeley.edu, 510‑642‑2809
Cultural Diversity and Global Talent in Korea
Colloquium
Speakers: Gi-wook Shin, Stanford University; Rennie Moon, Yonsei University
Date: September 15, 2015 | 4:00 p.m.
Location: 180 Doe Library
Sponsor: Center for Korean Studies
The 21st century is an era of fierce competition for global talent. Economic globalization has facilitated the movement of human labor, and the demand for foreign talent is high in most advanced countries, due to their low birth rates and aging populations. The competition to attract skilled labor is becoming fiercer among corporations as well as among countries.
Higher education is key to producing such skilled labor. In particular, two main forms of internationalization of higher education, i.e., inbound and outbound student mobility, are important to creating global talent. Inbound mobility brings diverse groups of foreign students to campuses, offering opportunities for local students to enhance inter-cultural skills as well as providing human capital to the host countries. However, ethnically homogenous countries like Korea do not properly appreciate the value that such cultural diversity brings to their own people and society and thus lose many talented foreign students after graduation. On the other hand, outbound student mobility can contribute to the development of human capital through brain circulation but at the same time incurs the risk of a country losing its brightest students to host countries.
In this lecture, Shin and Moon discuss how Korea can deal with these two main challenges associated with inbound and outbound student mobility, i.e., cultural diversity and brain drain, respectively. They argue that in order to compete with North America and Western Europe over global talent, Korea (and other Asian countries similar to Korea) should embrace diversity as a strength and consider converting brain drain into brain linkage beyond brain circulation.
This is based on their project on "globalization and higher education in Asia."
Event Contact: cksassist@berkeley.edu, 510‑643‑9787
Chinese Renminbi: Regional or Global Currency?
Colloquium
Speaker: Barry Eichengreen, Economics, UC Berkeley
Moderator: Lowell Dittmer, Political Science, UC Berkeley
Date: September 16, 2015 | 12:00–1:00 p.m.
Location: 180 Doe Library
Sponsors: Institute of East Asian Studies, Center for Chinese Studies
This talk will contrast two views of the process and ultimate result of renminbi internationalization, one in which the renminbi becomes a consequential international currency used throughout the world, and a second in which the renminbi is used for cross-border transactions mainly in Asia.
Event Contact: ieas@berkeley.edu, 510‑642‑2809
Sports in the Global Cold War : A Transnational History Project
Speaker: Robert Edelman, Professor of Russian History and the History of Sport, UC San Diego
Lecture
Date: September 18, 2105 | 12:00–1:30 p.m.
Location: 370 Dwinelle Hall
Sponsors: Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, Center for African Studies, Institute of European Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies, Institute for South Asia Studies, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, UC Berkeley History-Social Science Project, Center for Latin American Studies
During the Cold war, nations and peoples used sport to promote their political, social and economic development. Elites sought ways to confer legitimacy on their dominance. Sport was uniquely positioned between high politics and diplomacy on the one hand and mass politics and popular culture on the other. Because results could be easily measured and profound international connections were formed, sport assumed more significance during the Cold War than at any other time in its history. Success and failure seemed to be measured every four years at the Olympic Games. Yet, sport between the end of World War II and the collapse of Communism involved far more than just Olympic competition. This is a history that goes beyond the bipolar USA-USSR rivalry played out on the Olympic stage, with the two Germanies the centerpiece, and the postcolonial world sitting in an imaginary "Southern Stand" while deciding to whom they would give their hearts and minds. Cold War sport was global. It involved not only the nations of the so-called metropolis but Africa, Asia and Latin America as well.
Under the auspices of the Cold War International History Project in Washington DC, we are engaged in a multi-year, research project that will explore the multifaceted phenomenon of sport both during the Cold War. It involves scholars, and journalists, policy makers, sports officials and athletes from all over the world and take in such emerging sporting nations as South Africa, China and Brazil as well as the representatives of the Cold War heartlands. There are both academic public components to this effort. It is our belief that we have come to a propitious moment for such a project. The last twenty years have seen prodigious scholarship and rapidly opening archives. New subjects and approaches have emerged, while the familiar categories of class, race, gender, nationality and religion continue to remain relevant. This project involves seventy-seven scholars, young and old, female and male, from all over the world.
Event Contact: 510‑642‑3230
Gender and Awakening: Sexual Transformation in Mahāyāna Sūtras
Colloquium
Speaker: Jan Nattier, Numata Visiting Professor of Buddhist Studies, UC Berkeley
Date: September 24, 2015 | 5:00–6:30 p.m.
Location: 180 Doe Library
Sponsor: Center for Buddhist Studies
It is commonly held that the rise of the Mahāyāna opened new spiritual horizons for Buddhist women. Many modern writers, especially those inspired by feminist theory, have seen the non-dualistic language that abounds in many Mahāyāna scriptures as evidence that dualities of any sort—including dualities based on gender—were not important in Mahāyāna circles, thus creating a more egalitarian atmosphere for female practitioners. Just as a previous generation of scholars, inspired above all by the work of Akira Hirakawa, saw the Mahāyāna as having increased the status of lay people, so in more recent times the Mahāyāna has often been portrayed as eradicating previously existing barriers to the spiritual attainments of women.
A close look at the Mahāyāna scriptures that have come down to us, however, paints a significantly different picture. In this paper I will examine one subset of narratives featuring female characters: those recounting sexual transformation, in which women either suddenly (within a single lifetime) or gradually (at some point during the course of rebirth) turn into men. In contrast to the view that gender differences were not important in Mahāyāna circles, I will argue that these tales encode a decidedly non-egalitarian vision of what women can (and cannot) achieve.
Jan Nattier is Numata Visiting Professor of Buddhist Studies at the University of California, Berkeley (fall 2015). She did her undergraduate work in comparative religion (specializing in Buddhism) at Indiana University, where she also began graduate training in the Department of Uralic and Altaic Studies. She completed her Ph.D. at Harvard University under the Committee on Inner Asian and Altaic Studies (specializing in classical Mongolian and Tibetan). She has taught at Macalester College, the University of Hawaii, Stanford University, Indiana University, and the University of Tokyo, in addition to serving as a member of the International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology (Soka University). Her monographs include Once Upon a Future Time: Studies in a Buddhist Philosophy of Decline (Asian Humanities Press, 1991), A Few Good Men: The Bodhisattva Path according to the Inquiry of Ugra (Ugraparipṛcchāsūtra) (University of Hawai'i Press, 2003), and A Guide to the Earliest Chinese Buddhist Translations (Soka University, 2008).
Event Contact: buddhiststudies@berkeley.edu, 510‑643#&8209;5104
Koreans and Camptowns: Mixed-Race Adoptees and Camptown Connections
Conference
Speakers:
• Grace M. Cho, CUNY Staten Island
• Sue-Je Lee Gage, Ithaca College
• Eleana Kim, UC Irvine
• Deann Borshay Liem
Discussants:
• Yong Nam Lee
• Myung Duck Joo
• Jai Song Seo
Date: September 26, 2016 | 9 a.m.–5 p.m.
Location: David Brower Center, 2150 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA 94704 Sponsors: Center for Korean Studies, Me & Korea, Asia Society Northern California
The Center for Korean Studies is co-hosting a conference with advocacy group Me & Korea about the camptowns that developed alongside American military bases in Korea during and after the Korean War. The conference aims to spotlight the intersection of American military presence and Korean society, focusing on exploring the lives of people who lived in the camptowns and the historical context surrounding the overseas adoption of thousands of mixed-race children.
The event will include academic presentations, a short film, an activist panelist talk, a photo exhibit, and a live musical performance.
PROGRAM
9:00 - 9:30
Tea/coffee
9:30 - 9:45
Welcome and opening remarks
Laura Nelson, UC Berkeley & The Honorable Judy Preddy Draper
Camptowns in Korea
9:45 - 10:15
My Korea, My America: Korean Amerasians and the Everyday Politics of Belonging
Sue-je Lee Gage, Ithaca College
10:20 - 10:50
Birth and Death in the Camptown
Grace Cho, College of Staten Island
11:00 - 12:00
Impact of Militarization along the DMZ
Yong Nam Lee, Institute of Photojournalism
12:00 - 1:00
Lunch
Mixed-race "orphans" and adoptions from Korea to the U.S.
1:00 - 1:30
Understanding Adoptions from South Korea to the U.S.: How an Emergency Situation Turned into a Permanent Solution
Eleana Kim, UC Irvine)
1:30 - 1:55
Afterimage of the Korean War: Camptowns, Orphans, and Photography
Jung Joon Lee, Rhode Island School of Design
1:55 -2:45
A Practitioner's Perspective
Jai Song Seo, St. Vincent's Home for Amerasian Children
2:45 - 3:00
Break
3:00 - 3:15
Video interview of adoptee Noel Cross
Deann Borshay Liem, Mu Films)
3:15 - 4:30
Adoptee Panel
Dawn Tomlinson, Milton Washington, Robert Ricardo Reese, Cerrissa Kim
4:30 – 4:40
The DNA Project
4:40 – 5:00
Performance by Selah Art
Kyung Seob Woo, Seungeun Kim, Haejo Nam, Moonjung Kang, Min Seob Woo, Younji Jin
5:00 - 5:10
Closing remarks
5:30
Reception/Dinner
CAMPTOWNS IN KOREA
My Korea, My America: Korean Amerasians and the Everyday Politics of Belonging
Sue-je Lee Gage will center on research conducted over the last 13 years on the history and experiences of Amerasians in Korea. It will address spatial politics, place-making, and identity as Korean Amerasians have maneuvered through everyday life since 1945. The end of World War II with the surrender of Imperial Japan also marked the beginning history of the U.S. military presence in Korea, which still remains today. Korean Amerasians and their mothers are linked inextricably to both Korea's imperialism by Japan and the United States; imperialisms that may seem to have dissipated with national independence, but linger within Korea's social and political fabric. Despite policies in the name of progress like multiculturalism, Korean Amerasians are rendered invisible. This research examines why. The positionality of the researcher as a mixed Korean American with roots in the camptown also provides a narrative weave into what she has learned thus far about the complexities and strategies of belonging.
Birth and Death in the Camptown
Grace Cho will discuss the origins of transnational adoption in U.S. military intervention in Korea from 1945 to the present. It will provide a brief historical overview of the violent relationship between the U.S. and Korea and the way in which the death and destruction caused by this relationship also created new populations ("Yankee whores" and mixed-race children) that needed to be managed by the South Korean government. The camptown sex worker and her biracial child were the prototypes of the birth mother and adoptee. Although they are no longer visible in contemporary issues of transnational adoption, they continue to be the foundation upon which the practices and ideologies of transnational adoption rest.
Impact of Militarization along the DMZ
Yong Nam Lee will discuss his personal experience growing up in a camptown and the impact of military culture on local society. In particular, he will focus on the role of Korean and US governments in developing and maintaining camptowns and military prostitution, the aftermath of the camptown on women, and the responsibilities of the Korean and US governments to mixed-race children.
ADOPTIONS AND MIXED-RACE "ORPHANS" FROM KOREA TO THE U.S.
Understanding Adoptions from South Korea to the U.S.: How an Emergency Situation Turned into a Permanent Solution
Eleana Kim will outline the history of transnational/transracial adoptions from South Korea, which began with the "crisis" of mixed-race children in the immediate post-Korean War period. South Korea was the world's primary recipient of international aid in the 1950s, and "war orphans" drew significant attention from dozens of voluntary organizations, religiously-motivated individuals, and international aid groups. Rescuing these children from a war-devastated country dovetailed with the decline of adoptable children in the U.S., and with social work practices that discriminated against non-normative families, especially African Americans. Mixed-race Korean children thereby quickly became framed as adoptable children by Americans, especially as their adoptions were framed by Cold War geopolitics, in which the U.S. government sought to mitigate North Korea's accusations about American colonialist exploitation of the South Korean people by encouraging humanitarian adoption of these children.
