Thursday, January 12, 2023
A Short Introduction to Toshio Hosokawa: 2023 Berkeley Japan Prize Winner
Colloquium: Center for Japanese Studies | January 12 | 5-5:30 p.m. | Online - Zoom Webinar
Speaker: Ken Ueno, Professor, UC Berkeley
Sponsor: Center for Japanese Studies (CJS)
Professor Ken Ueno will present a 12-minute presentation via Zoom to introduce composer Toshio Hosokawa, Japan's most eminent living composer. In his operas, Hosokawa helped update Noh theater and has been influential in balancing Japanese and Western aesthetics in his compositional work, which have been widely commissioned and played in Europe and abroad.
Friday, January 20, 2023
Colloquium: Center for Japanese Studies | January 20 | 5-6:30 p.m. | Faculty Club, Seaborg Room
Featured Speaker: Toshio Hosokawa, Composer
Featured Performer: Kyoko Kawamura, Koto Player
Moderator: Ken Ueno, Professor, UC Berkeley
Sponsors: Institute of East Asian Studies (IEAS), Center for Japanese Studies (CJS), Department of Music
The Center for Japanese Studies (CJS) of UC Berkeley welcomes Japanese composer, Toshio Hosokawa to the campus as the recipient of the 6th Berkeley Japan Prize. At the award ceremony, Toshio Hosokawa will give an acceptance speech, followed by a performance of koto music that he composed. Kyoko... More >
Wednesday, January 25, 2023
Book Discussion: Ethnicity and Empires in World War II
Panel Discussion: Center for Chinese Studies: Center for Japanese Studies: Center for Southeast Asia Studies | January 25 | 4-5:30 p.m. | 3335 Dwinelle Hall
Speaker: Seiji Shirane, Assistant Professor of History, The City College of New York
Panelist/Discussants: Janaki Bakhle, Associate Professor of History, UC Berkeley; Andrew E. Barshay, Dr. C. F. Koo & Cecelia Koo Chair in East Asian Studies, Professor of History, UC Berkeley; Rebekah Ramsay, Assistant Professor of History, UC Berkeley; Peter B. Zinoman, Professor of History, UC Berkeley
Moderator: Hidetaka Hirota, Associate Professor of History, UC Berkeley
Sponsors: Department of History, Center for Chinese Studies (CCS), Center for Japanese Studies (CJS), Center for Southeast Asia Studies, Li Ka-shing Foundation Program in Modern Chinese History
In Imperial Gateway, Seiji Shirane explores the political, social, and economic significance of colonial Taiwan in the southern expansion of Japan's empire from 1895 to the end of World War II. Challenging understandings of empire that focus on bilateral relations between metropole and colonial periphery, Shirane uncovers a half century of dynamic relations between Japan, Taiwan, China,... More >
Friday, January 27, 2023
Middle Powers Economic Statecraft: Strategies for High Technology Industries
Conference/Symposium: Center for Korean Studies: Center for Japanese Studies: Institute of East Asian Studies | January 27 | 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m. | Golden Bear Building, 5th Floor IEAS Conference Room
Location: 1995 University Avenue, Berkeley, CA 94704
Sponsor: Berkeley APEC Study Center (BASC)
This conference addresses middle powers’ strategies for high-tech industries, exploring both the theoretical and thematic contours of this concept and issue-specific dynamics. Participants focus on the economic statecraft of countries across the Asia-Pacific region amid the great power competition between Washington and Beijing.
Lecture | January 27 | 3-4:30 p.m. | 125 Morrison Hall
Speaker/Performer: Toshio Hosokawa
Sponsors: Department of Music, Center for Japanese Studies (CJS)
“The calligraphy masters say that this space, where one cannot see — this silence, this white area — is just as important as linear movement. With my music, this silence, where one cannot hear, is also a part of the movement of sound energy.” Toshio Hosokawa (New York Times, August 4, 2011)
Saturday, January 28, 2023
Middle Powers Economic Statecraft: Strategies for High Technology Industries, Jan 28
Conference/Symposium: Center for Korean Studies: Center for Japanese Studies: Institute of East Asian Studies | January 28 | 10 a.m.-1 p.m. | Golden Bear Building, 5th Floor IEAS Conference Room
Location: 1995 University Avenue, Berkeley, CA 94704
Sponsor: Berkeley APEC Study Center (BASC)
This conference addresses middle powers’ strategies for high-tech industries, exploring both the theoretical and thematic contours of this concept and issue-specific dynamics. Participants focus on the economic statecraft of countries across the Asia-Pacific region amid the great power competition between Washington and Beijing.
Registration: Free
Registration info:
Thursday, February 2, 2023
Lecture: Center for Chinese Studies | February 2 | 4-6 p.m. | VIRTUAL EVENT - ZOOM WEBINAR
Sponsors: Center for Race and Gender, Berkeley Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative
"Criminalizing Migration and Indefinite Detention: Chinese at Angel Island and McNeil Island Prison"
with Elliott Young (Lewis & Clark College)
Registration required
Registration info: Must register to receive a personalized link to join the Zoom webinar.
or or by emailing centerrg@berkeley.edu
Friday, February 3, 2023
Panel Discussion: Center for Chinese Studies | February 3 | 2-3 p.m. | Institute of East Asian Studies (Golden Bear Center, 1995 University Ave., 5th floor), IEAS Conference Room
Sponsors: Center for Chinese Studies (CCS), Li Ka-shing Foundation Program in Modern Chinese History
How did the modern-style commercial newspaper, as an institution, make its way to China? Where did it come from, and which forces were involved? How did the political exigencies of the era of reform and revolution that commenced in the mid-1860s and ended with the Boxer Rebellion reshape the character of the press in China and its relationship to the outside world at the turn-of-the-century?... More >
[Canceled] Distant Shores: Colonial Encounters on China’s Maritime Frontier
Colloquium: Center for Chinese Studies | February 3 | 4-5:30 p.m. | 510 Institute of East Asian Studies (Golden Bear Center, 1995 University Ave., 5th floor) | Canceled
Speaker: Melissa Macauley, Professor of History, Northwestern University
Panelist/Discussant: Wen-hsin Yeh, Richard H. and Laurie C. Morrison Chair Professor & Distinguished Professor of History, UC Berkeley
Sponsor: Center for Chinese Studies (CCS)
In a story that dawns with the Industrial Revolution and culminates in the Great Depression, Distant Shores reveals how the migration of Chinese laborers and merchants across a far-flung maritime world linked their homeland to an ever-expanding frontier of settlement and economic extraction. At home and abroad, they reaped many of the benefits of an overseas colonial system without establishing... More >
[In Person] Hong Yung Lee Book Award Ceremony
Special Event: Center for Korean Studies | February 3 | 5-7:30 p.m. | David Brower Center, Goldman Theater
Location: 2150 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA 94704
Featured Speaker: Ksenia Chizhova, Princeton University
Speaker: Yoon Sun Yang, Boston University
Sponsor: Center for Korean Studies (CKS)
Tickets are Free but Required - Space is Limited
CKS is honored to host the inaugural winner of the UC Berkeley Hong Yung Lee Book Award in Korean Studies, Professor Ksenia Chizhova (Princeton University), and present her with the award for her winning book "Kinship Novels of Early Modern Korea: Between Genealogical Time and the Domestic Everyday" (Columbia University Press, 2021).
Tickets required: $0.00
Ticket info: Required for in-person attendance.
Registration not required
Registration info: Online Viewing via Zoom Webinar Only.
Saturday, February 4, 2023
[In Person] UC Berkeley-Stanford Graduate Student Conference in Korean Humanities
Panel Discussion: Center for Korean Studies | February 4 | 10:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. | UC Berkeley Extension (Golden Bear Center), IEAS 5th Floor Conference Room
Speakers: Michelle Ha, Stanford University; Sophie Lockey, UC Berkeley; Rachel Min Park, UC Berkeley; Qingyang Freya Zhou, UC Berkeley
Moderators: Ksenia Chizhova, Princeton University; Yoon Sun Yang, Boston University
Sponsors: Center for Korean Studies (CKS), Center for East Asian Studies - Stanford University
This Graduate Student Conference is jointly sponsored by the Center for Korean Studies a UC Berkeley and the Center for East Asian Studies at Stanford University. Students representing both schools will present on their diverse topics of research in the Korean humanities, moderated by Prof. Ksenia Chizhova and Prof. Yoon Sun Yang.
