Author: campus

Hansen’s Disease and Modern Japanese Literature, 1919-1942

campus

The Art and Politics in East Asia Workshop

Presents:

Hansen’s Disease and Modern Japanese Literature, 1919-1942

Kathryn Tanaka

Ph.D. Student

Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations

With a response offered by

Valerie Levan, Ph.D candidate, Comparative Literature

Friday, April 24
3:00-5:00 p.m.

Judd 313

Abstract

In 1930s Japan, writings by patients with Hansen’s Disease (leprosy) became popular enough that critics referred to it as a distinct genre, Hansen’s Disease literature. I explore the purposes this genre served for patients, doctors, and the received literary history. By exploring the connections this writing makes between medical and literary discourse, I examine the role of the body and experience in patient writing, and the relationship of the category of patient writing to dominant literary genres, with a particular emphasis on Hansen’s Disease literature and shishôsetsu, or autobiographical fiction. I argue that restoring this genre to Japanese literary history is crucial to demonstrating the social and political implications occluded from mainstream literary categories.

This paper is a very rough draft of my dissertation proposal. Please do not circulate.

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

Workshops this week

campus

The week of March 30, we are excited to begin spring quarter with two workshops scheduled: one on March 30, at 4:30 p.m. in Social Sciences 302, and another April 1, at 3:30 in the John Hope Franklin room. We are proud to have such distinguished speakers, and we hope you will be able to join us for both workshops this week.

Please scroll down for more information on both of our events this week. If you have any questions or concerns, please e-mail ktanaka@uchicago.edu or tseto@uchicago.edu.

Exploring the Philosophical and Historical Dimensions of Contemporary Japan by Tracing Three “Turns”

campus

The Art and Politics in East Asia Workshop

Presents:

Exploring the Philosophical and Historical Dimensions of

Contemporary Japan by Tracing Three “Turns”

A Special Presentation By:

Iwasaki Minoru

Tokyo University of Foreign Studies

“The ‘Memorial’ Turn in Contemporary Philosophy”

Narita Ryûichi

Japan Women’s University

“Spatial Turn and Temporal Turn in Contemporary Historical Studies.”

Monday, March 30

Social Sciences 302

4:30-6:30 PM

There is no paper for this talk. The talk will be in Japanese with English translation.

Abstract

Throughout the long latter half of the twentieth century, “Japan” took its actions and thought within the framework of the “postwar.” Today, however, this “postwar” has come to an end, and “Japan” has entered a “post-‘postwar’” condition. In our presentations, we will discuss “contemporary” Japan as the “post-‘postwar’” by exploring three “turns” in memory, time and space.

Iwasaki Minoru is Professor of philosophy and political thought at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. He is the co-editor of 戦後日本スタディーズ3 – 80, 90年代 (Postwar Japan Studies 3: 1980-90s, 2008) and継続する植民地主義―ジェンダー/民族/人種/階級 (Continuing Colonialism: Gender, Nation, Race, and Class, 2005). His published articles include “歴史学における想起と忘却の問題系(“Problematique of Recollection and Oblivion in Historical Studies”, 2002), and “Desire for a Poietic Metasubject: Miki Kiyoshi’s Technology Theory” in Total War and “Modernization” (Yamanouchi Yasushi, J. Victor Koschmann and Narita Ryûichi eds., Cornell UP, 1998).

Narita Ryûichi is Professor of modern Japanese history at Japan Women’s University. He is the author of大正デモクラシー (Taisho Democracy, 2007), 歴史学のポジショナリティ―歴史叙述とその周辺 (Positionality of Historical Studies – Historical Narratives and their Surroundings, 2006), “歴史”はいかに語られるか―1930年代「国民の物語」批判 (In What Way “History” is Narrated: Criticism of “National Narratives” in the 1930s, 2001), and「故郷」という物語―都市空間の歴史学 (Narratives of “Native Place”: Historical Studies of Urban Space,1998), and the co-editor of Total War and “Modernization” (Cornell UP, 1998).

Issues in Conceptualizing Japanese Garden Art

campus

The Art and Politics in East Asia Workshop

Presents:

Issues in Conceptualizing Japanese Garden Art

Camelia Nakagawara

Ph. D Candidate

Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations

With a response offered by

Brian Bergstrom, Ph.D student, EALC

Friday, March 6
4:00-6:00 p.m.

Judd 313

There is no paper for this workshop.