Afterimage of the Korean War: Camptowns, Orphans, and Photography
Jung Joon Lee's presentation introduces Myungduck Joo's photographs of the mixed race orphans at the Harry Holt Memorial Orphanage and the imagery closely related to Joo's work—the photographs of camptown sex workers and GIs. The numerous camptowns established after the Korean War scarcely registered as photographic subjects during the military regime in South Korea. The many problems in these camptowns, particularly of violence against camptown women, have also been disguised and silenced by the military regime in conjunction with the interests of the U.S. Lee examines the ways that the camptown photographs from different periods and photographers explore the issues of South Korean militarism, particularly the U.S. military presence and the gendered treatment of Koreans as citizens and as a nation.
A Practitioner's Perspective
Jai Song Seo will discuss the issue of orphans and mixed-race adoptees from a practitioner perspective. Since the 1960s, he was involved in sending more than a thousand Amerasian children for adoption. Since his retirement in 1997, he has been helping mixed-race adoptees find their birth families.
LAURA NELSON
Laura Nelson is the faculty chair of the Center for Korean Studies and an associate professor of gender and women's studies at UC Berkeley.
JUDGE JUDY PREDDY DRAPER
Judge Draper is Associate Circuit Judge of St. Louis County, Missouri.
SUE-JE LEE GAGE
Sue-Je Lee Gage is an associate professor in anthropology at Ithaca College. Her specialization is on the lives, histories, and experiences of "mixed" Koreans known as Korean "Amerasians" in South Korea and in the United States. As a long-term and insider ethnographer, her work is cross-disciplinary, exploring holistically how Korean Amerasians as local, national, and global citizens identify themselves and strategically use their identities to maneuver within Korean society, the United States, and the globalizing world.
GRACE CHO
Grace Cho is the author of Haunting the Korean Diaspora: Shame, Secrecy and the Forgotten War, which won a 2010 book award from the American Sociological Association. She was born in Busan, Korea to a Korean mother and American father and immigrated to the U.S. as a young child with her birth parents. Her work explores the psychic impact of U.S. militarism on the Korean diaspora.
YONG NAM LEE
Yong Nam Lee is an activist and photographer who grew up in Paju, Korea. Through video and still photographs, he has documented much about the people who worked in the camptowns along the DMZ. He actively promotes the rights of women who formerly worked in the sex industry in the camptowns and has been instrumental in Paju City's plans to have a memorial park at a former US military base, Camp Howze.
JUNG JOON LEE
Jung Joon Lee is an assistant professor of history of art and visual culture at the Rhode Island School of Design. Her research focuses on the politics and economy of photography since the Korean War in South Korea and in the U.S. Ms. She was a recipient of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston's Alexander Award, and a fellow at the Center for Place, Culture, and Politics. She is currently working on her book manuscript exploring the relationship between militarism and photography in postcolonial Korea.
ELEANA KIM
Eleana Kim is an associate professor of anthropology at UC Irvine. Her book, Adopted Territory: Transnational Korean Adoptees and the Politics of Belonging, an ethnographic study of a global network of adult adopted Koreans and their returns to South Korea, received the James B. Palais Prize from the Association of Asian Studies and the Social Science Book Award from the Association of Asian American Studies.
JAI SONG SEO
Jai Song Seo is the former director of the St. Vincent Home for Amerasian Children in Incheon, Korea.
DEANN BORSHAY LIEM
Deann Borshay Liem is an award-winning Korean adoptee documentary filmmaker who grew up in the U.S. and is currently finishing work on a documentary called Geographies of Kinship about first-wave Korean adoptees.
Archaeology of Knowledge: New Archival and Material Discoveries in Mongolia
Conference
Date: September 26, 2015 | 9 a.m.–5 p.m.
Location: 145 Dwinelle Hall
Sponsors: Institute of East Asian Studies, Center for Buddhist Studies, Mongolia Foundation, Department of East Asian Languages & Cultures, Townsend Center for the Humanities, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Consulate General of Mongolia in San Francisco
Mongol spaces have always been heavily trafficked intersections, sites of mediation, and global circuits of people and exchange in the heart of Asia. Recent archaeological work is shedding new light on Mongolia's complex history. Experts from Mongolia who have been working with excavation sites join Berkeley and other scholars in analyzing their discoveries and the implications for our understanding of Mongolia's past.
This conference celebrates the revival of Mongolian studies and language instruction at UC Berkeley. The generous support of the Mongolia Foundation is gratefully acknowledged. For information on additional Mongolia-related events, including art exhibitions and a dinner and performance following the conference, please visit the Mongolia Foundation website at http://www.mongoliafoundation.org/events/.
Event Contact: ieas@berkeley.edu, or call 510‑642‑2809 for information (not registration)
A Political Ecology of the Qin Empire
Colloquium
Speaker: Brian Lander, Ziff Environmental Fellow 2015-2017, Harvard University Center for the Environment
Discussant: Mark Csikszentmihalyi, East Asian Languages and Cultures, UC Berkeley
Date: September 28, 2015 | 4:00–6:00 p.m.
Location: 180 Doe Library
Sponsor: Center for Chinese Studies
The state-strengthening reforms of the Warring States period (481-221 BCE) gave the Qin government direct control over the exploitation of land and labor, allowing it for the first time to affect the ecology of large regions. This paper uses newly excavated administrative documents to analyze the Qin state during the reign of the first emperor (246-210 BCE) in order to understand the ecological consequences of this new political system. Qin reorganized the agrarian landscape into standardized plots, established state management of forests and wetlands, and encouraged both the expansion and the intensification of agriculture. In addition to funding large-scale wars and imperial vanity projects like the terracotta army, it employed the surplus food and labor of the population to build roads, canals and dikes. Although Qin's sudden collapse revealed the flaws in its system, its centralized bureaucratic model of governance has survived for over two millennia, playing a central role in the almost complete replacement of China's natural ecosystems with anthropogenic ones.
Part of the Environmental China series.
Event Contact: ccs@berkeley.edu, 510‑643‑6321
The Structure of Protest Cycles: Contagion and Cohesion in South Korea's Democracy Movement
Colloquium
Speaker: Paul Chang, Harvard University
Date: September 30, 2015 | 4:00 p.m.
Location: 180 Doe Library
Sponsor: Center for Korean Studies
In his seminal study of contentious politics, Sidney Tarrow conceptualized social movements as constituting a series of protest cycles. While the concept of protest cycles has received much attention in the social movements literature, its empirical operationalization remains relatively crude compared to the rich theoretical discussion. Most studies operationalize protest cycles as the total number of protest events in a given period. Drawing on recent work on event structures, this paper attempts to further develop the application of the protest cycle concept by conceptualizing social movements as a population of interlinked events and identifying events that play critical roles in historical outcomes. We demonstrate the usefulness of considering protest cycles as protest event networks with a novel dataset on South Korea's democracy movement. In our conceptualization the nodes of the network are protest events and links are coded as present if protestors cited a specific prior event as a source of inspiration for mobilizing. Appropriating strategies developed for network analysis we ascertain which events in Korea's democracy movement were more likely to solicit direct responses and which linked disparate event clusters. By identifying the characteristics of events that contribute to the probability of protest contagion and movement cohesion, we hope to show the usefulness of identifying direct links between events when analyzing protest events data, while providing a better understanding of the structure of protest cycles in South Korea's democracy movement.
Paul Y. Chang is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Harvard University. His primary research interest is in South Korean social and political change. He is the author of Protest Dialectics: State Repression and South Korea's Democracy Movement (Stanford University Press 2015), and co-editor of South Korean Social Movements: From Democracy to Civil Society (Routledge 2011). He is currently embarking on a new project exploring various manifestations of Korea's changing family structure including rising rates of divorce, unwed mothers, and elderly suicide. He teaches courses on social change in modern Korea and social movements in East Asia.
Event Contact: cksassist@berkeley.edu, 510ૹ643ૹ9787
Interrogating 'Dvaravati Civilization' — What, when, where (and why)? Overview of, and questions about, the culture of Central Siam,
CE 500–1000
Colloquium
Speaker: Peter Skilling, École Française d'Extrême-Orient (EFEO), Bangkok
Date: September 30, 2015 | 5:00ૻ6:30 p.m.
Location: 3335 Dwinelle Hall
Sponsor: Center for Buddhist Studies
Perspectives on 70 Years of the Nuclear Age: From Berkeley, a Birthplace of the Atomic Bomb
Conference
Dates: September 30, 2015 | 10:45 a.m.–6:15 p.m. and
October 1, 2015 | 10:00 a.m.–6:00 p.m.
Location: Berkeley City Club, The Drawing Room
2315 Durant Avenue, Berkeley, CA 94704
Sponsors: Institute of East Asian Studies, Center for Japanese Studies, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Asia Society of Northern California
Over the past seventy years, nuclear technologies have brought about both atomic weapons and new sources of electric energy, which are now woven deeply into the fabric of many advanced societies. This symposium brings together scientists, historians, and other experts to share their views on past, present and future in an open, cross-disciplinary exchange. Presentations will start from the political and scientific history of the nuclear industry in Japan and the US and how it influenced the ethical and scientific challenges we face today.
The clash between nuclear and non-nuclear countries, between proponents and opponents, grows greater every day. Japan is a fulcrum for passionate debate on the future, even as many new nations are considering adopting nuclear power and nuclear weapons. This symposium offers a valuable opportunity to consider the weighty philosophical and pragmatic concerns that are revealed by close study of the nuclear industry, bringing together experts from the two nations that together directly witnessed the birth of atomic energy.
(Photo Courtesy of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory)
DAY 1: SEPTEMBER 30
Opening session: Greetings (10:45 - 11:00 am)
Prof. Dana Buntrock, Center for Japanese Studies Chair
Prof. Masayuki Izutsu, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
Prof. Joonhong Ahn, Conference Organizer
Session 1: Before Hiroshima and Nagasaki (11:00 am - 1:00 pm)
Moderated by Prof. Dana Buntrock (Department of Architecture, UCB)
Prof. Cathryn Carson (Department of History, UCB)
"Science, Politics, and Ethical Choices: Berkeley and the Opening of the Nuclear Era"
Prof. Atsushi Moriyama (University of Shizuoka)
"Why Japan Decided to Enter the War with U.S.: From the Perspective of Japan's Decision-making Process"
Break (1:00 - 2:00 pm)
Session 2: Impacts on Political Powers (2:00 - 4:00 pm)
Moderated by Prof. Steven Vogel (Department of Political Science, UCB)
Prof. Jacques Hymans (University of Southern California)
"70 Years after: Explaining Nuclear War and Nuclear Peace"
Dr. Masakatsu Ota (Kyodo News)
"The Japanese Nuclear Enigma — The Secret Nuclear Pact with the U.S. and the Nuclear Shadow She Has Feared"
Break (4:00 - 4:15pm)
Session 3: Nuclear Technologies (4:15 – 6:15 pm)
Moderated by Prof. Per Peterson (Department of Nuclear Engineering, UCB)
Dr. Jay Davis (The Hertz Foundation)
"The Utility of Technology in Reducing the Nuclear Threat"
Prof. Atsuyuki Suzuki (Emeritus, The University of Tokyo)
"Nuclear Power Development in Japan"
DAY 2: OCTOBER 1
Session 4: Impacts on Humans (10:00 am - 12:20 pm)
Moderated by Prof. Kai Vetter (Department of Nuclear Engineering, UCB)
Prof. Naoko Wake (Michigan State University)
"Americans Survive the Bomb in Japan: Nuclear Destruction's Ground Zero, 1945 and Beyond"
Prof. David Hoel (Medical University of South Carolina)
"Impacts of the Atomic Bombings on Humans: What Do We Know after 70 Years?"
Dr. Sylvain Costes (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory)
"The DOE Low Dose Program at the Berkeley Laboratory: Where We Are and Future Directions"
Break (12:20 - 1:15 pm)
Session 5: Toward a Nuclear-free world (1:15 - 3:15 pm)
Moderated by Prof. Ron Gronsky (Emeritus, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, UCB)
Prof. Tatsujiro Suzuki (Director, RECNA, Nagasaki University; former AEC commissioner)
"Role of Japan toward a Nuclear-free World"
Dr. Kennette Benedict (Director and publisher of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, retired)
"Doomsday Clockwork: Toward a Nuclear Weapons Free World"
Break (3:15 - 3:30pm)
Session 6: Panel discussion among speakers (3:30 - 5:30 pm)
Moderated by Martin Fackler (Journalist-in-Residence, the Rebuild Japan Initiative Foundation in Tokyo)
Closing Session (5:30 - 6:00 pm)
Event Contact: cjs-events@berkeley.edu, 510‑642‑3415
Psychological Consequences of Walking in Urban Chinese Infants
Colloquium
Speaker: Joseph J. Campos, Psychology, UC Berkeley
Moderator: Qing Zhou, Psychology, UC Berkeley
Date: October 1, 2015 | 12:00–1:00 p.m.