Friday, February 10, 2023
The Opposite of Cancel Culture
Colloquium: Center for Chinese Studies | February 10 | 5-6:30 p.m. | Institute of East Asian Studies (Golden Bear Center, 1995 University Ave., 5th floor), IEAS Conference Room
Speaker: Phil Chan, Co-Founder, Final Bow for Yellowface
Sponsor: Center for Chinese Studies (CCS)
Final Bow for Yellowface co-founder Phil Chan takes us on a magic carpet ride through a history of orientalism in ballet and explains why preserving a Eurocentric view of “exotic” people and places on our stages isn’t doing us any favors with the diversity conversation. The opposite of cancel culture, we will explore how to keep works from the European canon with artistic merit but outdated... More >
Wednesday, February 15, 2023
Lecture: Center for Japanese Studies | February 15 | 12:10-1 p.m. | 101 2251 College (Archaeological Research Facility)
Speaker: Jun Mitsumoto, Visiting Scholar, Department of Anthropology, UC Berkeley & Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Okayama University, Japan
Sponsors: Archaeological Research Facility, Center for Japanese Studies (CJS)
This presentation aims to discuss the theory of LiDAR surveying using drones, and a case study of the Tsukuriyama mounded tomb group in Okayama City, Japan, dating from the first half of the fifth century AD during the Kofun period... More >
Thursday, February 16, 2023
[Online] Surviving Squid Game: Designing the Maze of Psychological Terror
Colloquium: Center for Korean Studies | February 16 | 4-5:30 p.m. | Online via Zoom
Speaker/Performer: Suk-Young Kim, UCLA
Sponsor: Center for Korean Studies (CKS)
Squid Game swept the pandemic-jaded world by storm upon its release and has become the first Asian-language drama to top Netflix’s global ranking. Its gory yet moving dramatic metaverse set social media platforms on fire with its genre-bending story about desperate contestants playing a series of deadly “winner-take-it-all”... More >
Registration required
Registration info: Zoom Webinar.
Tuesday, February 21, 2023
[Aspects of Japanese Studies] Rethinking 20th Century Chinese Aesthetics in Japan
Colloquium: Center for Japanese Studies | February 21 | 5-5:30 p.m. | Online - Zoom Webinar
Speaker: Yi Ding, Research Fellow, Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, The University of Tokyo
Panelist/Discussant: Kevin Smith, UC Berkeley
Sponsor: Center for Japanese Studies (CJS)
Aesthetics is usually defined as a branch of philosophical inquiry dealing with “beauty,” “emotion” and “art.” However, with reference to this Western definition, the question of how to position the field of Eastern aesthetics remains unanswered. In China today, there is a tendency to emphasize the characteristics that distinguish Chinese aesthetics from the West. Yet, this view of East and West... More >
Registration required
Wednesday, February 22, 2023
(Im)Mobilities in Transnational Art History
Lecture: Center for Southeast Asia Studies | February 22 | 5-6:30 p.m. | 308A Doe Library
Speaker: Brigitta Isabella, Indonesian Institute of the Arts
Sponsors: Center for Southeast Asia Studies, Department of Art Practice, Department of History of Art
What does it mean for art historical studies to pursue mobility as a methodology in redefining epistemological and political frameworks such as nation, citizenship, ethnicity, and culture? This talk will consider mobility as a theory of motion that gives particular attention to a range of traveling experiences, including those of Chinese Indonesian artists in the 1950s and '60s.
Thursday, February 23, 2023
TDPS presents Berkeley Dance Project 2023: Within These Walls by Lenora Lee Dance
Performing Arts - Dance: Center for Chinese Studies | February 23 – 26, 2023 every day | Zellerbach Playhouse
Sponsor: Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies
Within These Walls is an award-winning, site-responsive, multimedia dance experience that speaks to the power of people to transcend unthinkable hardships. Originally created and performed at the U.S. Immigration Station on Angel Island, the work is inspired by stories of the estimated 170,000 Chinese immigrants who were unjustly detained, interrogated, and processed at the site.
Tickets: $10–18
Friday, February 24, 2023
TDPS presents Berkeley Dance Project 2023: Within These Walls by Lenora Lee Dance
Performing Arts - Dance: Center for Chinese Studies | February 23 – 26, 2023 every day | Zellerbach Playhouse
Sponsor: Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies
Within These Walls is an award-winning, site-responsive, multimedia dance experience that speaks to the power of people to transcend unthinkable hardships. Originally created and performed at the U.S. Immigration Station on Angel Island, the work is inspired by stories of the estimated 170,000 Chinese immigrants who were unjustly detained, interrogated, and processed at the site.
Tickets: $10–18
Ticket info:
Saturday, February 25, 2023
TDPS presents Berkeley Dance Project 2023: Within These Walls by Lenora Lee Dance
Performing Arts - Dance: Center for Chinese Studies | February 23 – 26, 2023 every day | Zellerbach Playhouse
Sponsor: Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies
Within These Walls is an award-winning, site-responsive, multimedia dance experience that speaks to the power of people to transcend unthinkable hardships. Originally created and performed at the U.S. Immigration Station on Angel Island, the work is inspired by stories of the estimated 170,000 Chinese immigrants who were unjustly detained, interrogated, and processed at the site.
Tickets: $10–18
Sunday, February 26, 2023
TDPS presents Berkeley Dance Project 2023: Within These Walls by Lenora Lee Dance
Performing Arts - Dance: Center for Chinese Studies | February 23 – 26, 2023 every day | Zellerbach Playhouse
Sponsor: Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies
Within These Walls is an award-winning, site-responsive, multimedia dance experience that speaks to the power of people to transcend unthinkable hardships. Originally created and performed at the U.S. Immigration Station on Angel Island, the work is inspired by stories of the estimated 170,000 Chinese immigrants who were unjustly detained, interrogated, and processed at the site.
Tickets: $10–18
Ticket info:
Thursday, March 2, 2023
[In Person] Colonizing Language: Cultural Production and Language Politics in Modern Japan and Korea
Colloquium: Center for Korean Studies: Center for Japanese Studies | March 2 | 4-5:30 p.m. | Institute of East Asian Studies (Golden Bear Center, 1995 University Ave., 5th floor)
Speaker/Performer: Christina Yi, University of British Columbia
Sponsors: Center for Korean Studies (CKS), Center for Japanese Studies (CJS)
With the launch of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, Japan’s colonies saw the full-scale launch of kōminka (imperialization) policies designed to turn the colonized into loyal subjects of the emperor. In Korea, such policies included the enforced recitation of the “Oath of Imperial Subjects” in public... More >
RSVP required
RSVP info: In-Person RSVP.
Chants for Life and Death: Buddhist Poetry from Early Modern Cambodia
Lecture: Center for Buddhist Studies: Center for Southeast Asia Studies | March 2 | 4-5:30 p.m. | 223 Moses Hall
Speaker: Trent Walker, Postdoctoral Fellow, Ho Center for Buddhist Studies, Stanford University
Sponsors: Center for Southeast Asia Studies, Center for Buddhist Studies
This lecture, drawing from a new book, highlights the key aesthetic and affective dimensions of the four main types of melodic Buddhist poems in Cambodia: narrations of the Buddha’s life, expressions of filial debts, meditations on death and decay, and aspirations for awakening.