Abstract:

For many centuries, “Japanese gardens” have been both a source of fascination and an object of mystification for Japanese and non-Japanese alike. Partly by overemphasizing certain themes or aspects, partly by overlooking others, images of Japanese gardens can alter our perception of their materiality. How are gardens transformed by their representations in the media? What is lost in those representations and what is created as a result? How are gardens drawn in a dialogue with political agendas, and what are the factors or features that make such a dialogue lucrative? This presentation will provide some examples that attempt to address such questions and initiate a critical approach departing from current literature on Japanese gardens.


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 Daoist Immortality to Revolutionary Morality

campus

The Art and Politics in East Asia Workshop Presents:

From Daoist Immortality to Revolutionary Morality:
Transforming the Immortal Hirsute Maiden into
the White Haired Girl
 

Max Bohnenkamp

Ph.D. Candidate , Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations

With a response offered by Kwok-wai Hui, Ph.D student, History

Friday, February 27

4-6 p.m.

Judd 313

The White Haired Girl (Bai mao nü) has stood out over the years as one of the most successful creations of Chinese
revolutionary aesthetics since its inception as a musical theater piece in the Communist headquarters of Yan'an 
during the 1940s. While the story of the White Haired Girl is often claimed to originate from a folktale discovered 
by wartime culture workers in Hebei province, the details of its provenance have always remained vague. This 
paper examines the previously undiscovered relationship between the White Haired Girl and a tale from traditional 
folklore- the "Immortal Hairy Maiden" (Maonü xiangu). First mentioned in the 3rd century Biographies of Immortals 
(Liexian zhuan), the story tells how a female retainer of the Qin court escaped the fate of burial alongside the First 
Emperor by fleeing to the mountains, where she survived on sparse flora, learned the secrets of Daoist immortality, 
and uncannily sprouted fur all over her body. 
This paper explores the significance the Immortal Hairy Maiden and the White Haired Girl's similar straddling of the 
divide between human and non-human worlds, asking how the values of the traditional tale were commuted by the 
revolutionary one. Complicating recent interpretations of the latter as representing a sacrifice of gender subjectivity 
to revolutionary class-consciousness, I trace the figure's transformation from a traditional folk symbol of supernatural 
female metamorphosis and knowledge of immortality to a national icon of revolutionary subjectivity, domestic renewal, 
and the dispelling of superstition.  
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 Parliamentary Speeches to Chinese Poetry

campus

The Art and Politics in East Asia Workshop Presents:

From Parliamentary Speeches to Chinese Poetry:

The Privileged Space of Popular Rights Activist Kishida Toshiko’s Diaries (1891-1901)

Mamiko Suzuki

Ph.D. Candidate , Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations

Friday, February 6

4-6 p.m.

Judd 313 

Known as the first female orator of modern Japan, Kishida Toshiko (1864-1901) left behind a
decade's worth of diaries which spanned the years after her political activism and ran
concurrently with her shift in expressive mode from voice to pen. Kishida's turn toward the less
controversial medium of women's educational journals to express her ideas within the public
domain was a response to the increasingly restrictive world of the mid-Meiji period (1868-1901).
At the same time, Toshiko found in her diaries a unique and privileged space of self-expression
that helped her to construct an identity otherwise impermissible in her published writings.
In this talk, I will discuss the specific circumstances surrounding the posthumous publication in
1903 of the final two diaries (1900-1901) and how Kishida's formal language, audience, and
public persona in her remaining diaries complicate way we read Meiji women's writing. Kishida
also demonstrates also how the expressive space of the diary is communicating with, yet
functions outside the limitations of print media and other public platforms. The diary allowed
Kishida as a woman writer to multiply her narrative positions regardless of her legal subjugation
and social classification and to posthumously contribute an anomalous yet parallel discourse on
Meiji women.
 
Note:
No paper will be distributed in advance. The talk will be given at a research university for a
Languages and Literatures Department position.  We would appreciate comments and
questions to the talk, particularly from the position of a non-Japan or non-East Asian specialist.
 
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

Reconsidering Japanese education: encounters between children and teachers in prewar and wartime Japan

campus

The Art and Politics in East Asia Workshop

Presents:

Reconsidering Japanese education: 
encounters between children and teachers in 
prewar and wartime Japan

Mika Endo

Ph.D. Candidate

Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations

With a response offered by

Yoon Sun Yang, Ph.D candidate, EALC

Friday, January 23
4:00-6:00 p.m.

Judd 313

Please click on the link above to download the paper.

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

Kokuritsu Shônen

campus

The Art and Politics in East Asia Workshop

Presents:

Kokuritsu Shônen: Criminality, Beauty, and

National Boyhood in Modern Japan

Brian Bergstrom

Ph.D. Student

Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations

With a response offered by

Mika Endo, Ph.D candidate, EALC

Friday, December 5
3:00-5:00 p.m.