Location: 180 Doe Library
Sponsors: Institute of East Asian Studies, Center for Chinese Studies
Ever since Bishop George Berkeley (for whom our University is named) proposed the importance of motoric activity for mental development, the role of such activity has been highly controversial. The talk will present data to document that in some respects, Bishop Berkeley was correct. infants, for example show a psychological revolution after they begin to CRAWL, a finding with major clinical importance because infants with locomotor delays show delayed acquisition of cognitive and social functioning, which then spurts upon the delayed acquisition of crawling.
What does this have to do with China? Studies with Chinese infants in Beijing, conducted under the supervision of Professor Dong Qi, now President of Beijing Normal University, have confirmed the importance of locomotor activity for urban Chinese infants, for whom crawling is delayed by some 3.5 months due to cultural and safety reasons.
In the last three years, our laboratory has discovered that another locomotor development, WALKING, also has psychological consequences, profoundly affecting the newly-walking infant's language, emotions, and cognitive development.
Once again, as with the work on crawling, China offers the opportunity to confirm and expand the links between a motoric milestone, this time walking, and psychological development. Urban Chinese infants, as reported to us by pediatricians, begin to walk some 6 weeks on average later than do Western infants. As with the delay in crawling, the delay in walking seems due to cultural and ecological factors, and bears no relation to genes or biology). The study being funded under the auspices of funding from the East Asia Institute will investigate longitudinally the development of walking in both Shanghai and Berkeley to determine via longitudinal testing whether walking is an antecedent of psychological changes, and whether the delay in walking in Shanghai documents a delay in psychological development, following which the Chines e infants show a spurt in cognitive and social functioning, as did crawling infants.
This research will also be related to the outstanding and influential (as well as currently unrecognized) work of the famous Chinese psychologist Z.Y, Kuo, who received his education, including the PhD, from UC-Berkeley.
Event Contact: ieas@berkeley.edu, 510‑642‑2809
Contribution of Professor Michael Hahn to the study of Buddhist Narrative Literature
Colloquium
Speaker: Shrikant Bahulkar, Department of Pali, Savitribai Phule Pune University, India
Date: October 1, 2015 | 5:00–-6:30 p.m.
Location: 3335 Dwinelle Hall Sponsor: Center for Buddhist Studies
Event Contact: buddhiststudies@berkeley.edu, 510‑643‑5104
Auspicious Images to Feminist Critiques: The Evolution of Mithila Painting in Rural India
Lecture
Speaker: David Szanton, Ethnic Arts Foundation, Berkeley, California
Moderator: Lawrence Cohen, Anthropology and South and Southeast Asian Studies, UC Berkeley
Date: October 5, 2015 | 4:00–6:00 p.m.
Location: 180 Doe Library
Sponsors: Institute of East Asian Studies, Institute for South Asia Studies
Since at least the 14th century women from the Mithila region of Bihar have painted images of the Hindu gods and goddesses on the walls of their homes to create auspicious spaces for domestic rituals – especially elaborated for marriage rituals. In the late 1960s they began painting these images on paper for sale. Since 2000 their repertoire has expanded to include contemporary social and political issues and events, and powerful feminist critiques of patriarchy, purdah, gender inequalities, dowry, arranged marriages, bride burning, female infanticide, even marriage itself. This presentation will make passing reference to the other political issues, but focus on the gender dynamics and gender politics increasingly central to this ancient painting tradition.
Image title: "Has this ever happened? No, but it should!" by Supriya Jha, 2012 (Acrylic on hand made acid free paper)
Event Contact: ieas@berkeley.edu, 510‑642‑2809
Reactor Politics: Domestic Politics and Nuclear Energy in East Asia
Colloquium
Speaker: Il Hyun Cho, Lafayette College
Date: October 9, 2014 | 4:00 p.m.
Location: 223 Moses Hall
Sponsors: Institute of East Asian Studies, Center for Korean Studies
The 2011 Fukushima nuclear reactor meltdowns led some countries, most notably Germany, to renounce nuclear power altogether. However, East Asian countries, after initial suspension or shutdown, resumed or revamped the operation of nuclear reactors. Even in Japan where public opposition to nuclear power remains strong, the ruling government has been seeking to restart nuclear reactors. Prime Minister Abe Shinzo also inked a nuclear pact with India, laying the foundation for exporting nuclear reactors and related technologies to the energy-strapped nation, an arrangement mirroring South Korea's nuclear deal with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and China's nuclear cooperation agreements with France. What explains East Asia's region-wide drive for nuclear energy in the post-Fukushima context? What are likely regional and global consequences? Most analyses on nuclear energy examine either the technical aspects of nuclear reactor operation or the role of domestic interest groups in influencing energy policymaking. Others explore the effects of anti-nuclear public sentiments as a key variable shaping the energy debate in countries with nuclear power plants.
With an empirical focus on Japan, China, and South Korea, this paper examines how nuclear energy intersects with domestic politics in East Asia. Specifically, it demonstrates how nuclear energy has become a new source of domestic political contestation and a symbol of global prestige in East Asia. A comparative analysis of the domestic political debate on nuclear energy is important for the following reasons. First, given the increasing and largely successful campaign against nuclear energy in Europe, the contrasting nuclear push in East Asia offers an opportunity to evaluate the nature of domestic politics behind energy policy in general and nuclear power in particular. Second, East Asia's efforts to boost nuclear energy highlight the continuing relevance of a top-down, state-led approach and the salience of domestic political and global status considerations in energy policy. As the three countries seek to expand their nuclear energy programs and their shares in the global markets, the new energy drive will intensify competition among the three nations over regional energy leadership and international standing. The competitive push for nuclear energy in East Asia will also help diminish the effects of the global nonproliferation norm in the region and beyond.
Il Hyun Cho is an assistant professor in the Department of Government and Law and the Asian Studies Program at Lafayette College. His research and teaching interests include international relations theory, global governance, security studies, nuclear proliferation, energy politics, Chinese foreign policy, and East Asian politics. He received his Ph.D. in government from Cornell University and has held research fellowships and visiting positions at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University; the Department of Political Science, Stanford University; the Institute of Social Sciences, the University of Tokyo; the Center for International Studies, Yonsei University, Seoul; the Academy of Korean Studies; and the Center for the Study of the Presidency, Washington, D.C. Prior to coming to Lafayette, he was an assistant professor of political science at Cleveland State University.
Event Contact: cksassist@berkeley.edu, 510‑643‑9787
Book Talk: The Destruction of the Medieval Chinese Aristocracy
Colloquium
Speaker: Nicolas Tackett, History, UC Berkeley
Discussant: Robert Ashmore, East Asian Languages and Cultures, UC Berkeley
Date: October 9, 2015 | 4:00–6:00 p.m.
Location: 180 Doe Library
Sponsor: Center for Chinese Studies
The complete disappearance by the tenth century of the medieval Chinese aristocracy, the "great clans" that had dominated China for centuries, has long perplexed historians. In his book, Nicolas Tackett resolves the enigma of their disappearance by using new, digital methodologies to analyze a dazzling array of sources. He systematically exploits the thousands of funerary biographies excavated in recent decades — most of them never before examined by scholars — while taking full advantage of the explanatory power of Geographic Information System (GIS) and social network analysis. Tackett supplements these analyses with an extensive use of anecdotes culled from epitaphs, prose literature, and poetry, bringing to life the women and men of a millennium ago.
Event Contact: ccs@berkeley.edu, 510‑643‑6321
Which Historical Legacies Matter in East Asian International Relations?
Colloquium
Speaker: Seo-Hyun Park, Lafayette College
Date: October 12, 2015 | 4:00 p.m.
Location: 180 Doe Library
Sponsors: Institute of East Asian Studies, Center for Korean Studies
In the study of international relations in East Asia, it is almost taken as a given that historical memory or context influences foreign policy outcomes. But given that there are multiple historical "lessons" and "traumas" that inform contemporary security debates, it is important to ask which historical legacies matter in and what kinds of impact they have on international relations in the East Asian region. In this paper, I argue that the lens of hierarchy is an enduring socio-historical constraint in the discourse and conduct of foreign policy. Recent works on hierarchical orders (for example, Lake 2009; Kang 2008; Goh 2013) remind us that hierarchy is neither uniquely East Asian nor U.S.-centric in its character. They also suggest that hierarchical relations are more than a function of unequal and coercive power. Rather, hierarchy is also a social context, which imposes differential constraints, according to status, on diplomatic practices and foreign policy capacities. Therefore, hierarchy is reproduced through social practices, such as the repeated use of meaningful political vocabularies in foreign policy debates. Also important is the ways in which security issues get structured, or framed. To trace the persistence of hierarchy's effects on East Asian international relations, I compare modes of interaction and contention in two hierarchical orders in regional history: the traditional Sinocentric order and the U.S.-led "hub-and-spokes" system. I show that despite structural changes in the region, the security frames that motivate foreign policy choices, and the language used to describe them, persist in contemporary security debates in Japan and Korea. But the social context of hierarchy is not purely path-dependent. Within this enduring ideational structure, political elites have used these alternative security frames to contest Chinese or American influence, both real and perceived. Thus, an important finding of this paper is that hierarchical stability involves elements of both consent and contestation of the dominant power's authority.
Seo-Hyun Park is Assistant Professor of Government and Law at Lafayette College. Her research interests include international security, alliance politics, national identity politics, causes of war, the role of sovereignty in international relations, and East Asian politics. She teaches Introduction to International Politics, East Asian International Relations, Asian Security, and Global Conflict and Cooperation. Park received her Ph.D. from Cornell University (2009) and M.A. from the Graduate School of International Studies at Yonsei University in Seoul, Korea (2001). Prior to coming to Lafayette, she taught at Stanford University and conducted research in Japan and Korea as a visiting researcher at the University of Tokyo and at Yonsei University. Park has been a recipient of the Japan Foundation Dissertation Fellowship, the Mellon Fellowship, the Cornell University Einaudi Center's Carpenter Fellowship, and most recently, research fellowships from the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) and the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) at Stanford University.
Event Contact: cksassist@berkeley.edu, 510‑643‑9787
What Japan Teaches Us About Entrepreneurship: The New Entrepreneurial Dynamic in Japan after Institutional Reforms
Colloquium
Speaker: Robert Eberhart, Assistant Professor of Management, Santa Clara University
Discussant: Jo-Ellen Pozner, Assistant Professor, Haas Management of Organizations Group
Date: October 13, 2014 | 4:00&38211;6:00 p.m.
Location: 180 Doe Library
Sponsor: Center for Japanese Studies
In this talk I will examine the role that changes to the institutional environment play in the formation, exit, and performance of ventures. I discuss three natural experiments in Japan that relates to the formation, failure, and success of a venture. I examine lowering the "barriers to success" in IPO reform, lowering the "barriers to failure" in bankruptcy reform, and the lowering of "barriers to entry" that occurred in Japan's era of change. I will discuss how these reforms produced new knowledge of entrepreneurship as both intended and unintended consequences of policy. This work has important implications for scholars and policymakers in showing that policies for entrepreneurship should give more import to the quality rather than the quantity of entrepreneurs, and to the second order effects of reforms not just their direct effects.