Trent Walker
Film - Documentary | March 2 | 7 p.m. | Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
Director: Donagh Coleman
Sponsors: Center for Buddhist Studies, Department of Anthropology, Institute for South Asia Studies, The Himalayan Studies Initiative
Is it possible to die in a consciously controlled way? The Tibetan Buddhist tradition of tukdam, a practice of meditating at the deepest level of consciousness right before death, has been shown to delay rigor mortis and other postmortem decay for days or even weeks. The bodies of those in tukdam remain warm and in the meditation position even after they are declared medically dead. Through... More >
Ticket info:
Friday, March 3, 2023
[Hybrid] Sacred Secrets: Networks of Secret Knowledge in Japanese Religions
Conference/Symposium: Center for Japanese Studies | March 3 – 4, 2023 every day | David Brower Center
Location: 2150 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA 94704
Featured Speaker: Susan Blakeley Klein, Director of Religious Studies, Professor of Japanese Literature and Culture, University of California, Irvine
Speakers: Abe Yasurō, (Ryūkoku University); Anna Andreeva, (Ghent University, Belgium); Heather Blair, (Indiana University Bloomington); Mark L. Blum, (University of California, Berkeley); William M. Bodiford, (University of California, Los Angeles); Clark Van Doren Chilson, (University of Pittsburgh); Paul Groner, (University of Virginia); Itō Satoshi, (Ibaraki University); Kikuchi Hiroki, (The University Tōkyō); D. Max Moerman, (Barnard College); Michaela Mross, (Stanford University); Fabio Rambelli, (University of California, Santa Barbara); Marta Sanvido, (University of California, Berkeley); Unno Keisuke, (National Institute of Japanese Literature); Yoneda Mariko, (Tottori University)
Moderator: Robert H. Sharf, University of California, Berkeley
Sponsors: Center for Japanese Studies (CJS), Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
For more than four centuries, the history of Japanese religions has been dominated by secrecy. Secret texts circulated in every group regardless of their affiliation or social status, showing the porosity and pervasiveness of secrecy. Why and how did secrecy become such a central component of religious life? Although works on secrecy abound in the field of European and Tantra studies, the... More >
Registration required
Registration info: Registration only required for Zoom participants.
The Secret Five Bodhisattvas (Gohimitsu Bosatsu) 五秘密菩薩像, Japan (1200s), Cleveland Museum of Art
Saturday, March 4, 2023
[Hybrid] Sacred Secrets: Networks of Secret Knowledge in Japanese Religions
Conference/Symposium: Center for Japanese Studies | March 3 – 4, 2023 every day | David Brower Center
Location: 2150 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA 94704
Featured Speaker: Susan Blakeley Klein, Director of Religious Studies, Professor of Japanese Literature and Culture, University of California, Irvine
Speakers: Abe Yasurō, (Ryūkoku University); Anna Andreeva, (Ghent University, Belgium); Heather Blair, (Indiana University Bloomington); Mark L. Blum, (University of California, Berkeley); William M. Bodiford, (University of California, Los Angeles); Clark Van Doren Chilson, (University of Pittsburgh); Paul Groner, (University of Virginia); Itō Satoshi, (Ibaraki University); Kikuchi Hiroki, (The University Tōkyō); D. Max Moerman, (Barnard College); Michaela Mross, (Stanford University); Fabio Rambelli, (University of California, Santa Barbara); Marta Sanvido, (University of California, Berkeley); Unno Keisuke, (National Institute of Japanese Literature); Yoneda Mariko, (Tottori University)
Moderator: Robert H. Sharf, University of California, Berkeley
Sponsors: Center for Japanese Studies (CJS), Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
For more than four centuries, the history of Japanese religions has been dominated by secrecy. Secret texts circulated in every group regardless of their affiliation or social status, showing the porosity and pervasiveness of secrecy. Why and how did secrecy become such a central component of religious life? Although works on secrecy abound in the field of European and Tantra studies, the... More >
Registration required
Registration info: Registration only required for Zoom participants.
Sunday, March 5, 2023
Film - Feature: Center for Southeast Asia Studies | March 5 | 5 p.m. | Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
Sponsor: Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
Gardner’s 1961 expedition to Netherlands New Guinea (now West Papua) to film the Dani people (also known as the Hubula) resulted in the much-debated, influential ethnographic film Dead Birds, which explores the ritual warfare between villages and raises questions about the role of violence in society and culture. For Gardner, “It was an attempt to see people from within and to wonder, when the... More >
Monday, March 6, 2023
Film Screening and Discussion: Hooligan Sparrow (流氓燕)
Panel Discussion: Center for Chinese Studies | March 6 | 4-6:15 p.m. | Institute of East Asian Studies (Golden Bear Center, 1995 University Ave., 5th floor), IEAS Conference Room
Panelist/Discussants: Nanfu Wang, Film Director; Yaxin Lan; Zhuoxuan Bao
Moderator: Yan Long, Assistant Professor of Sociology, UC Berkeley
Sponsor: Center for Chinese Studies (CCS)
The danger is palpable as intrepid filmmaker Nanfu Wang follows maverick activist Ye Haiyan (a.k.a Hooligan Sparrow) and her band of colleagues to Hainan Province in southern China, to protest the case of six elementary school girls who were sexually abused by their principal. Marked as enemies of the state, the activists are under constant government surveillance and face interrogation,... More >
Wednesday, March 8, 2023
Film - Feature: Center for Southeast Asia Studies | March 8 | 7 p.m. | Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
Sponsor: Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
Michael Rockefeller’s sound recordings made during Robert Gardner’s 1961 expedition to West Papua are the starting point for Expedition Content, an experimental ethnographic film composed by Veronika Kusumaryati, a political and media anthropologist working in West Papua, and sound artist and sound designer Ernst Karel, both associated with Harvard’s Sensory Ethnography Lab. The resulting almost... More >
Voicing the Khmer Rouge: Communist Revolutionary and Cruel Torturer
Lecture: Center for Southeast Asia Studies | March 9 | 4-5:30 p.m. | Institute of East Asian Studies (Golden Bear Center, 1995 University Ave., 5th floor), IEAS Conference Room | Note change in date
Speaker: Cheryl Yin, Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow, South & Southeast Asian Studies, UC Berkeley
Sponsor: Center for Southeast Asia Studies
From 1975-1979, the Khmer Rouge linguistically engineered the Khmer language to be more equal because the language’s honorific register system was contradictory to the regime’s desire for an egalitarian, agrarian society. This talk looks at this language policy in the modern day and how survivors of the Khmer Rouge regime use language to describe their experiences.
Friday, March 10, 2023
Workshop on Tannishō Commentarial Materials
Workshop: Center for Japanese Studies | March 10 – 12, 2023 every day | Jodo Shinshu Center
Location: 2140 Durant Avenue, Berkeley, CA 94704
Sponsors: Center for Japanese Studies (CJS), Center for Buddhist Studies, Otani University, Ryukoku University, BCA Buddhist Center for Education, Institute of Buddhist Studies, Shinshu Center of America
The Centers for Japanese Studies and Buddhist Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, together with Ōtani University and Ryūkoku University in Kyoto announce a workshop under the supervision of Mark Blum that will focus on critically examining premodern and modern hermeneutics of the Tannishō, a core text of the Shin sect of Buddhism, and arguably the most well-read... More >
[Canceled] Lang Shining as Daemon: Giuseppe Castiglione and the Language of European Sinology
Colloquium: Center for Chinese Studies | March 10 | 4-5:30 p.m. | 3335 Dwinelle Hall | Canceled
Speaker: Marco Musillo, Art Historian, Photographer, and Curator
Panelist/Discussant: Winnie Wong, Associate Professor, Rhetoric, UC Berkeley
Sponsor: Center for Chinese Studies (CCS)
In the eighteenth century, what we generally define as chinoiserie comprehended different forms, from painting to furniture, created in Europe in dialogue with real Chinese productions. These items displayed elements recognized as Chinese but created along the lines of European poetics. The world of chinoiserie thus became one of the loci of a language of appropriation which structured... More >
Film - Feature: Center for Southeast Asia Studies | March 10 | 7 p.m. | Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
Sponsor: Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
FEATURING
Jenjira Pongpas Widner, Banlop Lomnoi, Jarinpattra Rueangram, Petcharat Chaiburi,
Weerasethakul returned to his hometown in Isan Province for this suitably mesmeric cine-poem on magic, history, and dreams. In a former school built on an ancient cemetery, a group of soldiers slumbers quietly, victims of a mysterious sleeping sickness. Here a psychic serves as a communicator between... More >
Saturday, March 11, 2023
Workshop on Tannishō Commentarial Materials
Workshop: Center for Japanese Studies | March 10 – 12, 2023 every day | Jodo Shinshu Center
Location: 2140 Durant Avenue, Berkeley, CA 94704
Sponsors: Center for Japanese Studies (CJS), Center for Buddhist Studies, Otani University, Ryukoku University, BCA Buddhist Center for Education, Institute of Buddhist Studies, Shinshu Center of America
The Centers for Japanese Studies and Buddhist Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, together with Ōtani University and Ryūkoku University in Kyoto announce a workshop under the supervision of Mark Blum that will focus on critically examining premodern and modern hermeneutics of the Tannishō, a core text of the Shin sect of Buddhism, and arguably the most well-read... More >
Sunday, March 12, 2023
Workshop on Tannishō Commentarial Materials
Workshop: Center for Japanese Studies | March 10 – 12, 2023 every day | Jodo Shinshu Center
Location: 2140 Durant Avenue, Berkeley, CA 94704
Sponsors: Center for Japanese Studies (CJS), Center for Buddhist Studies, Otani University, Ryukoku University, BCA Buddhist Center for Education, Institute of Buddhist Studies, Shinshu Center of America
The Centers for Japanese Studies and Buddhist Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, together with Ōtani University and Ryūkoku University in Kyoto announce a workshop under the supervision of Mark Blum that will focus on critically examining premodern and modern hermeneutics of the Tannishō, a core text of the Shin sect of Buddhism, and arguably the most well-read... More >
Wednesday, March 15, 2023
Embodied Memories: Japanese Americans across Generations
Colloquium: Center for Japanese Studies | March 15 | 5-7:30 p.m. | Latinx Research Center
Location: 2547 Channing Way, Berkeley, CA 94704
Moderator: Lisa Hirai Tsuchitani
Speakers/Performers: Karen Tei Yamashita; Philip Kan Gotanda
Sponsors: Asian American Research Center, Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies Program, Department of English, Townsend Center for the Humanities, Japanese American Studies Advisory Committee, Center for Japanese Studies (CJS), Othering & Belonging Institute
5-6pm: Reception and informal conversation
6-7:30pm: Program
Karen Tei Yamashita in conversation with playwright Philip Kan Gotanda.
