Author: campus

Feb.12 Presentation: Jae-Yon Lee “Criticism in the Making”

campus

Art and Politics of East Asia Workshop presents: 

 Criticism in the Making: The Co-Emergence of the Social and the Literary

in Kaebyŏk (The opening of the world, 1920-26)

(Please click here to read the paper)

Jae-Yon Lee

(PhD Candidate, EALC)

 With a Response Offered by

Sei-Jin Chang

(Visiting Scholar, University of Chicago) 

 

February 12 (Friday) 

3:00-5:00 p.m.

Judd Hall 313

5835 South Kimbark Avenue

Chicago, IL 60637

Abstract

My third chapter investigates the structure, as well as the historical structuring of, literary criticism through the analyses of a general-interest magazine, Kaebyŏk (The opening of the world, 1920-26). Published by the nascent religious sect, Chŏndogyŏ (Heavenly way), it also carried many texts on Marxism, reports on social affairs and literary works alongside religious essays. While considering criticism as the main mode of writing which interrelated the co-emergence of the social and the literary in the magazine, I pursue three projects. The first is to trace the trajectories of criticism where its subcategories of a social critique, a literary treatise, and practical criticism arose and interacted together in three historical phases. Secondly, I investigate what contributed to the dynamic interrelation of the three kinds of criticism through revealing how the magazine’s key contributors, such as the Chŏndogyo theorist Yi Tonhwa (1884-?) and Marxist commentators Kim Kijin (1903-1985) and Pak Yŏnghŭi (1901-?), struggled together to find a vision of society as a whole.

A constellation of critical insights they collectively endeavored to construct, which I call “the base of criticism,” played a substantive role in defining what comprised the literary in the magazine. Finally, I aim to illustrate that the base of criticism in Kaebyŏk served as the precursor to the criticism of sin kyŏnghyangp’a munhak (New Tendency Literature), a new genre that emerged in 1924 and 1925 the literary implications of which were considered to be the ushering in of full-fledged proletariat literature in later periods.

If you would like to be added to our mailing list and receive workshop updates, please contact jiyoung22@uchicago.edu

Faculty sponsors: Michael Bourdaghs, Paola Iovene 

The workshop is sponsored by the Center for East Asian Studies and the Council on Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences. Persons with a disability who believe they may need assistance, please contact Ji Young Kim (jiyoung22@uchicago.edu) or Ling Zhang (ling1@uchicago.edu)

January 22 Talk by Professor Miho Matsugu

campus

Art and Politics of East Asia Workshop presents:

“The Way I Think is My Own. I’m Neither Feminist Nor Lesbian”: Some Questions on Murakami Haruki’s 1Q84 [ichi-kyû-hachi-yon]

(to read the paper, click here)

Miho Matsugu

 (Assistant Professor, DePaul University)

with a response offered by 

Jae Yon Lee

(Ph.D. Candidate, EALC, University of Chicago)

 

January 22 (Friday) 

3:00-5:00 p.m.

Judd Hall 313

5835 South Kimbark Avenue

Chicago, IL 60637

 

 ABSTRACT

 In this presentation, I explore how Murakami Haruki gives the heroine of his 2009 work, the million-selling 1Q84 [ichi-kyû-hachi-yon], her individuality by naturalizing the marginalization of lesbian desire and the rejection of lesbian subjectivity. Aomame is a killer of men who abuse women. Her only intimate sexual and emotional relationship was with a woman who was abused by her husband and then committed suicide. But Aomame says she is “neither feminist nor lesbian,” viewing her relationship with the woman as an extension of friendship, and perpetuating her memory as a pure object of nostalgic longing. Like many Murakami protagonists, her lonely, independent and free individuality appears crafted to appeal to readers from around the world; as Rebecca Sutter points out in her book on his literature, Murakami’s characters often try “to be ‘singular’ without falling into particularism or exceptionalism and to construct their selfhood by engaging with otherness.” In Aomame, Murakami uses this familiar tactic – keying off otherness to set up a character — to draw readers into feelings of loss, helplessness, and, finally, healing as an individual. Lesbianism is a source of allure and a tool to dramatize the protagonist’s achievement of becoming an irreplaceable free individual, the hard-boiled “cool and tough” female assassin Aomame.

In reading 1Q84 for this workshop, I will address several questions. How does Murakami’s sentimentalization of the heroine’s lesbian experience mark a political position that both fits into the recent reactionary nationalist movement in Japan and bolsters corporate profits? Oguma Eiji points out that Japan’s last two decades have seen the emergence of new grass-roots conservative populism among unorganized free-floating individuals in urban areas, as symbolized in the rapid increase of independent voters (mutôha-sô). And how does this trend feed Murakami’s huge popularity, as demonstrated by this novel’s massive selling power despite a lackluster publishing environment?