Robert N. Eberhart is an Assistant Professor of Management at Santa Clara University and a research scholar at Stanford University where he directs the Santa Clara / Stanford Project on Japanese Entrepreneurship. He is also a visiting professor at Kobe University and research associate at Columbia University. His research interests focuses on theories of institutional change and role of institutions on new venture performance. Professor Eberhart's academic publications include topics such as new theoretical constructs on how institutional change has complex effects on new firms and entrepreneurs. He won awards for the BPS Outstanding Dissertation Award in 2014 from the Academy of Management, Best Paper Proceeding of the 2012 Academy of Management, and from the Fondation France-Japon de l'EHESS. He has been quoted in the New York Times, the Financial Times, Forbes, NPR, the Nikkei Weekly, and the Nihon Keizai Shimbun. Dr. Eberhart is also an academic advisor to the American Chamber of Commerce's Task Force on New Growth Strategies as well as the Japan Innovation Network. He is a member of the Academy of Management, the Institute of New Economic Theory, the International Society for New Institutional Economics, and an advisor to Japan's Board of Director's Training Institute. He lectures in classes on Japanese business and entrepreneurship at Stanford University, New York University, University of Tokyo, and Kobe University. Professor Eberhart earned his Ph.D. in Management Science from Stanford University after graduating from the University of Michigan (MA Economics) and Michigan State University (BA Finance).
Event Contact: cjs-events@berkeley.edu, 510‑642‑3415
China's Crisis of Political Morality: Diagnosis and Reconstruction
Colloquium
Speaker: Lowell Dittmer, Political Science, UC Berkeley
Moderator: Peter Lorentzen, Political Science, UC Berkeley
Date: October 15, 2015 | 12:00–1:00 p.m.
Location: 180 Doe Library
Sponsors: Institute of East Asian Studies, Center for Chinese Studies
Because of the moral focus of such founding thinkers as Confucius and Mencius and the absence of a strong tradition of the rule of law, China has always placed particular emphasis on public morality. The revolutionary first half of the 20th century culminating in the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution however featured moral iconoclasm. When this was abruptly brought to a close by the advent of "reform and opening" in December 1978, which assumed that "practice is the sole criterion of Truth" (also known as the "cat theory") Chinese society perceived complete pragmatism as a moral void and became afflicted with a "crisis of faith." Judging from the sustained ferocity of the anti-corruption campaign launched in 2012, this moral crisis has only intensified.
Event Contact: ieas@berkeley.edu, 510-642-2809
Japan Studies Working Group Presents Prof. Robert Stolz: Environmental Pollution and the Crisis of the Liberal State in Meiji Japan
Lecture
Date: October 15, 2015 | 4:30 p.m.
Location: 3335 Dwinelle Hall Sponsors: Department of History, Center for Japanese Studies, Townsend Center for the Humanities
Robert Stolz is the author of Bad Water, a sophisticated theoretical analysis of Japanese thinkers and activists' efforts to reintegrate the natural environment into Japan's social and political thought in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth. The need to incorporate nature into politics was revealed by a series of large-scale industrial disasters in the 1890s. The Ashio Copper Mine unleashed massive amounts of copper, arsenic, mercury, and other pollutants into surrounding watersheds. Robert Stolz argues that by forcefully demonstrating the mutual penetration of humans and nature, industrial pollution biologically and politically compromised the autonomous liberal subject underlying the political philosophy of the modernizing Meiji state. In the following decades, socialism, anarchism, fascism, and Confucian benevolence and moral economy were marshaled in the search for new theories of a modern political subject and a social organization adequate to the environmental crisis. With detailed considerations of several key environmental activists, including Tanaka Shozo, Bad Water is a nuanced account of Japan's environmental turn, a historical moment when, for the first time, Japanese thinkers and activists experienced nature as alienated from themselves and were forced to rebuild the connections.
Event Contact: cjs@berkeley.edu
Legacies of the Korean War Archive: Korean Americans Recall the "Forgotten War"
Conference
Speakers:
• Namhee Lee, UCLA
• Ramsay Liem, Boston College
• Deann Borshay Liem, Mu Films
• JT Takagi, Third World Newsreel
Date: October 17, 2015 | 3:00–6:00 p.m.
Location: David Brower Center, Goldman Theater
2150 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA 94704
Sponsors: Center for Korean Studies, Cal Humanities, UC Humanities Research Institute, Korea Policy Institute, Channing & Popai Liem Educational Foundation, Mu Films, Asia Society Northern California
Whereas most wars are commemorated on the anniversaries of their official end-dates, the Korean War, which has yet to be resolved by a peace process, has outlasted the lives of many who witnessed its brutality firsthand. Paradoxically enshrined in the United States as a "forgotten war," as American veterans point out, the Korean War has spawned other legacies of forgetting, including the obscuring of survivor memory. Supported by grants from Cal Humanities and the UC Humanities Research Institute, the "Legacies of the Korean War" oral history initiative situates the testimonies of Korean American war survivors as crucial to both the historical record and community reflection, thereby challenging the narrow national security lens via which the war is often narrated and understood. Not just a geopolitical reality but, in human-centered terms, a tragedy, the war's irresolution has been borne out in the lives of aging Koreans in the diaspora, many of whom witnessed the devastation of their hometowns, fled as battle-lines morphed north and south, were separated from their families, were orphaned, were pressed into military service, and have longed for reunion with family members in North Korea. If central to the history of Korean emigration to the United States — GI brides, chain-migration of families, adoptees — the unresolved Korean War also reverberates as the structural basis for the ongoing, tragic phenomenon of isan gajok, or separated families. By prioritizing multigenerational survivor testimonies, supplemented by scholarly insight, this event signals the launch of the "Legacies of the Korean War" website. Featuring remarks by oral-history participants and contributors, scholarly presentations on war memory, and screenings of testimonial shorts, this event, by inaugurating an online, community-based, diasporic archive, aims to enable long overdue reckoning with the past and present of the Korean War, a war yet to be concluded with a peace agreement.
SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
3:00 I. Welcoming remarks
3:15 II. "Survivor Memory and Korean War History," Namhee Lee (UCLA)
3:30 III. "Korean American Oral History Projects," panel featuring Ramsay Liem (Boston College) and Missing Pieces team (K.W. Lee Center)
4:00 IV. Screening of Legacies of the Korean War web stories and launch of the website, facilitated by Deann Borshay Liem and JT Takagi
5:00 V. "Remembering the 'Forgotten War': Korean War Survivors and Their Descendants," panel featuring Reverend Duk Joong Won, Insook Won, Dohee Lee, and Eun-Joung Lee
5:30 VI. Closing remarks
5:45 VII. Reception
Event MC: Christine Hong (UC Santa Cruz)
NAMHEE LEE is an associate professor of modern Korean history at UCLA. Her publications include The Making of Minjung: Democracy and the Politics of Representation in South Korea (Cornell University Press, 2007). She is currently working on a book project entitled Social Memory and Public History in South Korea, which explores production of historical knowledge outside established academic institutions in the last three decades, examining the debates, tensions, and exchanges generated from historical novels, films exhibitions, festivals, historical restorations, and other civic movements.
RAMSAY LIEM is professor emeritus of psychology at Boston College. His current work focuses on understanding contemporary legacies of significant historical events, e.g., the impact of the Korean War on Korean Americans today. Oral histories from this research have been incorporated into a multi-media exhibit, Still Present Pasts: Korean Americans and the "Forgotten War" that is currently on national tour (www.stillpresentpasts.org). Liem introduces this work in courses he teaches, Abnormal Psychology, Sociocultural Perspectives on Psychopathology, Culture, Identity, and Asian American Experience, and in other involvements with students, e.g., advisor to the Asian Caucus and Korean Student Association. Liem also works on related issues outside the university with organizations devoted to Korean unification, Asian American media arts, and human rights and mental health.
DEANN BORSHAY LIEM has over twenty years experience working in development, production and distribution of independent documentaries. She is Producer, Director, and Writer for the Emmy Award-nominated documentary, First Person Plural (Sundance, 2000) and the award-winning film, In the Matter of Cha Jung Hee (PBS, 2010); Executive Producer for Spencer Nakasako's Kelly Loves Tony (PBS, 1998) and AKA Don Bonus (PBS, 1996, Emmy Award); and Executive Producer for On Coal River (Silverdocs, 2010) by Francine Cavanaugh and Adams Wood. She served as Co-Producer for Special Circumstances (PBS, 2009) by Marianne Teleki, which follows Chilean exile, Hector Salgado, as he attempts to reconcile with former interrogators and torturers in Chile. She was the former director of the Center for Asian American Media (CAAM), where she supervised the development, distribution, and broadcast of new films for public television and worked with Congress to support minority representation in public media. A Sundance Institute Fellow and a recipient of a Rockefeller Film/Video Fellowship, Deann is the Director, Producer, and Writer of the new feature-length documentary, Geographies of Kinship — The Korean Adoption Story.
JT TAKAGI is a third generation Japanese American independent filmmaker who works with Third World Newsreel, a media arts center in New York City. Takagi's films include Homes Apart: Korea, about the division of Korea, which won a Special Jury Award at the San Francisco International Film Festival; Community Plot, a 20-minute black comedy set in the Lower East Side, which received the 1984 First Prize short at the Amiens International Film Festival; Bittersweet Survival, a documentary on the resettlement of Southeast Asian refugees in the U.S.; and THE #7 Train (with Hye Jung Park), a documentary that follows four immigrant passengers as they travel through Queens, New York.
The K.W. LEE CENTER FOR LEADERSHIP is a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing youth with the tools and opportunities necessary to become future leaders. Based in the Koreatown area of Los Angeles, the Center offers youth leadership training and educational programs that encourage community organizing. The mission of the Center is to teach and train youth to take proactive steps towards improving and enriching the quality of life in their communities. Members of the Center are intimately involved in the creation of the "Legacies of the Korean War" website.
REVEREND DUK JOONG WON, INSOOK WON, DOHEE LEE, and EUN-JOUNG LEE are multi-generational Korean Americans who will talk about their memories of the Korean War.
CHRISTINE HONG is an assistant professor of literature at UC Santa Cruz. She specializes in transnational Asian America, Korean diaspora, critical Pacific Rim, and comparative ethnic studies. She is currently working on a book project titled Blurring the Color Line: Racial Fictions, Militarized Humanity, and the Pax Americana in the Pacific Rim, which examines the double-fronted nature of U.S. Cold War counterrevolutionary violence and emergent, anti-militarist human rights politics in the Asia-Pacific region following Japan's Pacific War defeat.
Event Contact: cksassist@berkeley.edu, 510‑643‑9787
Intercity Cooperation in Governance: Dialogue between the Bay Area and Taiwan
Conference
Date: October 19, 2015 | 9:00 a.m.–6:00 p.m.
Location: David Brower Center, Tamalpais Room
2150 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA 94704
Sponsors: Center for Chinese Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies
This meeting will include scholars and professionals engaged in regional cooperation platforms in Taiwan and those at the management level in the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG), San Francisco Planning and Urban Renewal Association (SPUR), and others specializing in regional governance in the US. Presentations will cover regional cooperation platform programs in Taiwan and the Bay Area, focusing on issues of organizational structure, policies and judicial system, financial/taxation, as well as citizens' involvement in regional and community planning.
Visit the conference website here.
Event Contact: ccs@berkeley.edu, 510‑643‑6321
Download the conference agenda here.
North Koreans in the USSR and the Making of the DPRK's Higher Education
Colloquium
Speaker: Dima Mironenko
Date: October 20, 2015 | 4:00 p.m.
Location: 180 Doe Library
Sponsor: Center for Korean Studies
In the late 1940s, Moscow sent a group of specialists to the northern part of Korea in order to assist the newly liberated nation with setting up its system of higher education and training new cadres in education administration. The Soviet team brought with them a wealth of technical literature and expertise which became crucial in founding North Korea's national university and various specialized schools. At the same time, hundreds of North Koreans were sent to the Soviet Union during the 1950s, where they enrolled in degree programs in fields varying from engineering to medicine to filmmaking. Drawing on newly available archival materials from Russia and interviews with event participants, I revisit the history of these early interactions, focusing on a case study of a group of North Korean students who attended the All-Union State Institute of Cinematography (VGIK) in Moscow between 1948 and 1958. Following a number of select personal histories, I show that the effects of these programs on concrete individuals were rather diverse as much as they were often unpredictable, at times resulting in a complete overturning of their official goals.
Dima Mironenko is a film and cultural historian of North Korea. His research focuses on the history of everyday. His dissertation, A Jester with Chameleon Faces: Laughter and Comedy in North Korea, 1954-1969, looks at how laughter functioned in North Korean culture, examining its effects on society and cultural policy during the postwar decade. Dima received his Ph.D. from Harvard in 2014. He was as a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University and is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University.