Moderated by: Lisa Hirai Tsuchitani
Karen Tei Yamashita is the author of seven books, including I Hotel, finalist for the National Book Award, and most recently, Sansei and Sensibility.
Registration: $0
Registration info:
Thursday, March 16, 2023
Is the Language of the Pali Canon a Creation of Grammarians?
Colloquium | March 16 | 5 p.m. | 370 Dwinelle Hall
Speaker/Performer: Aleix Ruiz Falques, Khyentse Postdoctoral Fellow, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Sponsors: Center for Buddhist Studies, Glorisun Global Buddhist Network
The Pali Tipiṭaka or Pali Canon is considered to be the largest collection of Early Buddhist Texts in an Indic language, known as Pali. Pali is a Middle Indic dialect, but the Pali Texts are literary compositions, and therefore Pali is considered to be an artificial language, not a colloquial one. This means that our Pali texts are probably not a faithful reproduction of the Buddha's words.... More >
I Hotel: Feminist Perspectives on a Social Movement
Colloquium: Center for Southeast Asia Studies | March 16 | 5-7:30 p.m. | Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union, Multicultural Community Center, First Floor
Speakers/Performers: Karen Tei Yamashita; Estella Habal; Shoshana Arai; Nancy Hom
Sponsors: Asian American Research Center, Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies Program, Department of English, Townsend Center for the Humanities, Japanese American Studies Advisory Committee, Multicultural Community Center, Othering & Belonging Institute
5-6pm: Reception and informal conversation (in-person only)
6-7:30: Program (hybrid)
Come hear from activists involved in the fight to save the International Hotel, home to elderly Filipino American and Chinese American residents until their eviction in 1977 by 400 police officers in riot gear.
Registration: $0
Registration info:
Friday, March 17, 2023
On a Magical Island - A tribute in Balinese shadows to Peter Brook’s Tempest Project
Performing Arts - Music: Center for Southeast Asia Studies | March 17 | 8-9 p.m. | 125 Morrison Hall
Sponsors: Department of Music, Center for Southeast Asia Studies
Join us for an evening showing of The Tempest Project, a Balinese-style shadow puppet show in tribute to Peter Brook. Return to that magical island!
Dalang: Larry Reed
Gamelan gender wayang musicians: Lisa Gold, Carla Fabrizio, Paul Miller, Sarah Willner
Gamelan musician and composer, specializing in gender wayang to perform traditional sitting pieces: Ni Nyoman... More >
Monday, March 20, 2023
Jose E. Marco: Forging the Nation
Lecture: Center for Southeast Asia Studies | March 20 | 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m. | 250 Sutardja Dai Hall
Speaker: Ambeth Ocampo, Professor of History, Ateneo de Manila University
Sponsors: Center for Southeast Asia Studies, Filipinx and Philippine Studies Working Group
Jose Rizal wielded history as a weapon against colonial rule, and, to paraphrase James Joyce, “forged in the smithy of [his] soul the uncreated conscience of the race.” Forging the nation though can have a dark side. This talk will look at Jose E. Marco who produced forgeries like the Code of Kalantiaw and the novel La Loba Negra - a cautionary tale on the (ab)uses of History.
Ambeth Ocampo
Apichatpong Weerasethakul: Art and Cinema
Conference/Symposium: Center for Southeast Asia Studies | March 20 | 2-5 p.m. | Stephens Hall, Geballe Room, 220
Panelist/Discussants: Nilgun Bayraktar, History of Art & Visual Culture, California College of the Arts; Daena Funahashi, Anthropology, UC Berkeley; Jo-ey Tang, Director, KADIST; Allyson Unzicker, Film & Media, UC Berkeley; Trent Walker, Religious Studies and Buddhist Studies, Stanford University
Moderators: Natalia Brizuela, Film & Media and Spanish & Portuguese; Poulomi Saha, English
Sponsor: Townsend Center for the Humanities
Scholars and curators discuss the work of Apichatpong Weerasethakul, award-winning Thai filmmaker and artist and the 2022-23 Una’s Lecturer.
Wednesday, March 22, 2023
The Online Gambling Industry, Chinese POGOs Migrants and Urban Spatialities: Notes from Metro Manila
Lecture: Center for Southeast Asia Studies | March 22 | 4-5:30 p.m. | Institute of East Asian Studies (Golden Bear Center, 1995 University Ave., 5th floor)
Speaker: Zih-Lun Huang, CSEAS Visiting Student Researcher, UC Berkeley
Sponsor: Center for Southeast Asia Studies
This talk will review the intersection of ethnic space and Chinese Philippines Online Gambling Operators (POGO) workers in the Philippines and how Chinese POGOs workers reproduce the consumption space of temporary ethnic workers.
Thursday, March 23, 2023
[Canceled] Getting to Know You: Korean Orphanhood and Christian Benevolence in One to One
Colloquium: Center for Korean Studies | March 23 | 4-5:30 p.m. | Institute of East Asian Studies (Golden Bear Center, 1995 University Ave., 5th floor) | Canceled
Speaker/Performer: Katherine In-Young Lee, UCLA
Sponsor: Center for Korean Studies (CKS)
One to One was a televised musical special that first aired on network television on December 15, 1975. It starred Julie Andrews, the World Vision Korean Children’s Choir, and Jim Henson’s The Muppets. The special functioned as a telethon for World Vision, and promoted its international child sponsorship and the... More >
Film - Feature: Center for Southeast Asia Studies | March 23 | 7 p.m. | Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
Sponsor: Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
FEATURING
Duangjai Hiransri, Somsri Pinyopol, Kannikar Narong, Jaruwan Techasatiern,
The surrealist concept of the exquisite corpse game—where a story is improvised and continued from person to person—is reinvented along the roadside stops of rural Thailand in Weerasethakul’s astounding debut feature. A film crew heads from Bangkok to the hinterlands, asking people along the way to continue... More >
Friday, March 24, 2023
Conference/Symposium: Center for Japanese Studies | March 24 | 1-5 p.m. | Doe Library, Room 303
Sponsors: Center for Japanese Studies (CJS), C. V. Starr East Asian Library, Keio Institute of Oriental Classics
東アジアの近代化と日本漢学の変容
―今関天彭の蔵書構築を端緒として―
This conference aims to reconsider Sinology in Japanese history through the introduction of Imazeki Tenpo,... More >
Registration required
Registration info:
Indonesia Out of Exile: How Pramoedya's Buru Quartet Killed a Dictatorship + film screening
Lecture: Center for Southeast Asia Studies | March 24 | 4-7 p.m. | 370 Dwinelle Hall
Speakers: Max Lane; Faiza Mardzoeki
Sponsors: Department of South & Southeast Asian Studies, Center for Southeast Asia Studies
Max Lane is the translator of Pramoedya Ananta Toer's quartet of novels written in the prison camp of Buru. He will discuss his latest book on Pramoedya's role in bringing down the authoritarian regime of Suharto's New Order. The talk will be followed a a film screening of "The Silent Song of the Genjer Flowers".