Lastly this is my first attempt to articulate a critical perspective on this most popular and influential Japanese writer whose creations have become mythologies of our time, and no doubt there are holes and ripples in my argument. I will upload my paper for this workshop soon and would greatly appreciate your feedback before or during/after the workshop.

If you would like to be added to our mailing list and receive workshop updates, please contact jiyoung22@uchicago.edu

Faculty sponsors: Michael Bourdaghs, Paola Iovene 

The workshop is sponsored by the Center for East Asian Studies and the Council on Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences. Persons with a disability who believe they may need assistance, please contact Ji Young Kim (jiyoung22@uchicago.edu) or Ling Zhang (ling1@uchicago.edu)

SPECIAL APEA Workshop: Mock Job Talk this Tuesday

campus
 
Art and Politics of East Asia Workshop Presents:

 

A Revolutionary Women’s Culture:

Re-writing Femininity and Women’s Experience in China,

1926-1949
 

 

A Mock Job Talk by Anup Grewal
Ph.D candidate, EALC

 

 

*PLEASE NOTE THE UNUSUAL TIME AND LOCATION

 

Tuesday, November 24
3:30-5:30 p.m.

  

HM 103
(William Rainey Harper Memorial Library

  1116 E. 59th St.)

 

 

There is no paper for this workshop. Come with questions for our scintillating discussion.
Refreshments will be served.
 
Persons with a disability who believe they may need assistance, please email Jiyoung Kim at
jiyoung22@uchicago.edu  and Ling Zhang at ling1@uchicago.edu

Nov. 20th Presentation: Joshua Solomon “Localizing the Imaginary”

campus

Art and Politics of East Asia Workshop presents:

Localizing the Imaginary:

Identifying Discursive Landscapes of the Tsugaru Min’yō Sakaba 

Click here to read the paper 

 Joshua Solomon 

PhD Student,  

Department of East Asian Languages & Civilizations 

 

 With a Response Offered by

Nicholas Harkness

(PhD Candidate, Anthropology, University of Chicago)

 

November 20th (Friday) 

3:00–5:00 p.m.

Judd Hall 313

5835 South Kimbark Avenue

Chicago, IL 60637

 ABSTRACT

In this presentation I use an ethnographic account of the Tsugaru-jamisen folk song bar to contextualize a discussion of the scape-mediated discourse of Tsugaru-as-furusato and its consumption/interpretation by multiple consumer sub-types.  The folk song bars put to analysis are a series of izakaya in Hirosaki, Aomori, in which customers can enjoy nightly live performances of Tsugaru-jamisen, min’yô, and Tsugaru te-odori.

The notion of cultural flows as “scapes” introduced by Appadurai has been developed into discrete categories of cultural exchange.  The scapes—emphasizing the locality of the exchange—overlap and interact as discourses within the site of the folksong bar.  I focus particularly on analyzing the relationship between multiple flows of ethnoscapes in the context of Tsugaru, furusato.  Furusato has been described a constructed and discursive space of reflexive identity making.  The folk song bar is very literal example of this type of imagined space; the imagined furusato within the physical space so often designated (re the lyrical content of enka and folk song) as the site of this discourse.  I would like to consider how the furusato discourse is appropriated and reinterpreted within the furusato itself by identifying the qualities of various ethnoscapes that interact in the site of the folk song bar.

If you would like to be added to our mailing list and receive workshop updates, please contact jiyoung22@uchicago.edu

Faculty sponsors: Michael Bourdaghs, Paola Iovene 

The workshop is sponsored by the Center for East Asian Studies and the Council on Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences. Persons with a disability who believe they may need assistance, please contact Ji Young Kim (jiyoung22@uchicago.edu) or Ling Zhang (ling1@uchicago.edu)

Nov.6th Talk by Professor Gerry Yokota: Theorizing Literature of Millennial Witness

campus

Art and Politics of East Asia Workshop presents:

 

 Theorizing Literature of Millennial Witness:

The Tale of Genji in New Noh by Women

 

Gerry Yokota

(Professor, Osaka University)

 

  With a Response Offered by

Reginald Jackson

(Assistant Professor, EALC, University of Chicago)

 

November 6th (Friday) 

2:00-4:00 p.m.

Judd Hall 313

5835 S. Kimbark Avenue

*******

To read the synopses of Ono no Ukifune and Yume no Ukihashi that will be discussed in the talk,

click here.

