East Asia: Workshops and Colloquia
Workshops are an important aspect of graduate training at the University of Chicago, bringing together students, faculty, and outside speakers. The Japan-related workshops for 2004-2005 include the following:
Art and Politics of East Asia
Faculty sponsors: Kyeong-Hee Choi, Gregory Golley, Michael Raine
Coordinators: Jae-Yon Lee (jaelee@uchicago.edu), Yoon Sun Yang (yysys@uchicago.edu)
Website: http://cas.uchicago.edu/workshops/apea/
Meeting: Alternate Fridays from 3-5 pm in Judd 313. The Art and Politics of East Asia Workshop is intended as a forum for students and scholars of diverse fields investigating the interaction of aesthetics with political economics as reflected in textual and visual media in East Asia. In East Asia and elsewhere, proletarian and avant-garde writers and artists frequently used interdisciplinary approaches in their work critical of colonialism, capitalism, politics, and the role of art in a world influenced by the experimental culture of the Soviet Union and avant-garde currents from Europe. The international dimension of the various left-wing and avant-garde movements and the cultural specificity of proletarian and avant-garde literature and art in China, Japan, and Korea created historical tensions that often influenced its reception and critique. Through presentations by students and scholars, we will discuss and analyze interrelated literary and artistic developments in China, Japan, and Korea as we rethink historical and theoretical issues including gender, class, aesthetics, literary authority, political agency, and the role of the intellectual in society.
East Asia: Trans-Regional Histories
Faculty sponsors: Presenjit Duara, Gregory Golley, James Ketelaar
Coordinators: Grace Chae (gchae@uchicago.edu), Tanya Maus (tsmaus@uchicago.edu)
Website: http://people.cs.uchicago.edu/~tsmaus/goodmaus/eatrans-regionalhist/
Meeting: 1st and 3rd Friday of each month from 3-5 pm. Location to be announced.
This workshop invites University of Chicago graduate students and faculty, as well as scholars from other academic communities to present creative and original work that speaks across the national lines of East Asia as well as the disciplinary lines of the academic community. Joint presentations among participants that engage multi-disciplinary and/or trans-regional historical perspectives as well as questions of historical methodology are especially encouraged.
While recognizing the continuing importance of the nation-state in historical understanding, we believe that it is equally important to give exposure to themes of a transnational and regional/global nature that have been obscured by the national paradigm. Such approaches can prove particularly fruitful when undertaken at a level of understanding beyond traditional departmental and specialty boundaries.
East Asia: Politics, Economy and Society
Faculty sponsors: William Parish, Dali L. Yang, Dingxin Zhao
Coordinator: Xiaotian Zhang (jxzhang@uchicago.edu)
Website: http://cas.uchicago.edu/workshops/eastasia
This workshop focuses on current social science research on East Asia societies, particularly the People’s Republic of China, Korea, Taiwan, and Japan. The scope of the workshop is truly interdisciplinary, as we attract students and faculty from political science, sociology, economics, anthropology, and various other areas. The workshop features presentations by university faculty members, graduate students, and guest speakers working on East Asia at other institutions. Graduate students are especially encouraged to present their thesis and dissertation research.
Literature and Cultural History in Early Modern East Asia
Faculty sponsors: Susan Burns, Judith Zeitlin
Coordinators: Fumiko Joo (fumikoj@uchicago.edu), Su-young Son (son@uchicago.edu)
Website:
This workshop aims to explore the cross-disciplinary and trans-regional understanding of literature and cultural history in early modern East Asia. In close relation with other disciplines such as art, religion, and philosophy, we will mainly examine the literary and cultural representations and practices that emerged over the fourteenth to the nineteenth centuries. In this period, people, things, and ideas were vigorously transmitted beyond national borders; Ming-Qing China, Tokugawa Japan, and Choson Korea were not isolated entites but actively interacted with each other. While focusing on the flow of cultural productions and ideas across regional boundaries, we will also discuss theoretical and historical issues such as the reformation of gender and sexuality, performance and popular culture, literati and self-representation, book publishing and print culture, and the interaction of literary and visual images.
Visual and Material Perspectives on East Asia
Faculty Sponsors: Jennifer Purtle, Hans Thomsen
Student Coordinators: Catherine Stuer (cstuer@uchicago.edu), Wang Yudong (ywang12@uchicago.edu)
Website: http://cas.uchicago.edu/workshops/vmpea
This workshop is focused on the study of material or visual objects from East Asia (defined broadly to include China, Central Asia, Tibet, Korea, and Japan, and other regions, depending on student interest). It explores the possible uses of recent theories of art, history, and material and visual culture in the study of East Asia. Presentations of studies of objects and visual materials from a variety of historical periods and geographical locations within East Asia serve as case studies for the exploration of such methodological concerns. The workshop consists of roughly two-thirds student presentations and one-third outside speakers.