Thursday, March 30, 2023
Film - Feature: Center for Southeast Asia Studies | March 30 | 7 p.m. | Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
Sponsor: Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
FEATURING
Banlop Lomnoi, Sakda Kaewbuadee, Sirivech Jareonchon, Udom Promma,
The agreeably irrational Tropical Malady melds folk fable with euphoric modern moviemaking, effortlessly traversing the mundane and the miraculous. In this pastoral with a dark pulse, two beguiling stories unfold: the first, a playful romance between a handsome soldier, Keng, and Tong, a country boy; the second, a... More >
Saturday, April 1, 2023
Kronos Quartet with special guest Wu Man
Performing Arts - Music: Center for Chinese Studies | April 1 | 8-10 p.m. | Zellerbach Hall
Sponsor: Cal Performances
Kronos Quartet visits with frequent collaborator Wu Man for a performance of compositions written for the unique instrumentation of string quartet plus pipa. Terry Riley’s The Cusp of Magic creates a synergy between the quartet and the plucked Chinese lute. Tan Dun’s Ghost Opera was written for the first meeting of this quintet in 1994 and has remained in Kronos’ repertoire ever since. The two... More >
Tickets required: $48-$78 prices subject to change
Ticket info:
or by calling 510-642-9988, or by emailing tickets@calperformances.org
Cal Performances presents Kronos Quartet with special guest Wu Man, Saturday, April 1, 2023 in Zellerbach Hall. (credit: Lenny Gonzalez)
Thursday, April 6, 2023
Colloquium: Center for Korean Studies | April 6 | 4-5:30 p.m. | Institute of East Asian Studies (Golden Bear Center, 1995 University Ave., 5th floor)
Speaker/Performer: Chuyun Oh, San Diego State University
Sponsor: Center for Korean Studies (CKS)
This talk will cover the evolution of K-pop dance from the 1980s to the 2020s and K-pop dance fandom on social media.
Chuyun Oh (PhD. UT Austin) is a Fulbright scholar and Associate Professor of Dance Theory at San Diego State University. Her book K-pop Dance: Fandoming Yourself on Social Media... More >
RSVP info: In-Person RSVP.
Littoral Images: A Conversation with artist Adam de Boer
Lecture: Center for Southeast Asia Studies | April 6 | 5-5:30 p.m. | 308A Doe Library
Speaker: Adam de Boer, artist
Moderator: Katherine Bruhn, Ph.D. candidate, South & Southeast Asian Studies, UC Berkeley
Sponsor: Center for Southeast Asia Studies
Artist Adam de Boer will present an overview of his life and work since visiting Indonesia for the first time in 2010, a turning point in his career wherein his Dutch-Indonesian heritage became a source for conceptual and material inspiration, including his use of the ancient Javanese medium - batik colet - or the ‘dabbing batik’ method.
Friday, April 7, 2023
Apichatpong Weerasethakul Masterclass
Film - Feature: Center for Southeast Asia Studies | April 7 | 3 p.m. | Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
Sponsor: Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
In conversation with Leila Weefur, Apichatpong Weerasethakul addresses his approach to making moving images for both the cinema and installations and alternative screening spaces. The presentation includes a screening of Morakot (Emerald), which is also installed in BAMPFA’s galleries as part of the exhibition Endless Knot: Struggle and Healing in the Buddhist World, and three other works that... More >
Panel Discussion: Powers Entwined: China and the US in 2023
Panel Discussion: Center for Chinese Studies | April 7 | 5:30-7 p.m. | Sibley Auditorium, Bechtel Engineering Center
Panelist/Discussants: Evan Osnos, Staff Writer, The New Yorker; Orville Schell, Arthur Ross Director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at Asia Society New York; Zha Jianying, Independent Writer
Sponsor: Center for Chinese Studies (CCS)
Evan Osnos is a staff writer at The New Yorker, a CNN contributor, and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Based in Washington D.C., he writes about politics and foreign affairs. He was the China Correspondent at The New Yorker from 2008 to 2013. His first book, “Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China,” won the 2014 National Book award and was a finalist for... More >
RSVP required
RSVP info:
Sunday, April 9, 2023
Curator’s Talk: Yi Yi Mon (Rosaline) Kyo on Endless Knot: Struggle and Healing in the Buddhist World
Presentation: Center for Chinese Studies | April 9 | 12 p.m. | Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
Sponsor: Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
Guest curator Yi Yi Mon (Rosaline) Kyo offers a series of gallery talks highlighting works by contemporary Asian and Asian American artists such as Binh Danh, Yong Soon Min, Takashi Murakami, and Do Ho Suh, who have been influenced by Buddhist thought to process life’s struggles and to approach healing.
Yi Yi Mon (Rosaline) Kyo, assistant professor of art history and Chinese studies at... More >
Monday, April 10, 2023
Desire and Relationality in the Films of Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Panel Discussion: Center for Southeast Asia Studies | April 10 | 4 p.m. | Stephens Hall, Geballe Room, 220
Panelist/Discussants: Arnika Fuhrmann, Cornell University; Jean Ma, Stanford University
Sponsor: Townsend Center for the Humanities
Two prominent scholars of Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul, the 2022-23 Una’s Lecturer, explore compelling interpersonal themes in the artist's cinematic work.
Tuesday, April 11, 2023
Colloquium: Center for Japanese Studies | April 11 | 5-6:30 p.m. | Online - Zoom Webinar
Speakers: Glenda S. Roberts, Professor, Waseda University, Graduate School of Asia-Pacific Studies; Noriko Fujita, Adjunct Researcher, Waseda Institute for Asia-Pacific Studies; Gracia Liu-Farrer, Professor, Waseda University, Graduate School of Asia-Pacific Studies
Panelist/Discussant: Michael Orlando Sharpe, Professor, York College of the City University of New York
Moderator: Keiko Yamanaka, Lecturer, UC Berkeley
Sponsor: Center for Japanese Studies (CJS)
Glenda S. Roberts and Noriko Fujita
Is ‘Short-term’ for the long run? Is ‘skilled’ really skilled? Japan’s convoluted short-term labor migration schemes
In Japan, despite rapid demographic decline, until recently, low-skilled migrant workers have been welcomed only through side doors, such as technical interns (TITP) and students. Yet pressure for change comes from two sides:... More >
Registration required
Registration info:
Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Filmmaker: In Conversation with Hilton Als
Panel Discussion: Center for Southeast Asia Studies | April 11 | 5 p.m. | BAMPFA, Barbro Osher Theater
Location: 2155 Center Street, Berkeley, CA 94720
Speakers/Performers: Apichatpong Weerasethakul; Hilton Als, English, UC Berkeley
Sponsor: Townsend Center for the Humanities
Filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul, the 2022-23 Una’s Lecturer, is joined in conversation by writer and UC Berkeley teaching professor Hilton Als.
Wednesday, April 12, 2023
Redress and Reparations: Black/Asian Intersections
Colloquium: Center for Japanese Studies | April 12 | 12-1:30 p.m. | Zoom + in-person location TBD
Speakers/Performers: Jovan Scott Lewis, Associate Professor of Geography, UC Berkeley; Donald K. Tamaki, Senior Counsel at Minami Tamaki LLP
Sponsors: Asian American Research Center, African American and African Diaspora Studies, Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies, Institute of Governmental Studies
California’s task force on reparations documents multi-generational harm to African Americans and recommends reparations. The task force builds on the successful organizing for redress for Japanese American incarceration. This event illuminates the connections between Asian American and Black American communities and suggests how people can get involved in this growing reparations movement.
Registration info: For more information and to register for the Zoom Webinar.