Event Contact: cksassist@berkeley.edu, 510‑643‑9787
From "One-Country-Two-systems" to "Two models and one future": Some Reflections on Beijing-Taipei relations
Lecture
Speaker: Zhang Weiwei, International Relations & Director of Centre for China Development Model Research, Fudan University, China
Date: October 21, 2015 | 4:00 p.m.
Location: 180 Doe Library
Sponsors: Institute of East Asian Studies, Center for Chinese Studies
ZHANG Weiwei is a distinguished professor of international relations at Fudan University, China, and concurrently Director of the Centre for China Development Model Research at Fudan University and the Director of the Institute of China Studies at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences. He holds a Ph.D in International Relations from the University of Geneva. A former visiting fellow at Oxford University, he was professor of international relations at the Geneva School of Diplomacy and International Relations and senior research fellow at the Centre for Asian Studies, University of Geneva. He had worked as a senior English interpreter for Deng Xiaoping and other Chinese leaders in the mid-1980s. He has travelled to over 100 countries.
His main publications include Ideology and Economic Reform under Deng Xiaoping (Kegan Paul, London, 1996), Transforming China: Economic Reform and its Political Implications (Macmillan, London and St. Martins, New York, 2000), Reshaping Cross-Strait Relations: Ideas and Reflections (CAS, Geneva, 2006) and "the China Trilogy" (published by the Shanghai People's Press) of Zhongguo Chudong (the China Ripple), Zhongguo Zhenhan (the China Wave: Rise of a Civilizational State, English edition by World Century, New Jersey, 2012) and Zhongguo Chaoyue (the China Harizon), which won many prestigious prizes in China. He has written extensively in Chinese and English on China's political and economic reforms, the China model of development, China's foreign policy and comparative politics.
Event Contact: ieas@berkeley.edu, 510‑642‑2809
Fifty-two Bhikkhuni Images: Thepthidaram Temple for Rama III's Daughter
Colloquium
Speaker/Performer: Pattaratorn Chirapravati, California State University, Sacramento
Date: October 22, 2015 | 5 p.m.
Location: 308A Doe Library
Sponsors: Institute of East Asian Studies (IEAS), Asian Art and Visual Cultures graduate working group
Professor Chirapravati will be presenting her research on the bronze images of female Buddhist devotees in the Thepthidaram temple in Bangkok. The temple was constructed in the 1830s by King Rama III for his favorite daughter, Princess Wirat, and was built in a hybrid Thai-Chinese style. The talk will address the role of women in Buddhist monastic literature and the role of women Buddhist practitioners in 1830s Bangkok.
Event Contact: patriciajyu@berkeley.edu, 510‑642‑2809
Dismantling Developmentalism: Japan, Korea, Taiwan
Conference
Organizer: T.J. Pempel, Political Science, UC Berkeley
Date: October 23–24, 2015 | 9:00 a.m.–5:15 p.m.
Locations: 180 Doe Library and
1995 University Avenue — Suite 510
Sponsors: Institute of East Asian Studies, Center for Chinese Studies, Center for Japanese Studies, Center for Korean Studies
This conference will examine the issues surrounding how Japan, Korea and Taiwan have adjusted their political and economic institutions as well as their public policies ‘after developmentalism.' The intellectual starting point is the recognition that these three governments enjoyed highly successful political economies for several decades as each followed its own specific iteration of "developmentalism.' Past practices were challenged by the end of security bipolarity in East Asia, as well as the increased penetration of East Asian economies by global capital. These external challenges meant that some past institutions and policies were dismantled; others were adjusted; some were retained intact.
The workshop has three key targets. First we hope to identify and highlight the most significant post-developmental approaches taken within each of these three political economies. Second, we will assess the relative successes and weaknesses of post-developmental moves, politically and economically. Third and finally, we will explore how domestic changes play out in across the region—in the form of both security and economic activities. To what extent do national grand strategies change? To what extent are domestic changes reflected within regional institutions? When and how do domestic shifts result in security cooperation or contestation?
True-View Landscape Painting of the Late Joseon Period
Colloquium
Speaker: Song-mi Yi, Academy of Korean Studies
Date: October 27, 2015 | 4:00 p.m.
Location: 180 Doe Library
Sponsor: Center for Korean Studies
A genre of Korean landscape painting termed "true-view" landscape painting refers to paintings of scenery that truly existed in Korea, and that flowered during the seventeenth century through the beginning of the nineteenth century. After the fall of Ming (1644), Koreans became increasingly conscious about their own cultural identity, and came to investigate not only their own historical and cultural heritage, but also their own land of exceptional beauty. This coincided with the beginning of the development of the School of Practical Learning in Qing China which Korean scholars avidly absorbed and assimilated into their own cultural environment. It is in this multi-layered cultural and intellectual background that the "true-view" landscape painting evolved. It is now acclaimed to be the best group of Joseon dynasty paintings that expresses the uniquely Korean inspiration, creative energy, and the ethos of Korean people.
Song-mi Yi is Professor Emerita of Art History at the Academy of Korean Studies. Previously, she served as Dean of the Graduate School of Korean Studies at the Academy. Prior to her tenure at the Academy, she taught at Duksung Women's University in Seoul and also served as the Director of the University Museum there. She has been an active member of the National History Council of Korea and has served as the President of Korean Art History Association. Overseas she is a member of the editorial board of Archives of Asian Art. In February, 2001, she held the 21st Franklin Murphy Lectureship at the University of Kansas
Professor Yi was educated at Seoul National University (B.A.), the UC Berkeley (M.A.), and Princeton University where she received a Ph.D. degree in Art History. Her recent publications on Korean painting include Searching for Modernity: Western Influence and True-View Landscape in Korean Painting (2015), the award winning Joseon Dynasty Euigwe of Royal Wedding in Art Historical Perspective (in Korean, 2008), Korean Landscape Painting: Continuity and Innovation Through the Ages (2006), Fragrance, Elegance, and Virtue: Korean Women in Traditional Arts and Humanities (2002/2005), Western influence on Korean Painting of the Chosŏn Dynasty (in Korean, 2000/2003, revised and enlarged edition, 2008). An avid traveler, she wrote about her adventures in the Architectural Treasures of the World: A Personal Perspective (in Korean, 2002, revised ed., 2004). She has also contributed numerous academic articles to both Korean and English language journals.
Event Contact: cksassist@berkeley.edu, 510‑643‑9787
Southern Asian Buddhist Kingship in Trans-regional Perspective, 1200-1500
Colloquium
Speaker: Anne Blackburn, Department of Asian Studies, Cornell University
Date: October 29, 2015 | 5:00–6:30 p.m.
Location: 370 Dwinelle Hall
Sponsor: Center for Buddhist Studies
Between 1200 and 1500, Buddhist-oriented kingdoms in Southern Asia (including those in what is now Sri Lanka, Burma, and Thailand) participated in a Buddhist world of intensifying density and trans-regional connection. A Buddhist political theory forged earlier in Lanka articulated a vision of state formation linked to the localization of Buddhist monastics and institutions. This Lankan vision shaped the rapidly shifting political landscape in several regional locations linked by Indian Ocean connections, and informed the trans-regional careers of Buddhist monks. Bringing the study of Buddhist texts and inscriptions into conversation with recent scholarship on religious specialists and kingship in Hindu-theist and Islamic Southern Asian locations, this paper explores Buddhist kingship and institution-building in an era characterized by proliferating kingdoms and increasing Buddhist monastic mobility.
Anne M. Blackburn is Professor of South Asia Studies and Buddhist Studies in the Department of Asian Studies at Cornell University, and Director of the Cornell University South Asia Program. She taught at the University of South Carolina before joining Cornell's faculty. She received her BA from Swarthmore College, and MA and PhD degrees from the University of Chicago. Blackburn studies Buddhism in South and Southeast Asia, with a special interest in Buddhist monastic culture and Buddhist participation in networks linking Sri Lanka and mainland Southeast Asia before and during colonial presence in the region. Her publications include Buddhist Learning and Textual Practice in Eighteenth-Century Lankan Monastic Culture (Princeton, 2001), Approaching the Dhamma: Buddhist Texts and Practices in South and Southeast Asia, co-edited with A/Prof Jeffrey Samuels (BPS Pariyatti Editions, 2003), and Locations of Buddhism: Colonialism and Modernity in Sri Lanka (Chicago, 2010). She is working on a new project, "Making Buddhist Kingdoms Across the Indian Ocean, 1200-1500," supported in part by an ACLS Fellowship.
Event Contact: buddhiststudies@berkeley.edu, 510‑643‑5104
2015 Toshihide Numata Bookprize Presentation and Symposium
Conference
Date: October 30, 2015 | 2:00–6:30 p.m.
Location: Alumni House, Toll Room
Sponsor: Center for Buddhist Studies
Detail of Wofoyuan cave 29, wall f.
The Toshihide Numata Book Prize in Buddhism is awarded on an annual basis to an outstanding book or books in the area of Buddhist studies. The selection is made by an annually appointed outside committee. This symposium is organized in celebration of the book Buddhist Stone Sutras in China, Sichuan Province 1, edited by Lothar Ledderose and Sun Hua (Harrassowitz Verlag, 2014).
2:00-2:30 pm
Introductory Remarks and Prize Presentation
Robert Sharf, UC Berkeley
Rev. Brian Nagata, Bukkyo Dendo Kyokai
2:30 - 4:00 pm
Keynotes by 2015 award recipients
Writing on Mountains to Save the World
Lothar Ledderose, Heidelberg University
The Ascending Spiral Evolvement of Carriers of Buddhist Sutras - from Stone to Paper
Sun Hua, Peking University
4:15-6:30
Symposium
Chair, Alexander von Rospatt, UC Berkeley
4:15-5:30 pm
Short Presentations on the Stone Sutra Research Project at Heidelberg University
"The Two Million Character Cache"
Lothar Ledderose
"Go West the Easy Way"
Claudia Wenzel
"The Flying Stone Banner"
Martin Bemmann
"Every Book Needs Scaffolding"
Manuel Sassmann
"Framing the Sutras"
Jessica Rawson
5:30-6:00 pm
On the Matter of Material in Chinese Buddhist Philology: the ‘Consecration Scriptures' in Paper, Wood, and Stone
Ryan Overbey, Wesleyan University
6:00-6:30 pm
Xuanzang (ca. 602–64) and His Image-making Activities: Mass Reproduction and Materiality in Buddhism
Dorothy C. Wong, University of Virginia
Event Contact: buddhiststudies@berkeley.edu, 510‑643‑5104
Constellations of Intimacy, Historical and Otherwise, in Chang-rae Lee's Korean War Novel, The Surrendered
Colloquium
Speaker: Daniel Kim, Brown University
Date: November 2, 2015 | 4:00 p.m.
Location: 180 Doe Library
Sponsor: Center for Korean Studies
While critics hoping for a densely-textured materialist account of the Korean War may well be frustrated with Chang-rae Lee's monumental novel on that topic, The Surrendered, in light of its self-evident aspirations to universality, this paper suggests that there is much to be gained from a serious engagement with the work's ambitions. In its epic scope, The Surrendered does in fact issue a powerful and timely critique of certain foundational elements of Western civilizational discourse. Moreover, this work opens a window into the enigmatic forms of intimacy that are forged by war and that emerge from its ostensible aftermath—ones that are not necessarily legible through the conventional grammars of race, nation and diaspora.
Daniel Y. Kim is Associate Professor of English at Brown University where he teaches classes in Asian American literature, American literature and Ethnic Studies. He has also taught as a Visiting Assistant Professor of American Studies at Yale University. He earned his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley and his AB from the University of Michigan. He is the author of Writing Manhood in Black and Yellow: Ralph Ellison, Frank Chin, and the Literary Politics of Identity (Stanford University Press, 2006) and the co-editor (with Crystal Parikh) of The Cambridge Companion to Asian American Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2015). He is currently working on a book provisionally titled The Intimacies of Conflict: A Cultural History of the Korean War, which examines cultural representations of what has come to be known as "the forgotten war" with a particular focus on the interlocking domestic and transnational histories of race and empire that constellate around this historical event. Essays based on material from this project has been published in the journals, American Literary History and Cross-Currents; another is forthcoming in positions. His articles have also appeared in the Journal of Asian American Studies, Novel and Criticism.