 

If you would like to be added to our mailing list and receive workshop updates, please contact jiyoung22@uchicago.edu

Faculty sponsors: Michael Bourdaghs, Paola Iovene 

The workshop is sponsored by the Center for East Asian Studies and the Council on Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences. Persons with a disability who believe they may need assistance, please contact Ji Young Kim (jiyoung22@uchicago.edu) or Ling Zhang (ling1@uchicago.edu)

October 23rd presentation: “Iconoclasm in Self-Expression: Narratives of Love and Guilt”

campus

The Art and Politics of East Asia Workshop is pleased to present:

“Iconoclasm in Self-Expression: Narratives of Love and Guilt”

(the third chapter from her dissertation, “Forbidden Enlightenment: Self-Articulation and Self-Accusation in the Works of Yu Dafu (1896-1945).”)

Valerie Levan

Ph.D.  Candidate

 Department of Comparative Literature

with a response by Scott Mehl (Ph.D student, Department of Comparative Literature)

October 23(Friday) 3:00-5:00 PM 

Room: Judd 313

A summery of  the second section of the paper (pages 20-35):

Section II. Modern Spirits. Modern Flesh?

This section begins with a brief discussion of the “conflict of spirit and flesh” ( ling rou chongtu) as it appeared in the critiques of Yu Dafu’s contemporaries.  First I explore the “conflict of spirit and flesh” as a foreign import that differs from traditional notions of passion/ritual, order (qing/li, li).   The paragraphs that follow are a brief “East-West” comparative discussion of the association of guilt with sex and romance.  I then use these two discussions – of the “conflict of spirit and flesh” and the association of guilt with sex and romance – as the basis for my theory of the modern Chinese male progressive’s romantic predicament circa 1920-1930.  I use Zhang Jingsheng’s (aka Dr. Sex) sexological studies and the famous Ms. Chen debate to illustrate this situation of an educated male public eager for information on modern romance and forced to function in a world of ill-defined romantic moral standards.  

 

If you would like to be added to our mailing list and receive workshop updates, please contact jiyoung22@uchicago.edu

Faculty sponsors: Michael Bourdaghs, Paola Iovene

The workshop is sponsored by the Center for East Asian Studies and the Council on Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences. Persons with a disability who believe they may need assistance, please contact Ji Young Kim (jiyoung22@uchicago.edu) or Ling Zhang (ling1@uchicago.edu)

Writing Ethnicity in Contemporary China October 12 (Monday)

campus

The Art and Politics of East Asia Workshop invites you to attend:

 

Writing Ethnicity in Contemporary China:

A Conversation with Six Writers

We are going to discuss issues such as how these writers bring their own ethnic background into their writing in Chinese, how they deal with the relationship between artistic creation and politics in contemporary China, and so forth. Feel free to bring up related issues which interest you.

We are also going to show some short clips from the Chinese film “Green Tea” (lv cha, 绿茶), which is directed by Sixth Generation director Zhang Yuan (张元) and adapted from a short story written by JIN Renshun 金仁顺, one of the writers who will participate in the event.

Participants:

CAO Youyun 曹有云 (Poet, Tibetan ethnicity)
GUO Wenbin 郭文斌 (fiction writer and essayist from Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region)
JIN Renshun 金仁顺 (fiction writer and screenwriter, Korean ethnicity)
NIE Le 聂勒 (Han name 钟华强Zhong Huaqiang, poet and editor, Wa ethnicity)
WANG Hua 王华 (fiction writer, Gelao ethnicity)
HU Xuewen 胡学文 (fiction writer, Vice-President of Hebei Writers’ Association, Han ethnicity)

Interpreter:

Guo Li 郭丽 (Ph.D Candidate, Comparative Literature, University of Iowa) 

Moderator:

Paola Iovene (Assistant Professor in Modern Chinese literature, Department of East Asian Languages & Civilizations, University of Chicago)

   October 12 (Monday) 3:00-5:00 PM

           Room: Cobb Hall 409

The discussion will be in both Chinese and English.  

Please download the writers’ biographies and writing samples (both in Chinese and English)

Biographies

cao youyun’s poem (Chinese) 

Guo Wenbin’s revised story_9_25 (English)

Guo Wenbin’s short story (Chinese)

Jin Renshun—In Dunhuang (English)

Jin Renshun’s short story (Chinese) 

Li Hui’s poems (Chinese)

Nie Le’s poem (Chinese)

Poetry with trans (both)

Wang Hua’s short story (Chinese)

Wang Hua’s tranlated text (English)

 

 

*If you would like to be added to our mailing list and receive workshop updates,  please contact jiyoung22@uchicago.edu
  

**Persons with a disability who believe they may need assistance,  please contact Ji Young Kim (jiyoung22@uchicago.edu) or Ling Zhang (ling1@uchicago.edu)

First APEA Workshop of the 2009-2010 Year (October 9)

campus

The Art and Politics of East Asia Workshop

is pleased to present:

 

