Janet Poole

Tuesday, April 26, 11 p.m.-1 p.m. in CEAS 319 (1155 E 60th St)

Tuesday, April 26, 11 a.m.-1 p.m. in CEAS 319 (1155 E 60th St)

Janet Poole, “A New World?: Midcentury Modernisms on the Korean Peninsula”

We have invited Professor Janet Poole, the 2015 Modernist Studies Association Book Prize Winner, from the University of Toronto to give a very special lecture at APEA. A summary of the talk can be found below. Please note the unusual meeting time.

This talk takes an exploratory look at two writers—Yi T’aejun and Ch’oe Myŏngik—and their work from the late colonial and early post-Liberation periods. Acknowledged as masterly modernists during the colonial era, their work from the late 1940s is usually understood as having regressed under the influence of the North Korean society to which they moved (in the case of Yi) or stayed (Ch’oe) as the peninsula was partitioned by competing states. But can we think of their work through the era of the Asia-Pacific and Korean Wars as forming part of an ongoing modernist project?

There will be no pre-distributed paper for this talk. If you have concerns about accessibility, please contact David Krolikoski at davidkroli at uchicago.edu or Brian White at bmwhite at uchicago.edu.

Han Zhang

Han Zhang, “Philological Jiangnan: The Practice of Wu Dialect in the Works of Drama in Late Imperial China”

Han Zhang will present a work-in-progress version of one of her dissertation chapters. She summarizes the chapter as follows.

In 1684, after winning a complete victory over the revolt of the three Han feudatories and consolidating Manchu rule over mainland China, Emperor Kangxi soon launched his first southern inspection tour. In Suzhou, the emperor grabbed the earliest opportunity he had to indulge in a Kunqun opera performance. The emperor’s infatuation with Kunqu, captured in a contemporary Shanghai native and Ming sympathizer’s diary, obviously contains extravagant historical and political implications worthy of decoding. This paper focuses on the dual indexicality of Kunqu as a unique art and cultural genre in the Qing dynasty. Kunqu, in the historical trajectory, is a highly refined, artistic representation of the classic and entertaining cultural inheritance passed down from the late Ming, while in the geopolitical dimension, it bears an inseverable philological connection to Jiangnan, the thorny area that once held the most persistent resistance to the Manchu conquest. By examining the practice of the Wu dialect, the alleged linguistic foundation of Kunqu composition and vocalization, in the works of drama in late imperial China, this paper intends to gain a further understanding of the actual use of the Chinese language(s) in a multi-lingual and multi-media context. Moreover, this study aims to complicate and challenge the prevailing time-dominant narrative of the vernacularizing history of the Chinese language(s) and literary writing, bringing the discussion of language into intrinsically connected spatiotemporal formations.

A draft of Han’s chapter is available at this link. If you have not received the password for the post, or if you have concerns about accessibility, please feel free to contact David Krolikoski at davidkroli at uchicago.edu or Brian White at bmwhite at uchicago.edu.

Spring 2016 Schedule

Harris School/Center for East Asian Studies, 1155 E 60th St

Harris School/Center for East Asian Studies, 1155 E 60th St

Unless otherwise noted our workshop meets from 3-5 p.m. at 1155 E 60th St (60th and Woodlawn) in Room 319.

Spring 2016 Schedule

April 15 (F), Han Zhang (East Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago)

April 26 (T), 11 a.m.-1 p.m., Janet Poole (Associate Professor, East Asian Studies, University of Toronto) * note time and date

May 6 (F), Junko Yamazaki (Cinema and Media Studies/East Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago)

May 20 (F), William Feeney (Anthropology, University of Chicago)

May 27 (F), Documentary Roundtable

June 3 (F), Anne Rebull (East Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago)

If you are interested in presenting at the workshop, please contact David Krolikoski (davidkroli at uchicago.edu) or Brian White (bmwhite at uchicago.edu).