Event Contact: cksassist@berkeley.edu, 510‑643‑9787
The Transpacific Imagination
Colloquium
Speakers:
• TATSUMI Takayuki, Keio University
• SHIMOKOBE Michiko, Seikei University
• Joseph Lavery, Assistant Professor, UC Berkeley
Moderator:
• Miryam Sas, Professor, UC Berkeley
Date: November 4, 2015 | 4:00–6:00 p.m.
Location: Stephens Hall, Townsend Center, Geballe Room Sponsors: Center for Japanese Studies, Department of English, Department of Comparative Literature
As area studies and the framework of "national literatures" comes under fire, we ask: what are the possibilities and limitations of literary and artistic reading when mobilized beyond the temporal-spatial boundaries of the nation-state?
This panel opens alternative approaches to literary and artistic works produced in East Asia, Polynesia and the Americas in order to account for the coterminous life of regional, inter-regional and transnational voices in the formation of the transpacific as a literary/artistic topography. What aesthetic and political aspirations underwrote the production of these texts in their various localized settings? What scales of experience can be perceived by reading them through a transpacific lens?
The larger conversation of which this panel is a part brings together scholars of English, American, Japanese, Japanese-American literature and theory working in Japan alongside scholars of English, European and Japanese literatures and cultures working in the U.S. The November 4th panel will feature papers by cultural critic Tatsumi Takayuki (Keio University), feminist and literary theorist Shimokobe Michiko (Seikei University), and UC Berkeley English professor Joseph Lavery, with response by Miryam Sas, Professor and Chair of Comparative Literature.
Michiko Shimokobe is a professor of English and American literature at Seikei University, Tokyo. Currently she serves as chief editor on the Editorial Board of the American Studies Society of Japan. Her major area of research lies in 19th-century American literature, American studies, and psychoanalytic criticism. Her major books are: History and Trauma: Mechanism of Memory and Oblivion (2000), Inaudible Voices of Trauma: Collective Memory & Perspectives on History (2006), and Globalization and the Imagination of Planetarity (2015). She is also coeditor of American Terror: Enemy Inside and Fear Infectious (2009), American Violence: Visible /Invisible Violence (2013). She is the translator of Cathy Caruth's Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History.
Takayuki Tatsumi is professor of American Literature at Keio University, Tokyo. He received his Ph.D. at Cornell University in 1987. He is currently president of the American Literary Society of Japan and vice president of the Melville Society of Japan, as well as a member of the editorial board of Journal of Transnational American Studies. His major books are: Cyberpunk America (1988), the winner of the Japan-US Friendship Commission's American Studies Book Prize; New Americanist Poetics (1995), winner of the Yukichi Fukuzawa Award;. Full Metal Apache: Transactions between Cyberpunk Japan and Avant-Pop America (2006, 2010 IAFA Distinguished Scholarship Award). Co-editor of the New Japanese Fiction issue of Review of Contemporary Fiction (Summer 2002), he has also published a variety of essays such as: "Literary History on the Road: Transatlantic Crossings and Transpacific Crossovers" (PMLA [January 2004]);"Planet of the Frogs: Thoreau, Anderson and Murakami" (Narrative 21.3[October 2013]).
Event Contact: cjs@berkeley.edu, 510‑642#&8209;3415
Conceptualizing Modernity: Technologies of Knowledge and Discourse in East Asia
Conference
Featured Speaker: Rebecca Karl, History, NYU
Dates: November 6–7, 2015
Location: 370 Dwinelle Hall Sponsors: Institute of East Asian Studies, Department of History of Art
The 2014-2015 Haas Junior Scholars present a two-day conference (November 6-7), "Conceptualizing Modernity: Technologies of Knowledge and Discourse in East Asia." The keynote speaker is Professor Rebecca Karl (History-NYU).
The conference is the culmination of a yearlong effort by the Haas Junior Scholars, an interdisciplinary group formed to workshop research projects, and engage in collaborative discussions. This conference is an opportunity to share this research with the Cal community and to facilitate further conversations with scholars on how modernity was experienced, conceived, and understood, as well as materially and discursively manifested in East Asia. Each of the four panels will approach this question differently and attempt to offer suggestions toward an answer.
This conference was funded with generous support from the Haas Junior Scholars Program at the Institute of East Asian Studies, and the Department of Art History.
SCHEDULE
Friday, November 6
11:00 - 11:15
Introductory Remarks
11:15 - 12:45
Panel 1: Under-Stated Leadership: Elite Networks in Early Twentieth Century East Asia
Jonathan Tang (History, University of California - Berkeley)
"Law, Morality, and History: Li Jiannong and the Hunan Provincial Constitution Movement, 1920-1925"
Matthew Berry (History, University of California - Berkeley)
"Confucian Terrorists: Phan Boi Chau and Elite Networks of Modern Vietnamese Nationalism, 1900-1925"
Keren He (East Asian Studies, Stanford University)
"Revolutionizing Evolution: The Politics of Assassination in Early Twentieth Century China"
Discussant: Professor Rebecca Karl (History, New York University)
12:45 - 2:00
Lunch
2:00 - 3:30
Panel 2: Genres of Apprehension: Navigating Efficacy and Doubt in East Asia
Jeannette Ng (East Asian Languages and Cultures, University of California - Berkeley)
"A Rhetoric of Marvel: Martial Arts as Anecdote, Hyperbole, and Biography in Republican China"
Emily Ng (Anthropology, University of California - Berkeley)
"Borrowed Mouths: Mediumship and the First Person Plural"
Tiffany Lee (Art and Art History, Stanford University)
"Picturing the Departed: Spirit Photography in Republican China"
Discussant: Professor Andrew F. Jones (East Asian Languages and Cultures, University of California - Berkeley)
3:30-4:00
Coffee
4:00 - 5:30
Keynote Lecture
Professor Rebecca Karl (History, New York University)
6:00: Conference Dinner
Saturday, November 7
10:00 - 10:30
Breakfast
10:30 - 12:00
Panel 3: Engineering Modernity: Tactical Plays on Time in East Asian Technopolitics
James Lin (History, University of California - Berkeley)
"Third World Futures: Taiwanese International Development and Land Reform Training in Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America, 1959-1975"
Jerry Zee (Science and Technology Studies, University of California Davis)
"Cement: Chronotopes of Sand and State"
Jean Yen-chun Lin (Center for Philanthropy and Civil Society, Stanford University)
"Understanding Frame Legitimacy and Frame Mechanisms in China: Three Beijing Environmental Protests and the Emergence of a ‘Science Frame'"
Discussant: Professor Jia-Ching Chen (Geography, Pennsylvania State University)
12:00 - 1:30
Lunch
1:30 - 3:00
Panel 4: Sensing Modernity in East Asia
William H. Ma (History of Art, University of California - Berkeley)
"Tracing the Holy Mothers: the Creation and Recreation of a Sacred Image in Early Twentieth Century Shanghai"
Paulina Hartono (History, University of California - Berkeley)
"Sound Doctrine: Radio Technology, Mandarin Standardization, and Political Ideology in 1950s China"
Feng-en Tu (History and East Asian Languages, Harvard University)
"Japan's Empire of Scents and the Making of the Modern Senses"
Discussant: Professor Sugata Ray (History of Art, University of California - Berkeley)
3:00 - 3:15
Concluding remarks
Divided Nations and their Neighbors: Paths to Reconciliation?
Conference
Featured Speakers: Stephan Haggard, UC San Diego; Lily Gardner Feldman, Johns Hopkins University
Date: November 6, 2015 | 8:30 a.m.–6 p.m.
Location: 180 Doe Library
Sponsors: Institute of East Asian Studies, Institute of European Studies, Center for Korean Studies, The Institute of the Humanities for Unification
This conference, sponsored jointly by the Institute of East Asian Studies, Institute of European Studies, Center for Korean Studies, and the Konkuk University Institute of the Humanities for Unification, will compare the experience of Germany, the two Koreas, and China-Taiwan as divided nations.
Divided nations can foster potential international instability and domestic discontent. Indeed, the Korean DMZ and Taiwan Strait remain two of the most critical global hot spots. Internally, Taiwan's politics have frequently been driven by issues related to its relations with China. Germany, after World War II was a divided nation, surrounded by hostile and wary neighbors. Germany has now united and made peace with France, Poland, the Czech Republic. And the inevitable wariness in Germany's relationship with Israel after the Holocaust has been transformed into a durable and mutually dependent relationship. Although the process was prolonged, Germany achieved both reconciliation with its neighbors and unification of the country. How was this feat accomplished? Some observers have suggested that the German model could be source of inspiration for unification of divided states in Asia and for reconciliation with their neighbors. But there is no consensus on unification as a desirable outcome, or even the norm. Reconciliation/co-existence within divided states might be the next best alternative, but it does not necessarily mean peace, harmony, or friendship. And it can be a long and messy process, sometimes ending in an agreement to disagree.
Speakers will focus on the following questions: Is reconciliation possible (or even desirable) in nations which have been divided by war and revolution? Is there a possibility of reconciliation in the absence of unification? What role do political leaders, non-governmental institutions and governmental institutions play in knitting together divided nations and reconciling their conflicting interests? What role do domestic politics and culture play in helping or hindering reunification and reconciliation? Is there a viable counterpart to Germany's Ostpolitik in northeast Asia?
SCHEDULE
8:45-9:00 | Welcoming remarks
9:00-11:00 | The Divided Nations and Regional Stability/Instability
Fania Oz-Salzberger, University of Haifa
"Post-Holocaust Israelis and Germans: The First 70 years"
Eric Langenbacher, Georgetown University
"Collective Memory and German Foreign Policy"
Shaocheng Tang, National Chengchi University
"Reference of Inner-German Relations to Cross-Strait Relations"
Sung-Min Kim, Konkuk University
"Overcoming the Division System on the Korean Peninsula and Peaceful Co-existence in East Asia"
Discussants: Stephan Haggard, Beverly Crawford
11:00-1:00 | The Domestic Politics of Division and Reconciliation
Jean Yhee, Freie Universität Berlin
"Divided Memories: The Constitutive Character of Public Memory in Conflict"
Vincent Wei-cheng Wang, University of Richmond
"Whither Cross-Strait Relations? Convergence, Collision, and Reconciliation"
Kyung Hyo Chun, Konkuk University
"Representations of the Divided Minjok: The Presence and Absence of North Korea at the National Museum of Korea"
Discussants: Tom Gold, John Lie
1:00-2:00 | Lunch with Keynote Address
Lily Gardner Feldman, Johns Hopkins University
"Germany as Promising Lesson and Cautionary Tale: Division, Unification, and Reconciliation"
2:00-4:00 | The Political Economy of Division and Reconciliation
Hans Kundnani, German Marshall Fund
"Economic Interdependence and Collective Memory in International Relations: Lessons from Germany for Asia?"
Yung-hsiang Frank Ying, National Taiwan Normal University
"The Entangled Issues of Social Justices and Globalization: A case of Integrated or Divided Taiwan"
Birgit Geipel, UC Riverside
"North Korea's Unification with(out) the South: Ideological Survival Strategies in the Post-Socialist Era"
Discussants: Tun-jen Cheng, Laura Nelson
4:00-5:00 | Roundtable Discussion with Practitioners, Diplomats, & Academics
Tun-jen Cheng, College of William and Mary
Beverly Crawford, UC Berkeley
Lily Gardner Feldman, Johns Hopkins University
Stephan Haggard, UC San Diego
John Lie, UC Berkeley
Wolfgang Petritsch, Austrian Marshallplan Foundation
5:00-6:00 | Keynote Address
Stephan Haggard, UC San Diego
"Engaging North Korea"
Buddhist Ritual Music
Symposium and Performances
Dates: November 6–7, 2015 | 9:30 a.m.-10:15 p.m.