Thursday, April 13, 2023
Theravada Cosmology In and Out of History
Lecture: Center for Southeast Asia Studies | April 13 | 5 p.m. | 3335 Dwinelle Hall
Speaker/Performer: Alastair Gornall, Singapore University of Technology and Design
Sponsors: Center for Buddhist Studies, Glorisun Global Buddhist Network
European-language scholarship on Theravada Buddhism still needs a systematic study of cosmology. This neglect of cosmology contrasts with the interests of Theravada scholar-monks in history, who, over two
Friday, April 14, 2023
Networks and Knowledge in Southeast Asia
Conference/Symposium: Center for Southeast Asia Studies | April 14 | 8:45 a.m.-4 p.m. | International House, Home Room
Sponsors: Center for Southeast Asia Studies, UCLA Center for Southeast Asian Studies
This conference is hosted by the Center for Southeast Asia Studies at UC Berkeley and the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at UCLA - a consortium U.S. Department of Education Title VI National Resource Center for Southeast Asia. It is free and open to the public.
Day 1: Hearing Things--Non-Human Voices in Chinese Literary and Visual Culture
Conference/Symposium: Center for Chinese Studies | April 14 | 9 a.m.-5:15 p.m. | Institute of East Asian Studies (Golden Bear Center, 1995 University Ave., 5th floor), IEAS Conference Room
Sponsors: Center for Chinese Studies (CCS), Department of East Asian Languages & Cultures, Townsend Center for the Humanities, Advanced Institute for Global Chinese Studies of Lingnan University (Hong Kong)
Lecture: Center for Southeast Asia Studies | April 14 | 5-6:30 p.m. | Faculty Club, Heyns Room
Featured Speaker: Jack Meng-Tat Chia, Assistant Professor of History and Religious Studies, National University of Singapore
Sponsors: Center for Southeast Asia Studies, UCLA Center for Southeast Asian Studies
Using Nanputuo Monastery as a case study, this keynote lecture explores the transregional Buddhist connections between southeast China and maritime Southeast Asia from the turn of the twentieth century to 1949. It argues that new patterns of Buddhist mobility contributed to the circulation of people, ideas, and resources across the South China Sea.
Attendance restrictions: If you require an accommodation for effective communication (ASL interpreting/CART captioning, alternative media formats, etc.) in order to fully participate in this event, please contact cseas@berkeley.edu with as much advance notice as possible and at l
Saturday, April 15, 2023
Networks and Knowledge in Southeast Asia
Conference/Symposium: Center for Southeast Asia Studies | April 15 | 9 a.m.-5 p.m. | International House, Home Room
Sponsors: Center for Southeast Asia Studies, UCLA Center for Southeast Asian Studies
This conference is hosted by the Center for Southeast Asia Studies at UC Berkeley and the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at UCLA - a consortium U.S. Department of Education Title VI National Resource Center for Southeast Asia. It is free and open to the public.
Day 2: Hearing Things--Non-Human Voices in Chinese Literary and Visual Culture
Conference/Symposium: Center for Chinese Studies | April 15 | 10 a.m.-4:45 p.m. | Institute of East Asian Studies (Golden Bear Center, 1995 University Ave., 5th floor), IEAS Conference Room
Sponsors: Center for Chinese Studies (CCS), Hearing Things--Non-Human Voices in Chinese Literary and Visual Culture, Department of East Asian Languages & Cultures, Townsend Center for the Humanities
Sunday, April 16, 2023
Performing Arts - Music: Center for Southeast Asia Studies | April 16 | 3 p.m. | Hertz Concert Hall
Sponsor: Department of Music
Midiyanto, Music Director
Shadow Theater
Javanese Shadow theater of Mahabharata episode.
Safety
The UC Berkeley Department of Music is committed to the health and safety of our students, staff, and patrons. Measures to protect concertgoers and musicians will be informed by state, local, and UC Berkeley Public Health policies and are subject to change. Social distancing,... More >
Tickets required: $16 general public, $12 Seniors, Faculty/Staff, Non-UCB Students, Groups 10+, $5 UCB Students, Children under 12 at door
Ticket info:
Monday, April 17, 2023
Colloquium: Center for Korean Studies: Center for Japanese Studies: Institute of East Asian Studies | April 17 | 4 p.m. | Institute of East Asian Studies (Golden Bear Center, 1995 University Ave., 5th floor), IEAS Conference Room
Speaker: Leif-Eric Easley, Associate Professor of International Studies, Ewha University
Moderator: Daniel Sargent, Associate Professor of History & Public Policy, UC Berkeley
Sponsors: Institute of East Asian Studies (IEAS), Institute of International Studies, Center for Japanese Studies (CJS), Center for Korean Studies (CKS)
North Korea’s nuclear missile threats and China’s assertive foreign policy make cooperation between Seoul and Tokyo more critical than ever. Ties are often strained over history but are better maintained than either side is given credit. Political elites practice restraint to limit nationalist recriminations. Both governments calibrate policies toward Beijing while avoiding divergence from each... More >
Thursday, April 20, 2023
Epidemic Politics in Contemporary Vietnam: Public Health and the State
Lecture: Center for Southeast Asia Studies | April 20 | 4-5:30 p.m. | 223 Moses Hall
Speaker: Martha Lincoln, Assistant Professor of Medical and Cultural Anthropology, San Francisco State University
Sponsor: Center for Southeast Asia Studies
In this talk, anthropologist Martha Lincoln will discuss her new book, which presents an anthropological analysis of the political, economic, and infrastructural inputs to urban cholera epidemics in Hanoi. A final chapter reflects on the experience of COVID-19 in Vietnam in 2020 and 2021.
Friday, April 21, 2023
Li He 李賀 (790-816) and the Varieties of Song in Medieval Chinese Lyric
Colloquium: Center for Chinese Studies | April 21 | 4-5:30 p.m. | Institute of East Asian Studies (Golden Bear Center, 1995 University Ave., 5th floor), IEAS Conference Room
Speaker: Robert Ashmore, Associate Professor, EALC, UC Berkeley
Sponsor: Center for Chinese Studies (CCS)
Li He 李賀 (790-816) has seemed something of a “problem poet” almost from his own lifetime, with a style often deemed obscure or even hermetic. A useful place to begin reflecting on the problems of Li He is the rather distinctive genre category that was attached to his collected lyrics from the earliest times: geshi 歌詩, or “song-poem.” The Poetry of Li He, a new addition... More >
Sunday, April 23, 2023
Film - Feature: Center for Chinese Studies | April 23 | 12 p.m. | Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
Sponsor: Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
Rooth Tang
United States, 2023
A divisive character who dedicated her life to improving conditions in her community, Rose Pak was San Francisco’s atypical kingmaker. An immigrant from China, she started as a journalist and activist but found her greatest success as a controversial power broker who collaborated with Mayors Willie Brown, Gavin Newsom, and Ed Lee. She fought unsuccessfully against... More >
Monday, April 24, 2023
[Zoom Webinar] Film Discussion: Bad Women of China
Panel Discussion: Center for Chinese Studies | April 24 | 4-5:30 p.m. | Zoom Webinar
Panelist/Discussants: Xiaopei He, Film Director; Lisa Rofel, Professor Emerita, Anthropology, UC Santa Cruz; Xiyin Wang, Professor of Education, Beijing Normal University
Moderator: Yan Long, Assistant Professor of Sociology, UC Berkeley
Sponsor: Center for Chinese Studies (CCS)
... More >
RSVP info: Zoom Webinar.
The Ice Cream Sellers: Movie Screening and Q&A with film director Sohel Rahman
Film - Documentary: Center for Southeast Asia Studies | April 24 | 5-7 p.m. | Stephens Hall, 10 (ISAS Conference Room)
Speaker: Sohel Rahman, Director
Sponsors: The Subir and Malini Chowdhury Center for Bangladesh Studies, Institute for South Asia Studies
A screening of a documentary on the Rohingya.
Sunday, April 30, 2023
Presentation | April 30 | 12 p.m. | Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
Sponsor: Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
Noted Tibetan artist Tsherin Sherpa presents BAMPFA’s 2023 endowed Lijin Lecture in conjunction with the exhibition Endless Knot: Struggle and Healing in the Buddhist World. He will focus on present day Himalayan art and its connections with traditional arts.
Nepal-born Sherpa currently divides his time between California and Kathmandu, where he has established the Himalayan Art Initiative to... More >
Wednesday, May 3, 2023
Noon Concert: Balinese Gamelan
Performing Arts - Music: Center for Southeast Asia Studies | May 3 | 12 p.m. | Hertz Concert Hall
Sponsor: Department of Music
Lisa Gold, director
Admission to all Noon Concerts is free. Registration is recommended at music.berkeley.edu/register.