Judd 313

Click on the link to view the paper.

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

Competing Nationalisms: Tibet, China, and the West

campus

The Art and Politics of East Asia Workshop and

East Asia Trans-Regional Histories Workshop jointly present a special workshop session:

Competing Nationalisms:

Tibet, China, and the West

Guest Speakers:

Robert Barnett (Professor of Modern Tibetan Studies at Columbia University)

Tsering Wangdu Shakya (Canadian Research Chair in Religion and Contemporary Society in Asia, University of British Columbia)

Chaohua Wang (Essayist and editor of “One China, Many Paths”)

With responses offered by

Scott Relyea, University of Chicago Ph.D candidate, History

Saul Thomas, University of Chicago Ph.D candidate, Anthropology

November 21 (Friday) 3:00–6:00


Social Science Building 302

As the Beijing Olympics have dominated recent discussions about the current reality and future prospects of the People’s Republic of China, much needed analysis of the tumultuous protests and riots in the Tibetan regions of western China in March and April 2008 has been pushed to the sidelines.  We are now several months away from a crisis that not only exposed serious fault lines in the construction of a unified and harmonious China but also laid bare the underlying (dis)contents of contemporary nationalisms in the region.

Distance in time, we hope, will allow us to develop reasoned perspectives on the events in Tibet and its surrounding regions, and on the outpouring of competing reactions that quickly ensued.

For this reason, we have invited three speakers – Wang Chaohua, Robert Barnett, and Tsering Wangdu Shakya– to share their perspectives and lead an informed discussion that seeks to re-examine the dynamics, motivations, and timing of the protests; the voices and media that sought to represent and define the crisis; and the broader historical and political implications of the mobilization of different nationalisms and imperialisms that framed these events.

This event is generously co-sponsored by the China Committee of the Center for East Asian Studies, the Undergraduate Program in International Studies, the Norman Wait Harris Memorial Fund of the Center for International Studies, and the Committee on Southern Asian Studies.

Persons who have a disability and believe they may need assistance, please contact Kathryn Tanaka at ktanaka@uchicago.edu.

Suggested Readings:

Articles by Workshop Presenters:

Download Wang Chaohua’s Political Dissent and Tale of 2 Nationalisms

Download Tsering Shakya’s Blood in the Snows and an interview in the New Left Review.  Professor Tsering Shakya also asked us to view this clip and have a look at his translation of the text.

Download an interview with Robert Barnett published in Foreign Policy. Please also take a look at his articles on Internal Sovereignty, One China, and Two Realities.

Relevant Articles:

Download Wang Hui’s Orientalism, Autonomy of Ethnic Regions, and the Politics of Respect (Chinese) and Depoliticized Politics: From East to West

Competing Nationalisms: Links to poems, videos and essays of further interest

campus

The New York Times this week carries an update on the situation between Tibet and China.

You can view a video-version of a poem called “To the West: What Do You Want Us to Do After All? A modest tribute to part of world history over the past 150 years”, By a Quiet, Quiet Chinese here. The poem, circulated widely in mid-April, seems to have first appeared in French and then in Chinese and then in English.

This is a video showing images of the protests in Lhasa and protests accompanying the voyage of the Olympic flame.The images are accompanied by a hip-hop song calling on Chinese people not to accept such tactics. The last part of the video switches to a melancholy song about Lhasa, and mourns the victims of the unrest. The video was created by Chenzi in Paris, and appeared as a user-generated piece on Sina.com in the mid-April, and was quickly circulated on youtube as well.

Wang Lixiong recently published a 3-part article that we recommend. The first part can be found here, and here are the second and third. (In Chinese)

Here is an article from April 2008 by Brendon O’Neill, British journalist and Editor of Spiked Online, about the stereotypes of Chinese people used by the Free Tibet movement in Britain.

Another article on the debates in China over boycotting western companies in April and May 2008. The article, by Jeffrey Wasserstrom, was published in Nation, April 28, 2008.

A item of interest is an essay on “Orientalism, Autonomy of Ethnic Regions, and the Politics of Dignity” by the historian and public intellectual Wang Hui, published in the journal Tianya (Frontier) 2008, no. 4 (July-August).

You can find here a letter to the editors of the South China Morning Post by anthropologist Barry Sautman, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

The internet writer Yang Hengjun has also posted an article entitled “Why CNN is patriotic.”

A long series of posts by various authors on the blog The China Beat can be read here.

Wang Chaohua has also recommended an article by Wang Lixiong and an independent Tibetan blog written by his wife, where in fact his writings on Tibet often appear, which can be found here.