Location: Alumni House, Toll Room
Sponsors: Institute of East Asian Studies, Center for Japanese Studies, Center for Buddhist Studies, Center for Chinese Studies, Center for Korean Studies, Center for Southeast Asia Studies, Townsend Center for the Humanities, Letters & Science Division of Arts & Humanities, Bukkyo Dendo Kyokai
Buddhist Ritual Music
This symposium is focused on traditional Buddhist ritual music to consider its importance for studying the evolution of Buddhist culture as well as the interaction between Buddhist music and traditional musical culture outside the monastery in Japan, Nepal, Tibet, Cambodia, Laos, Sri Lanka, Korea and China.
It will include presentations by scholars in the field of ethnomusicology, Buddhist studies and/or religious studies and performances by Buddhist monastics, renowned in their home countries for their musicality in ritual chanting.
PROGRAM
Friday, November 6, 2015
12:30 pm – 5:00 pm
Symposium, Alumni House
12:30 pm – 12:45 pm
Welcoming Remarks
Mark Blum, UC Berkeley
12:45 pm – 1:25 pm
Reciting, Chanting, and Singing: Codifying Music in Buddhist Canon Law
Cuilan Liu, McGill University
1:25 pm – 2:05 pm
The Sound of Vultures' Wings: Tibetan Buddhist Ritual as Performing Art
Jeffrey Cupchik, St. John Fisher College
2:10 pm – 2:50 pm
Use of Dance as a Ritual Tool in the Tantric Tradition of Nepalese Buddhism
Alexander von Rospatt, UC Berkeley
2:50 pm – 3:05 pm
Break
3:05 pm – 3:45 pm
Chanting with the Dragon's Voice: Music and Musical Notation in Japanese Sōtō Zen
Michaela Mross, Postdoctoral Fellow, UC Berkeley
3:45 pm – 4:25 pm
Music and Liturgy in Japanese Esoteric Buddhism: The Rishu Zanmai Rite
Steven Nelson, Hosei University, Japan
4:25 pm – 4:30 pm
Break
4:30 pm – 5:00 pm
Group Discussion
7:00 pm – 10:30 pm
Performances, Zellerbach Playhouse
7:00 pm – 7:55 pm
Rishu Zanmai, Japanese Esoteric Buddhist Chant (Japan)
Performance by Karyōbinga Shōmyō Kenkyūkai Ensemble: Arai Kōjun, Kawashiro, Kōdō, Numajiri Kenshō, Tanaka Kōkan, Tobe Kenkai
8:15 pm – 9:10 pm
Charya Nritya — Nepalese Sacred Art (Dance Mandal, Portland, Oregon)
Performers: Prajwal Vajracharya, Uppa Sakya, Corinne Nakamura-Rybak
9:30 pm – 10:25 pm
Tibetan Ritual Music and Dance (Drikung Kagyu Nuns, Dehradun, India)
Performers: Konchok Gamtso, Konchok Tsechik, Meena Kumari, Sonam
Choenzin, Tandup Angmo, and Tsewang Dolma Sherpa (Samtenling Nunnery)
Saturday, November 7, 2015
9:30 am – 11:00 am
Symposium, Alumni House
9:30 am – 10:10 am
The Dhamma as Sonic Praxis: Perspectives on Chant in Burmese and Khmer Buddhism
Paul Greene, Penn State Brandywine
10:20 am – 11:00 am
Taxonomies of Chant in Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand
Trent Walker, UC Berkeley
12:15 pm – 2:40 pm
Performances, Zellerbach Playhouse
12:15 pm – 1:00 pm
Khmer 'Smot' Melodic Chant (Phnom Penh, Cambodia)
Performer: Pheoun Sreypov
1:05 pm – 1:45 pm
Lao 'Doen Sieng' and 'Lae' Sermon Chant (Santa Rosa, California)
Performer: Ven. Phetsamone Keomixay
2:00 pm – 2:40 pm
Sri Lankan 'Paritta/Pirit' Protective Chant (Rosemead, California)
Performer: Ven. Sumitta Thero
3:00 pm – 4:45 pm
Symposium, Alumni House
3:00 pm – 3:40 pm
History and Practice of 'Wuhui Nianfo'
Beth Szczepanski, Lewis and Clark College
3:40 pm – 4:20 pm
Elasticity of Korean Buddhist Rituals: Socioeconomic Conformance of the 'Pomp'ae' Chant Performances
Byong Won Lee, University of Hawai'i, Manoa
4:20 pm – 4:30 pm
Break
4:30 pm – 4:45 pm
Group Discussion
6:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Performances, Zellerbach Playhouse
6:00 pm – 6:55 pm
Yongsanje Buddhist Ritual (Seoul, Korea)
Performers: Ven. Pophyon, Han Sungyul, Kim Beop Ki, Kwaon Rihwan, Lee Chang Won
7:05 pm – 8:00 pm
Ven. Shi Guangquan (Hangzhou, China)
Performers: Monks from the Lingyin Temple and the Buddhist Academy of Hangzhou
Event Contact: cjs@berkeley.edu, 510‑642‑3415
Heritage and Ancestors: The Politics of Chinese Museums and Historical Memory
Colloquium
Speaker: Magnus Fiskesjö, Anthropology, Cornell University
Discussant: You-tien Hsing, Chair, CCS; Geography, UC Berkeley
Date: November 6, 2015 | 4:00–6:00 p.m.
Location: Faculty Club, Heyns Room
Sponsor: Center for Chinese Studies
The current Chinese boom in museum-building and in the construction of memorial sites coincides with a broad re-definition of the official and predominant view of China's history and identity. The Mao-era Communist orthodoxy of history as a sequence of class struggles is replaced across the board, with a story of unbroken, if interrupted, national glory. In this presentation I ask, how are the current developments related to older Chinese conceptions of culture-hero ancestry and imperial glory? Moreover, in what ways should we understand the new Chinese developments within their broader context — especially the simultaneous, yet seemingly paradoxical current world trends of economic globalization and narrow nationalism?
Elvera Kwang Siam Lim Memorial Lecture
Event Contact: ccs@berkeley.edu, 510‑643‑6321
Environment and Security in the South China Sea
Lecture
Speaker/Performer: David Rosenberg, Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Middlebury College
Date: November 9, 2015 | 4:00 p.m.
Location: 180 Doe Library
Sponsor: Institute of East Asian Studies
The paradox of the South China Sea disputes is that this area is filled with escalating maritime confrontations, resource conflicts, and competing territorial claims among countries that otherwise have a high degree of cooperation in commerce. Will this lead to a regional arms race, or will it prompt more cooperation in managing common resources? This presentation examines the interplay of resource competition, resurgent nationalism, and military modernization programs and their effects on environment and security in the South China Sea.
Event Contact: ieas@berkeley.edu, 510‑642‑2809
Chinese Investment in Africa: An Environmental Perspective
Panel Discussion
Date: November 10, 2015 | 3:00–5:00 p.m.
Location: 180 Doe Library
Sponsors: Institute of East Asian Studies, Center for Chinese Studies
Four graduate students conducting on-the-ground research in Africa discuss the current state of environmental impact as a result Chinese investment for each of their chosen case studies.
"Exploratory Visions: Dreams of Wealth and Resources among Chinese Investors and their Partners in Angola"
Cheryl M. Schmitz, Anthropology, UC Berkeley
"Rosewood Occidentalism and Orientalism in Madagascar"
Annah L Peterson, Environmental Science, Policy and Management, UC Berkeley
"Chinese Coal Mining in Zambia"
Justin Haruyama, Anthropology, UC Davis
"Environmental Protection Issues in Chinese CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) Practice in Africa"
Xinghan Xiong, International Relations, Tsinghua University
Event Contact: ieas@berkeley.edu, 510‑642‑2809
The Many Forms of Environmental Activism in China: Linking Local and Global?
Colloquium
Speaker: Mujun Zhou, Center for Chinese Studies postdoctoral fellow 2015-2016
Discussant: Peter Lorentzen, Political Science, UC Berkeley
Date: November 12, 2015 | 4:00–6:00 p.m.
Location: 180 Doe Library
Sponsors: Center for Chinese Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies
The reconstruction of China's civil society in the 1990s started from environmental activism. Liberal intellectuals and activists saw the environmental movement as an ideal starter for China's democratization, as environmental protection was a relatively desensitized topic compared to many other political issues in the country. Today, despite authoritarian repression, environmental activism of various kinds are flourishing, and becoming increasingly professional and specialized. This talk introduces three forms of activism: "rights-defending campaigns" organized by victims of environmental hazards; education campaigns with urban middle-class residents as their major participants; and NGO-organized campaigns targeted on China's enterprises investing oversea. Using data collected from ethnographic study in China, the speaker will focus on the question of "scale:" To what extent and in what way could activists grown out of local struggles be mobilized to engage issues at a more general level? What are the constraints for activism at local, or even national level in China to become an organic part of the global civil society?
Part of the Environmental China series.
Event Contact: ccs@berkeley.edu, 510‑643‑6321
Biographies of the Buddha: A Socially Engaged Approach
Colloquium
Speaker: Mahesh A. Deokar, Department of Pali, Savitribai Phule Pune University, India
Date: November 12, 2015 | 5:00–6:30 p.m.
Location: 3335 Dwinelle Hall
Sponsor: Center for Buddhist Studies
The life story of the Buddha has been a constant source of inspiration for many over the centuries. Right from the canonical literature up to the modern period there have been several attempts to depict the Buddha's life in different languages of the world. In the canonical literature of Pali and Sanskrit, the Buddha's life story has been narrated in the form of autobiographies. These autobiographical portions form a part of some larger discourses given by the Buddha where he is shown to share his life experiences with the disciples. There are of course some portions in the canon where the life story of the Buddha is narrated in the biographical manner, for instance, in the Pabbajjāsutta and the Nāḷakasutta of the Suttanipāta.
After the first century CE, the biography of the Buddha has inspired the great poet and Buddhist master Aśvaghoṣa, who composed two mahākāvyas, namely, the Buddhacarita and the Saundarānanda. The sole purpose of his kāvya is liberation and not amusement. In the preface to his aṭṭhakathās of the Vinayapiṭaka, the Dhammasaṅgaṇī and the Jātaka, Buddhaghosa has narrated the Buddha's birth-story basically in order to explain the origin of these texts. The later Pali works such as the Jinacarita, the Jinālaṅkāra etc. depict the Buddha's life in order to earn merit and to generate faith about the Buddha and his teaching in the minds of the listeners.
In the modern time when the western scholars began to study Buddhism, they started writing biographies of the Buddha based on different traditional sources. The main purpose of these writings was to introduce the life and the mission of the Buddha to the western world in an authentic manner.
In the second half of the 19th century, India witnessed resurgence of Buddhism through scholarship, active participation in Buddhism, popularization, and revival among Buddhist remnants. The popular biographies of the Buddha written by authors like K. A. Keluskar etc. sensitized Indian society about the persona and principles of the Buddha. The end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century marked the period of transition in the Indian society. Particularly in the state of Maharashtra it was the period of intellectual renaissance. With the advent of progressive leadership in the form of Mahatma Jotiba Phule, Vitthal Ramji Shinde and king Shahu of the princely state of Kolhapur there emerged a non-Brahmanic movement, which challenged the Brahmanic leadership and ideology. During the course of this movement, its members were easily attracted towards the Buddha as a non-Brahmin, unorthodox and a progressive leader. Many writers belonging to the first half of the 20th century started presenting Buddha's teaching as the higher form of Hinduism.
During the same period, there appeared two very important and influential social movements, namely, the socialist movement and the movement of the downtrodden or of untouchables. This was also the time of Indian freedom struggle on nonviolent principles under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi. On this background, the social, ethical and non-violent teaching of the Buddha not only became very much relevant but also proved to be a guiding principle for these movements.
The present talk will demonstrate how not only the Buddha's teachings but also his life story has been used to bring out the social message. It will focus on two important works in this regard, namely, Bhagavān Buddha (1940) by Acharya Dharmananda Kosambi and The Buddha and His Dhamma (1957) by Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar.