Safety
The UC Berkeley Department of Music is committed to the health and safety of our students, staff, and patrons. Measures to protect... More >
Reservation recommended
Reservation info:
Friday, May 12, 2023
Film - Feature: Center for Southeast Asia Studies | May 12 | 7 p.m. | Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
Sponsor: Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
FEATURING
Jenjira Pongpas Widner, Banlop Lomnoi, Jarinpattra Rueangram, Petcharat Chaiburi,
Weerasethakul returned to his hometown in Isan Province for this suitably mesmeric cine-poem on magic, history, and dreams. In a former school built on an ancient cemetery, a group of soldiers slumbers quietly, victims of a mysterious sleeping sickness. Here a psychic serves as a communicator between... More >
Wednesday, May 31, 2023
Chips war? Global production networks and geopolitics in the post-pandemic US and East Asia
Colloquium: Institute of East Asian Studies | May 31 | 4 p.m. | Institute of East Asian Studies (Golden Bear Center, 1995 University Ave., 5th floor), Conference Room
Moderator: Vinod Aggarwal, Distinguished Professor and Alann P. Bedford Chair in Asian Studies, Political Science, UC Berkeley
Speaker/Performer: Henry Wai-chung Yeung, Distinguished Professor, Department of Geography, National University of Singapore
Sponsors: Institute of East Asian Studies (IEAS), Berkeley APEC Study Center
Based on my forthcoming chapter in Global Value Chain Development Report 2023 and my recent monograph Interconnected Worlds (Stanford University Press, June 2022), this presentation offers some key empirical observations on the highly contested and politicized nature of semiconductor global production networks since the US-China trade war and the Covid-19 pandemic. In this capital-intensive... More >
Monday, August 28
This workshop presents efforts in Japan to develop food and ecoliteracy outreach programs through a full-year practical course of vegetable-garden-based education at the college level.
Tuesday, September 12
In this lecture, Peter van Riel reflects on the history of Indo-Dutch migration, his professional relief work with victims of war from the Dutch East-Indies, and his efforts to preserve their histories in their own words. As a son of an Indo mother, born on Java, and of a Dutch father who was sent to Indonesia in 1946 as a soldier, Peter van Riel is part of the Indo family. This is a relatively large and diverse ethnic minority in the Netherlands counting around 1,2 million. The small history of his parents is a reflection of the major developments in the world in the years shortly after World War II.
Friday, September 15
Joint Colloquium of the Center for Japanese Studies (CJS), University of California, Berkeley
&
Art Research Center (ARC), Ritsumeikan University
Wednesday, September 20
When the Administration of George W. Bush demanded Japanese “boots on the ground” to support its 2003 invasion of Iraq, Prime Minister Jun’ichiro Koizumi responded by deploying a small contingent of Self-Defense Forces in the first significant display of SDF force abroad. On the day following deployment, three antiwar protesters distributed flyers at SDF apartment buildings in Tachikawa. These protesters were arrested shortly after and detained for 75 days. Amnesty International called the Japanese detainees “Prisoners of Conscience,” the first time such a term has been applied to Japan.
Thursday, September 21
How do people understand their connections to the world outside and inside of themselves? What do they do to give that understanding substance in practice? This is the prolegomena to a study of “learning,” as five fields of knowledge and modes of practice that unfolded from the Song dynasty into the Qing. I am interested in conceptualizations of fields and norms of practice. The five fields—the physical world, living organisms, institutions, language, and behavior—were cumulative and contestatory. Cumulative because practice created an ever-growing body of artifacts that constituted a field. Contestatory because new conceptualizations challenged the work of earlier figures and contemporaries. Within a field there were shared modes of practice, but there were also problematics that cut across-fields and conceptualization from one field that penetrated others. This project is also intended to broaden our practice of “intellectual history.”
Saturday, September 23
This workshop aims to promote transdisciplinary conversations on the theory and practice of agroecology in the context of a broader discussion of historical ecology with a focus on the importance of revitalizing traditional ecological knowledge.
Sunday, September 24
Renowned artist and human rights activist Ai Weiwei discusses life, art, and politics in a conversation with respected director Peter Sellars and Orville Schell, Director of the Center on US-China Relations at the Asia Society. Ai’s unprecedented installation on Alcatraz in 2014–15, @Large, left an enduring mark on the Bay Area’s cultural landscape. In this talk, Ai will address issues of exile, imprisonment, repression, and advocacy that have infused his personal life and artistic work with fellow artist Sellars, himself an avid student of Chinese history and culture, and Schell, a leading expert on China and the Far East. This program continues a series of campus talks about China led by Schell, who is former Dean at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.
In this profoundly affecting and precisely detailed study of the familial and psychological effects of rapid industrial change, first-time feature director Kavich Neang creates a film of tactile vividness and otherworldly beauty. Samnang (Piseth Chhun), his family, and his friends live in the White Building, a landmark tenement in Phnom Penh that is slated to be demolished. Moving between hushed realism and dreamlike interiority, White Building announces major new talents in both Neang and star Chhun, who won the 2021 Venice Film Festival’s Horizons Award for Best Actor for a performance of finely balanced sensitivity and charisma.
Monday, September 25
Wednesday, September 27
Alan Tansman traces the rich history of Japanese literature, which encompasses a vast range of forms and genres stretching back nearly 1500 years.
Thursday, September 28
The popular image of the international student in the American imagination is one of affluence, access, and privilege, but is that image accurate? In this provocative book, higher education scholar Stephanie Kim challenges this view, arguing that universities – not the students – create the paths that allow students their international mobility.
This lecture elucidates the formation and development of theories of action in school reforms for Schools as Learning Communities (SLC) during ten years from its inception in 1998 in select Japanese elementary schools, junior high schools, and one secondary school. While growing international interest in Japanese lesson study is in pursuit of a standard lesson study, Suzuki offers a unique perspective into school reforms for SLC and how they resisted the standardization of lesson study out of concerns that it would limit a teacher’s autonomous judgment and choice.
Saturday, September 30
Rithy Panh’s harrowing inquiry into the lives and deaths of two casualties of the Pol Pot regime—Hout Bophana and her husband, Ly Sitha, an ex-Buddhist monk and former Khmer Rouge soldier—is the namesake of the audiovisual resource center Panh founded in Phnom Penh a decade after making this film. Bophana also means “flower.” The film is pieced together from the couple’s correspondence, forced confessions, and other chilling evidence. Today Bophana’s haunting photograph takes its place with hundreds of others covering the walls of S-21, the former high school and dreaded interrogation center that is now a genocide museum in Phnom Penh.
Thursday, October 5
How does a 5-year-old girl navigate deep loss after a tragic car accident leaves her motherless? Charting a lifelong process of sifting through grief and rediscovering hope, Memoirs of a Mask Maker honors the women who stepped in to help the girl stitch together a beautiful life—a grandmother, a neighbor and a pharmacist in Japan...
The rise of tantric ritual in the seventh and eighth centuries marked a paradigm shift in Indian religious thinking. Other scholars have enumerated the many ways that Buddhist practice was altered, from the practitioner identifying with the deity, to the rise of new forms of secrecy, mandalas, mudrās, mantras, and more. In his new book, Conjuring the Buddha, Jacob Dalton takes a more literary approach to these events....
“Davy Chou’s Golden Slumbers finds the few Cambodians who can recall the 1960-75 heyday of that nation’s cinema and tenderly listens to their stories.” — Hollywood Reporter
The Khmer Rouge’s reign of terror and genocide also decimated a homegrown film industry that had flourished since 1960: movie theaters were bombed, film prints were destroyed, and artists were executed. Filmmaker Davy Chou mourns this loss of lives and culture, but balances the somber material with a playfulness that honors the lush melodramas and mythic adventures of the Cambodian film industry’s glory years. Chou’s documentary is a séance of sorts, summoning the spirits of films past and finding remnants in the present through the reminiscences of surviving filmmakers and actors and, poignantly, through song.