How Do You Tell a Radical Story?: Leftist Experiments in Children’s Literature, 1926-1931 

 

(click on the title to read the paper) 

 

Mika Endo

Ph.D.  Candidate

Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations

 

Discussants:

 Jae Yon Lee

(Ph.D. Candidate, EALC, University of Chicago)

  Sarah Allen

(Ph.D. Student, History of Culture, University of Chicago)

 

October 9 (Friday) 3:00-5:00 PM

Room: Judd 313

 

 

If you would like to be added to our mailing list and receive workshop updates,

please contact jiyoung22@uchicago.edu

 

Persons with a disability who believe they may need assistance, please contact Ji Young Kim (jiyoung22@uchicago.edu) or Ling Zhang (ling1@uchicago.edu) 

campus

The Art and Politics in East
Asia Workshop

Presents:


Poetry in Action:

The Narrativity of Oracular Poems in Southeast China’s Divination

Xueting Liu

Ph.D. Candidate

Anthropology

Friday, May 22
3:00-5:00 p.m.

Judd 313

Abstract:

To describe JinBang as a village of poetry might invite severe challenges if the concept of poetry is restricted to
elegant classical Chinese regulated verse or free verse rich in “literariness”. This southeastern Chinese village situates in southern Fujian, with tea industry as the 9000 residents’ main means of life. 20% villagers are illiterate according to the official statistics, and the fact that most of the villagers older than 30 speak only local dialect makes the classical Chinese poetry recitable only by the school children. Yet poetry in its broader definition, i.e. verse, is present in every household and at every street corner. JinBang villagers listen to the poetry read as lines in local drama including puppet theater, Xiang opera and Ge Zai opera; they receive temple oracles in form of poems in the village temple Xing Yi Dian; and poems and poetic images are even the source of lottery number guessing. Closely bounded with their idea of fate and history, the reading of poems remains a crucial position both in JinBang village life and in individual villager’s life history and calls for the reader’s reflexive understanding and creativity in
discovering the hidden meanings in texts and the hidden possibilities in the life history of the characters that poems depict.

In this paper, I will discuss the narrativity of temple oracular poems in JinBang and the temple divination
practice (Chou Chien) as its context, because as the intersection of poetic text and the concept of fate, the oracular poems sheds light on an understanding of the framework the villagers employ in viewing their life crises and historical events. There being no easy, formulaic solution to either the problem that the petitioner faces or the problem of interpretation that the diviner faces, divination in JinBang is an action against closure more than a calculation of determined fate. As an exercise of human agency based on the agency of words, Chou Chien stresses
on here and now more than why and how, whereas it also calls attention to a reinterpretation of history. Taking Chou Chien as a generative meaning-making and meaning grounding process both on the petitioner’s and the diviner’s sides, I follow a Bahktinian approach in describing the multivocality of oracular poems and the interactive process of selection and communication, and in taking Chou Chien as a responsive and communicative action. Emphasizing on the intertextuality of oracular poems, I will discuss the mosaic of quotations in poems and how the readers view the poems in reference of local drama. In the end, I will turn to a modern practice of lottery number guessing which employs a similar technique of text interpretation.

If you would like to be added to our mailing list and receive workshop updates, please contact ktanaka@uchicago.edu

Persons with a disability who believe they may need assistance, please email Kathryn Tanaka at
ktanaka@uchicago.edu or Tomoko Seto at tseto@uchicago.edu

From “Borrowed Place, Borrowed Time” to “Our Place, Our Time”

campus

The Art and Politics in East Asia Workshop

Presents:

From “Borrowed Place, Borrowed Time” to “Our Place, Our Time”

– Reclaiming the city of Hong Kong as Home

–

Chun Chun Ting

Ph.D. Candidate

Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations

With a response offered by

Tie Xiao, Ph.D student, EALC

Friday, May 15
3:00-5:00 p.m.

Judd 313


Abstract:

Focusing on the social movement aimed at protecting the Star Ferry Pier and the Queen’s Pier in Hong Kong in 2006 and 2007, this paper examines how the concern with urban space serves as a vantage point to reflect on the question of social justice, the rationale of economic development, the politics of decolonization, and the role of history in everyday life. Taking my insights from a novel – Dong Qizhang’s The Atlas: the Archaeology of an Imaginary City – and an animated film Mcdull: Prince de la Bun, I explore how textual and political strategies overlap each other, and try to delineate the forces one has to wrestle with in order to claim a city home. I argue that the recognition of the uncertainty and fictiveness of history does not undo the notions of home and identity, but takes us to a more open space where the idea of home and the figuring of a new collective subject, do not have to depend on a stabilized, unambiguous historical narrative.

If you would like to be added to our mailing list and receive workshop updates, please contact ktanaka@uchicago.edu