Month: May 2019

Translating Premodern Chinese Buddhist Texts

Yueling Ji Leave a Comment
Public Lecture on Translating Premodern Chinese Buddhist Texts:
Five Ways of Reading Chinese Buddhist History  
Professor John Kieschnick, Stanford University
Please note special time and location：
Saturday, 5/25, 9AM-12PM, Cobb Hall 110, followed by a catered lunch

Led by Professor John Kieschnick, this workshop will take as its starting point the chapter on recitation from the tenth-century collection Song Biographies of Eminent Monks (宋高僧傳‧讀誦篇).Professor Kieschnick will introduce genres of Buddhist historical writing in China, the composite nature of Chinese historiography, the Buddhist canon in China and other topics useful for understanding the material. The goal is, by focusing on one specific example of Buddhist historiography, to provide an overview of the genre and inspire participants to explore new ways of understanding it.
There is no pre-circulated text for this event. The event will be followed by a catered lunch fromLotus Cafe and Bahn Mi Sandwiches. We look forward to seeing you there!

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Jun Hee Lee (PhD Candidate, History)
In Chorus with Cold War Allies: the Rise and Fall of the Utagoe Movement’s National Music Paradigm


Date and Time: Friday, May 24th, 3-5 p.m.
Location: CEAS 319, (1155 60th Street)
Discussant: Sabine Schulz (EALC, PhD Student)

Please join us for the final Arts and Politics of East Asia Workshop next Friday, May 24th at 3-5 PM. We are proud to be hosting Jun Hee Lee (History, PhD Candidate) as he presents a draft of his dissertation chapter, “In Chorus with Cold War Allies: the Rise and Fall of the Utagoe Movement’s National Music Paradigm.” Jun Hee offers us the following abstract:

From its humble origins as a choral group within the Japan Communist Party’s youth association, Nihon no Utagoe gained prominence and notoriety through the 1950s as a singing movement of national scale, giving birth to multitudes of choruses across workplaces and localities in Japan. Since the early 1950s, Utagoe began calling for the creation of “national music” (kokumin ongaku) – a body of music befitting a democratic Japan that was to stand in opposition to “decadent” culture instigated by the mass media and American imperialism. While the term had prewar and even wartime precedents, Utagoe’s national music had both “Japanese” and foreign reference points, including Soviet/Russian songs and later American folk music. In the 1950s and 1960s, Russian and Soviet music served as an example of national music which Utagoe’s leadership figures sought to emulate. American folk music, on the other hand, turned out to be a mixed blessing towards the end of the 1960s, as it caused a serious division within Utagoe over how to treat the “commercialized” version of the genre produced in both the United States and Japan. By examining manners in which individuals and groups from Utagoe translated and incorporated songs from the two Cold War super powers, this dissertation chapter illustrates how the “national music” paradigm informed Utagoe’s musical and political worldview in both domestic and international contexts for the first two decades of the movement (1953-1973), during which Utagoe cultivated its self-image as a part of (socialist) international solidarity against American imperialism and its aggression toward national cultures.

Yiren Zheng

Yueling Ji Leave a Comment
Yiren Zheng (PhD Candidate, EALC)
Listening to Sonic Excess in 17th Century China
Discussant: William Carroll (PhD, CMS & EALC)
Friday, May 10, 3-5PM
Special location: ​EALC Seminar Room, Wieboldt Hall 301N
Followed by a catered dinner from La Petite Folie


On May 10 from 3PM to 5PM, the Art and Politics of East Asia Workshop will host Yiren Zheng (PhD candidate, EALC). Yiren will present a chapter of her dissertation, “Listening to Sonic Excess in 17th Century China.” Yiren offers the following abstract:

 
This chapter traces an unexplored discourse centered on forms of sonic excess embedded in 17th-century classical Chinese writings. The sonic excess includes both excessive sounding and excessive listening, which urge us to rethink the norms of sound-making and listening. By observing how several writers in the late Ming and the early Qing, including Pan Zhiheng (1556-1622), Chen Ding (1650-?) and Pu Songling (1640-1715) imagined forms of sonic excess, this chapter examines how speech became a problem through accidental and unexpected confrontations with alternative forms of communication.