Friday, October 6
Sopheap Chea and Stephen Gong in Conversation
Over the course of the past decade, the Bophana Center has been actively involved in training programs for emerging filmmakers under the supervision of Rithy Panh. This program opens with Bophana: Shadows and Lights, depicting the work of the audiovisual center, followed by three shorts—Lady Stone, The Destiny, and Shoes—made for the One Dollar Project, with its goal of sharing the stories of individuals living on extremely limited resources. A second trio of films—Cyclo, Cambodian Heritage; On the Move; and Ice-cream—were generated by an initiative to develop filmmakers working in the rural provinces of Cambodia. Sound of the Night follows two brothers who sell noodles from a motorized cart on the streets of Phnom Penh.
Monday, October 9
Morning session: Banatao Auditorium Sutardja Dai Hall
Lunch and Afternoon session: MLK West Pauley Ballroom
Wednesday, October 11
Masako Tanaka will present findings from a study that highlights changes in contraceptive use among migrants to Japan from five Asian countries: China, Vietnam, Nepal, Indonesia, and Myanmar. She argues against Japan’s current migration policy and poor reproductive health services
Meet our new colleagues focusing on South Asian art in the Bay Area and learn about their cutting edge research.
Sonali Dhingra (the Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in Buddhist Studies): Making Monumental Figural Sculpture at Ratnagiri, Odisha (ca. 8th-10th centuries)
Padma Dorje Maitland (Malavalli Family Foundation Associate Curator, the Asian Art Museum): Emotional Fragments and Modern Networks of Buddhist Materiality in India
Monday, October 16
In Myanmar’s first and only country-wide environmental movement, Indigenous women activists and punk rock pastors defend a sacred river from a Chinese-built megadam through protest, prayer, and Karaoke music videos.
Tuesday, October 17
Pio Abad, artist and curator of the estate of Pacita Abad (1946 – 2004), looks at her artistic practice through the political convulsions that unravelled around her – from the first years of the Marcos dictatorship to the fall of the Suharto regime. At the heart of Pacita’s pioneering artistic work are her trapuntos, a form of quilted painting the artist originated by stitching and stuffing her painted canvases as opposed to stretching them over a wood frame.
Thursday, October 19
The postwar occupations of Germany and Japan were significant periods for the history of Europe and East Asia alike. They have both been thoroughly researched on their own right, yet until to date historical scholarship has hardly ever considered putting the history of both occupations into conversation, whether from comparative or entangled history perspectives. This talk, on the contrary, explores opportunities and challenges of writing a “geteilte Geschichte”—meaning both shared and divided history—of occupied Germany and Japan with a particular focus on the experience of the occupation period in peoples’ everyday life, race, gender, and sexuality.
The Bancroft Library Roundtable presents “Centering Philippine and Filipinx American Histories: Selections from The Bancroft Library.”
Panel discussion with exhibition curators, moderated by José Adrián Barragán-Álvarez, curator of Latin Americana, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley
Zoom presentation
Register to attend at ucberk.li/filipinx
In this presentation, Professor Bassoe will discuss the development of the idea of literature of the fantastic, or gensō bungaku, as a cohesive genre in the 1970s.
Elvera Kwang Siam Lim Memorial Lecture
Friday, October 20
Conceptually examining remittances as money, but also gifts, this book talk illustrates how Vietnam’s particular postwar refugee and remittance histories and channels exacerbate inherent contradictions in the mobile flows of finance, people, goods and services across borders that characterize globalization.
Thursday, October 26
The novel Xixiang ji yanyi by Yu Xuelun (1892-1967) is a narrative retelling of the romantic story between scholar Zhang and Cui Yingying, based on the Tang novella Huizhen ji, the Yuan play Xixiang ji, and the seventeenth century commentary by Jin Shengtan (1608-1661). The novel, published in Shanghai in 1918 and then reprinted several times in the following years, served as the model for two other narrative retellings of premodern plays penned by fellow friends of Yu Xuelun, the Pipa ji yanyi (1918) and the Taohua shan yanyi (1919), and was later transmitted to Korea (1925).
Through a comparative analysis of Yu’s work and its premodern sources, this talk will discuss the three dimensions that inform the process of textual production in the narrative retelling (yanyi) through the interplay between narrative elaboration, translation and intertextuality, and will consider its cultural value in the context of early twentieth-century China.
Barbara Bisetto (PhD) is associate professor of Chinese language and literature at the University of Verona, Italy. Her research interest lies in the field of premodern literature. She has published articles and chapters
on suicide in Ming literature, emotions and the Ming anthology Qingshi, and commentary, intralingual translation and rewriting practices in the premodern period. Currently, she is working on a project on yanyi
in Chinese literature and on the translation of the Yuan novella Jiao Hong zhuan.
An Inquiry into the Functions of Abhiṣeka
The ritual of initiation (abhiṣeka)—more correctly signifying lustration or invivification of an individual—is an essential feature of the esoteric Buddhist tradition, first adapted from the rites associated with royal coronation or ritual consecration. Abhiṣeka was employed as a gateway rite, perhaps since the late sixth or early seventh century, and over time developed extraordinary complexity, both in the country of its origin and its diaspora through Central and East Asia.
Friday, October 27
The King’s Road offers a new interpretation of the history of the Silk Road, emphasizing its importance as a diplomatic route, rather than a commercial one.
Sunday, October 29
Carving the Divine: Buddhist Sculptors of Japan
Yujiro Seki
United States, Japan, 2020
Monday, October 30
Thursday, November 2
This talk is co-sponsored by Department of History, UC Berkeley.
Friday, November 3
This workshop brings together an international group of scholars to share recent research on the ancient oasis of Kucha with specific attention paid to its visual and material culture. One of the aims of the workshop is to publish a concise volume for both a scholarly and general public audience as part of a series on individual oases/regions along the Silk Road.
Saturday, November 4
This workshop brings together an international group of scholars to share recent research on the ancient oasis of Kucha with specific attention paid to its visual and material culture. One of the aims of the workshop is to publish a concise volume for both a scholarly and general public audience as part of a series on individual oases/regions along the Silk Road.
The Saturday session will be remote, via Zoom
Wednesday, November 8
Does taking a global perspective on Indigenous peoples advance understanding of local situations? What issues do the world’s Indigenous peoples have in common, and how can conversations across boundaries help illuminate similarities and differences? This roundtable brings together scholars who work in North America, Central America, Africa, and Asia to engage in a conversation around these questions.
Thursday, November 9
Foregrounding the story of diplomatic gifts exchanged between these two rival courts, Gifts in the Age of Empire demonstrates the central role of visual and material culture in shaping the relationship of two rival Muslim courts. By placing gifts at the center of diplomacy, it sheds light on their function as broader tools of art, politics, warfare and religion.
Buddhist Philosophy of the Emotions: Solitude (viveka)
2023 Numata Lecture in Buddhist Philosophy
Tuesday, November 14
Public Talk by the Honorable Anwar Ibrahim, Prime Minister of Malaysia: Super Power Rivalry and Rising Tensions in the Asia Pacific: The View from Southeast Asia
Wednesday, November 15
Classical and Contemporary Works
Midiyanto, director
We are delighted to welcome Minister Nishimura, who will sit for a fireside chat with Haas Acting Dean Jenny Chatman. Minister Nishimura will then unveil a collaboration between the government of Japan and UC-Berkeley to foster entrepreneurship in Japan!
Thursday, November 16
Author Nay Saysourinho shares from her poetry chapbook, The Capture of Krao Farini, which explores the consequences of being both the Other and the Exceptional, and how this fraught position continues to bolster colonialism, elitism and capitalism.
Friday, November 17
Join author Patricia Evangelista in conversation with faculty member Lisandro Claudio to learn more about Evangelista’s new best-selling memoir, Some People Need Killing: A Memoir of Murder in My Country, which examines the brutality and injustices of former president Rodridgo Duterte’s war on drugs in the Philippines.
Thursday, November 30
Friday, December 1
Thursday, December 7
The interconnected mountain ranges of Central Asia served as a corridor of diffusion across prehistoric Asia, facilitating the spread of people, ideas, cultural trappings, as well as plants and animals. After the formation of a more organized trans-Eurasian exchange, what we colloquially refer to as the Silk Road, an even greater repertoire of items and technologies spread though these mountain valleys.
Reiki, Japanese Buddhism, and Imperial Veneration in the Transwar North Pacific
Justin B. Stein, Kwantlen Polytechnic University
Friday, December 8
This talk aims to offer a perspective on the nuclear ecology of Japan that does not begin or end with a divide between ecology and economy, nuclear energy and nuclear warfare, or national and global orders.