Event Contact: buddhiststudies@berkeley.edu, 510‑643‑5104
Why Chinese Citizens are so Positive toward Party and Government?: Chronological Analysis of Chinese Four-city Survey, 1998-2014
Lecture
Speaker: Shigeto Sonoda, Professor of Sociology and Asian Studies, University of Tokyo
Moderator: Kevin O'Brien, Political Science, UC Berkeley
Date: November 13, 2015 | 4:00 p.m.
Location: 180 Doe Library
Sponsors: Institute of East Asian Studies, Center for Chinese Studies
In spite of a lot of argument about "Collapse of CCP's rule," many opinion polls are still showing popularity of the government by ordinary citizens in China. Many social scientists discuss the possibility of democratization due to the rise of middle class, spread of higher education and marketization or the challenges of CCP's governance due to the rise of many social problems (air pollution, corruption, social inequality, and so forth), while Chinese political system seems to be maintaining its rigidity and stability. Many experts on China study are facing such "dilemmas" and "contradictions."
In this lecture, the speaker will start from brief introduction of Chinese Four-city Survey conducted in Tianjin, Shanghai, Chongqin, and Guangzhou from 1998 to 2014, and its basic findings, followed by analysis and interpretation of how to understand these "dilemmas" and "contradictions." Some additional information of third wave data will be presented, too.
Shigeto Sonoda is a professor of sociology and Asian studies at the University of Tokyo. He is now professor at the Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia (IASA) and Department Head of Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies (GSII), the University of Tokyo. He is also working as Deputy Director General of Division of International Affairs at the university.
Prof. Sonoda has taken initiatives in conducting researches including AsiaBarometer 2003-2008, Asia Student Survey 2008-2014, Chinese Four-city Survey 1998-2014. His special interest is in social stratification and globalization of cultures in Asia, and localization process of Japanese company in Asian countries. His latest publications include: "Linkage and Estrangement in East Asia," Keiso-Shobo (editor, 2015 in Japanese) "A History of Japan-China Relations," 1972-2012 III and IV, University of Tokyo Press (editor, 2012 and 2014, in Japanese), "Emerging Middle Classes in East Asia," Keisho-shobo (editor, 2012, in Japanese), "Social Inequality in Contemporary China," Chuo Koron (2008, in Japanese, awarded Special Prize of 20th Asia-Pacific Award), "Where Chinese Society is Heading for?: Dialogue with Chinese Sociologists," Iwanami Shoten Publishers (editor, 2008, in Japanese). For more information, see http://shigetosonoda.net/.
Event Contact: ieas@berkeley.edu, 510‑642‑2809
Hong Kong Cinema festival
Film - Series
Dates: November 14–16, 2015
Location: Vogue Theater — 3290 Sacramento Street (Presidio / Lyon), San Francisco, CA
Sponsors: Institute of East Asian Studies, Center for Chinese Studies
2015 marks the fifth anniversary of Hong Kong Cinema, which celebrates recent works from one of the world's most exciting filmmaking hubs and continues its tradition of offering a wild mix of genres and iconic performances from the region's biggest stars. Well-known filmmakers like Johnnie To and Dante Lam are on display with their latest films, along with a number of exciting new storytellers making their feature debuts. Films include Office, "Little Big Master," "SPL 2: A Time for Consequences," "It's Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong," "Helios," "To the Fore," "Two Thumbs Up," and "Monster Hunt."
Admission charged. Tickets and full lineup available at http://www.sffs.org/ exhibition/ fall-season-2015/ hong-kong-cinema#.ViVwyyuHBMQ.
Attendance restrictions: Admission charged.
Event Contact: ieas@berkeley.edu, 510‑642‑2809
Affective Governance in North Korea: Sexuality and Sensuality in Socialist Feminism
Colloquium
Speaker: Suzy Kim, Rutgers University
Date: November 16, 2015 | 4:00 p.m.
Location: 180 Doe Library
Sponsor: Center for Korean Studies
While North Korea is often known for its top-down coercive mechanisms that enforce compliance, such paternalistic order is complemented by maternal affect that elicits love and loyalty for the leaders. In effect, women proved to be the primary cultural conduits, and feminine tropes became models for emulation throughout society. Comparing North Korean women with other socialist female icons, this talk explores how alternative femininities became markers of ideal citizens in the name of state feminism that professed equality for the sexes. Through an analysis of critical differences between various cultural works from films to operas, the talk seeks to apprehend the diverse strategies to deal with the ‘woman question' in North Korea and the possibilities opened up by multivariate socialist feminisms as varied ways to address the oppression of women. In doing so, I deliberately challenge simplistic understandings of not only socialism, but more importantly, the socialist woman question, illustrating the extent to which feminism was indeed part of the socialist agenda.
Professor Suzy Kim began teaching Korean Studies at Rutgers in 2010 and has previously taught at Emerson College, Boston College, and Oberlin College after receiving her Ph.D. in Modern Korean History at the University of Chicago. Her current research focuses on North Korean social history, looking at changes in everyday life between 1945 after the end of Japanese colonial rule to 1950 before the start of the Korean War. Her research interests include critical theory, gender studies, and oral history.
She is currently working on a manuscript titled Politics of Empowerment: Everyday Life in North Korea 1945-50, examining the immediate post-colonial period of North Korean history from 1945 when Korea was liberated from Japanese colonial rule to 1950 before the start of the Korean War. Focusing on the local people's committees and mass organizations that were spontaneously organized and later centralized, she reconstructs the beginnings of North Korean society through a micro-level study of everyday life, informing more generally the underlying dynamic of how processes of social change come together with processes of ossification in the dialectic between agency and structure.
Event Contact: cksassist@berkeley.edu, 510‑643‑9787
Buddhism and Indian Lexicography
Colloquium
Speaker: Lata M. Deokar, Department of Pali, Savitribai Phule Pune University, India
Date: November 17, 2015 | 5:00–6:30 p.m.
Location: 341 Dwinelle Hall
Sponsor: Center for Buddhist Studies
The Sanskrit lexicographical tradition started with the compilation of Nighaṇṭus 'word-lists'. Their focus was on the 'rare, unexplained, vague, or otherwise difficult terms' that occurred in the sacred Vedic literature. Beginning with Amarasiṃha's Amarakośa (circa 6th century CE) we have an unbroken tradition of Sanskrit lexica mostly compiled by lexicographers belonging to the three major religious faiths in India. The influence of the Amarakośa, the first complete lexicon of the Sanskrit language, is felt throughout India and in the neighbouring countries such as Sri Lanka and Tibet. This in turn resulted in the creation of Pali and (Sanskrit-) Tibetan lexica.
In a paper entitled "Some Observations on Buddhism and Lexicography" (2012), I had made an attempt to find how Buddhist vocabulary has been presented in prominent Sanskrit lexicons, and the impact of the decline of Buddhism on the inclusion and explanation of Buddhist data. I had also tried to find the impact of religious affiliations of lexicographers on the selection of lexical entries, quantity of synonyms and accuracy in their explanation.
Against this background, in the present talk I would try to explore the role played by Buddhism in shaping the Sanskrit, Pali, and Indo-Tibetan lexicographical tradition. I will deal with this topic from the following view-points:
- The motives and application of the lexicographical activity in India, Sri Lanka, and Tibet
- The mutual relationship of lexica and literature
- Buddhist literature and lexica
- The role of religious affiliations of lexicographers in these compilations
For the Sanskrit part, I have selected a few prominent Sanskrit lexicographers belonging to the three important Indian religious traditions. For the Tibetan part, I have mainly dealt with the Mahāvyutpatti and the Tshig gi gter. For Pali, I have consulted the only Pali lexicon Abhidhānappadīpikā with its commentary Abhidhānappadīpikāṭīkā.
Social Responsibility or Development Responsibility? — What Is the Environmental Impact of Chinese Investments in Africa
Lecture
Speaker: Xiaoyang Tang, International Relations at Tsinghua University; Resident Scholar at the Carnegie–Tsinghua Center for Global Policy
Date: November 18, 2015 | 12:00 p.m.
Location: 180 Doe Library
Sponsors: Institute of East Asian Studies, Center for African Studies, Center for Chinese Studies
The rapid expansion of Chinese investments in Africa has attracted global attention. People are concerned with their impacts on the continent's environment, as Chinese firms are often criticized for not sufficiently considering social-environmental consequences of their operations. This presentation examines Chinese firms' environmental practice in Africa. Based on detailed field studies, I do not only show how Chinese investments really impact Africa's environment, but also explore the possibilities of regulating and improving the firms' practices.
Event Contact: ieas@berkeley.edu, 510‑642‑2809
Book Talk: The Defections
Colloquium
Speaker: Hannah Michell, UC Berkeley
Date: November 18, 215 | 4:00 p.m.
Location: 180 Doe Library
Sponsor: Center for Korean Studies
Snopsis
Mia is an outsider. The child of an English mother, she defies the rigid expectations of her Korean stepmother to work as a translator at the British Embassy.
Her uncle runs a charitable — and controversial — school for North Korean defectors, and prevails upon Mia's stepmother to shelter a traumatized young student. Mia is too preoccupied to note the defector's strange behavior — or its implications.
She has become infatuated with Thomas, a diplomat with a self-destructive streak. When an outrageous indiscretion endangers his position, it is Mia who saves him from humiliation and rescues his career. And the boundaries between them are crossed.
As a reward for his reformation, Thomas is commissioned to audit security amongst Embassy staff. Learning of Mia's connections to the defector, he is compelled to dig deeper into the life of the woman who has captivated him.
Suddenly, all that Mia has done to get close to Thomas begins to cause her undoing.
(Please also read The Guardian's review of The Defections.)
Hannah Michell grew up in South Korea and graduated in Philosophy and Anthropology from Cambridge University in England before earning an MFA in creative writing. Her first novel, The Defections, was published in 2014. She teaches a course at UC Berkeley on hallyu, or South Korean popular culture, with a focus on television drama, its modes of production, its global reception, and the ways in which it addresses South Koreans' encounters with modernity, capitalism and Western cultures, in relation to family and gender as well as nationalism and historical narrativity.
Event Contact: cksassist@berkeley.edu, 510‑643‑9787
The Risks and Rewards of Grassroots Environmentalism in China
Colloquium
Speaker: Kristen McDonald, China Program Director, Pacific Environment, San Francisco
Moderator: You-tien Hsing, Center for Chinese Studies; Geography, UCB
Date: November 20, 2015 | 4:00–6:00 p.m.
Location: 180 Doe Library
Sponsors: Center for Chinese Studies (CCS), Institute of East Asian Studies
Environmental laws in China are tougher than ever, but pollution problems persist. One of the key obstacles to improvement in China's environment is weak enforcement, and grassroots environmental groups are at the cutting edge of seeking to address the enforcement challenge. This talk explores the political space available for grassroots environmental organizing in China and the creative strategies used to expose illegally polluting enterprises and to put pressure on government regulators. From volunteer pollution monitoring networks to drafting new legislation, grassroots environmental organizers in China are changing China from the bottom up.
Part of the Environmental China series.
Event Contact: ccs@berkeley.edu, 510‑643‑6321
Belonging: Immigrant incorporation in Japan, migrant cultural identity, and how transnational communities bridge the divide
Panel Discussion
Date: November 23, 2015 | 5:30–7:00 p.m.
Location: 180 Doe Library
Sponsor: Center for Japanese Studies
An Intimate Panel Discussion with Presenters Jordan Cisneros (Political Science), Benny Corona (Anthropology), Craig Dermody (Political Science), Rachel Ng (undeclared), and Jai Lei Yee (Gender & Women's / Asian American & Diaspora Studies).
Japan confronts a crossroads of identity and immigration. What will tomorrow’s Japan look like? At the heart of the question is the essence of belonging: how does Japan incorporate migrants into Japanese society? This panel takes a special focus on the migrant experience as part of a transnational community. Five undergraduate Berkeley students share their experiences pursuing research through the Project-Based Learning fellowship, a unique educational approach that helps students acquire an interdisciplinary array of skills through fieldwork, data analysis, and problem solving challenges. With funding from the Japanese government, and with academic support from the Center for Japanese Studies and the program's partners at Akita International University, this enriching opportunity is once again available for students interested in doing research on international migration and transnationalism in Japan and the Bay Area over Summer 2016.
Event Contact: cjs@berkeley.edu, 510‑642‑3415