Author: susansu

Jun Hee Lee

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Title screen from film Araki Sakae the Laborer-Composer (1993)

Jun Hee Lee (PhD Candidate in History)
“In Chorus with Japanese Laborers: the Utagoe Movement and Araki Sakae the Laborer-Composer”
Friday, June 1st, 3:00pm-5:00pm in CEAS 319
Discussant: Alex Murphy (PhD Candidate in EALC)

Please join us Friday (6/1) from 3:00pm to 5:00pm as we host Jun Hee Lee (PhD Candidate in History). He will present a draft chapter from his dissertation, which he summarizes as follows:

The Utagoe movement arose, by official account, in 1948 in association with the Japanese Communist Party’s early postwar cultural policy.  Utagoe quickly gained momentum in the mid-1950s as it acquired associate performing groups in workplaces across Japan.  As Utagoe began aligning with labor and peace movements through the 1950s, one culturally and politically conscious laborer from northern Kyushu found his calling: Araki Sakae (1924-1962), a second-generation coal miner in Miike, the future site of a landmark labor dispute in postwar Japan.  Araki would dedicate the last ten years of his life to Utagoe, partaking in the Miike coal miners’ strike between 1959 and 1960 with his own songs.  This paper examines ways in which Utagoe has subsequently celebrated Araki Sakae as an ideal laborer-composer (rōdōsha sakkyokuka) figure who was at once an earnest, politically conscious laborer and a creative soul.  By exploring specific manners in which Utagoe posited the Miike strike as a national struggle and established Araki and his songs as landmarks for Utagoe’s timeline, this paper demonstrates how Utagoe produced and maintained a narrative of continued struggle (tatakai) for “peace” and “independence” of Japan, while eschewing Araki’s own life trajectory predating his encounter with Utagoe in favor of emphasizing Utagoe’s and Araki’s joint confrontations with “American imperialism” and “monopoly capital”.  Utagoe’s continued celebration of Araki today bespeaks the endurance of such perspective, in which continued struggles by Japanese laborers occupy a quintessential place.

The paper is available directly below, or at this link. If you have not received the password, or have questions about accessibility, please feel free to contact Helina Mazza-Hilway (mazzah@uchicago.edu) or Susan Su (susansu@uchicago.edu).

Corey Byrnes

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Duan Jianyu, Beautiful Dream #7, 2008

Corey Byrnes (Assistant Professor of Modern Chinese Literature in the Asian Languages and Cultures Department, Northwestern University)
“Defining the Chinese Landscape of Desolation in Teaching and Research”
Tuesday, May 1st, 5:00pm-7:00pm in the Cochrane-Woods Art Center, Room 157
Discussant: Pao-chen Tang (PhD Student, Cinema and Media Studies & EALC)
This event is co-sponsored with the Visual and Material Perspectives on East Asia Workshop and sponsored by the Center for East Asian Studies with support from a Title VI National Resource Center Grant from the United States Department of Education.

Please join us Tuesday (5/1) from 5:00pm-7:00pm as we host Professor Corey Byrnes, Assistant Professor of Modern Chinese Literature at Northwestern University. He will present an essay in progress as well as two related syllabi. The following workshop discussion will be an opportunity not only to offer feedback on the essay, but also to address the challenges of combining research and teaching and designing a syllabus based upon one’s research interests. We look forward to the continuation of discussion after the workshop at the catered dinner which will follow.

Professor Byrnes summarizes his essay as follows:

This joint APEA-VMPEA workshop will center on three related documents: an essay in progress entitled “Landscapes of Desolation” and two syllabi for a course with the same name. The essay is part of a broader attempt to reconsider the role of landscape and “tradition” in the context of environmentally conscious visual and literary culture representing Mainland China (mostly). In general, I am interested in how landscape has come to function as both a privileged way to represent environmental problems in China and also a practical ecocritical mode designed to move people and change behaviors. More specifically, in this essay I consider how specific art historical and cultural influences are used in three interconnected “modes” (the documentary, the trompe l’oeil and the fantastical) of what I am calling the “landscape of desolation” to support this practical ecocritical function. The essay extends some of the ideas I explore in my forthcoming book, Fixing Landscape: A Techno-Poetic History of China’s Three Gorges (Columbia, December 2018), but it emerges more directly from my experiences teaching an upper division seminar on literary and visual responses to environmental degradation in China and Taiwan. For the seminar meeting, I look forward to discussing both the article and also my experience in moving between teaching and researching. As you will see, there is significant overlap between the course materials and the primary and secondary sources I use in the article. The earliest version of this article predates these courses, though the current version really emerged out of my experiences teaching this seminar in the winter of 2016 and again in the winter of 2018.

The paper is available directly below, or at this link. If you have not received the password, or have questions about accessibility, please feel free to contact Helina Mazza-Hilway (mazzah@uchicago.edu) or Susan Su (susansu@uchicago.edu).

Yujie Li

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The 28″ bicycle design pattern with specifications, by the Team of Inspection and Research
of the Shanghai Bicycle Manufacturer Association, 1955

Yujie Li (PhD Student in History)
“Birth of the Phoenix Bicycle: Socialist Firm Formation and Industrial Standardization in the Early PRC”
Friday, March 30th, 3-5pm in CEAS 319
Discussant: Spencer Stewart (PhD Student in History)

Please join us Friday (3/30) from 3-5pm as we host Yujie Li (PhD Student in History). She will present a paper to be incorporated into a larger research project. She summarizes the paper as follows:

This paper is a case study on the history of Socialist Transformation of Capitalist Industry and Commerce Movement (1953-1956). It examines how industrial standardization was enforced and achieved in the Shanghai bicycle industry before, during and shortly after the Socialist Transformation. By focusing on the bicycle, this paper sheds light on the technological objectives of machine-tool industries under the particular developing needs of the early PRC. The paper tries to provide a detailed account of the transformation of the Shanghai bicycle industry by probing into the entanglement of the political, economic and technological changes, and particularly, to illuminate private enterprisers’ tactics to find themselves a new position while coming into the Socialist system.

The paper is available directly below, or at this link. If you have not received the password, or have questions about accessibility, please feel free to contact Helina Mazza-Hilway (mazzah@uchicago.edu) or Susan Su (susansu@uchicago.edu).

Sung Hyun Kang

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Sung Hyun Kang is an Assistant Professor at the Department of International Cultural Studies & Institute for East Asian Studies, SungKongHoe University (Seoul).

Sung Hyun Kang, Assistant Professor at SungKongHoe University
“Transnational Archives: Cold War, Postcolonialism, and Korean Studies”
Friday, February 23rd, 3-5pm in CEAS 319
Interpreter: Sandra Park (PhD Student, History)
Sponsored with the East Asia Transregional Histories Workshop and the Committee on Korean Studies

Please join us Friday (2/23) as we host Professor Sung Hyun Kang. Professor Kang will discuss two papers: an article draft on the topic of Korean ‘comfort women’ photography, as well as a reflection on his experiences engaging in archival research for the article. This workshop will be of significance to both to those who are interested in questions of photography, moving images, and comfort women; and also in the practical concerns of conducting archival research regarding images, both still and in motion.

Professor Kang’s article draft focuses on the still and motion pictures of Japanese military ‘comfort women’ captured by army photographers attached to the U.S. Army 164th Signal Photo Corps in China, Burma, and India during World War II. With attention to related documents and testimonies of “comfort women”, Kang analyzes the viewpoint of the photographers, as well as the intent and nature of the army photographers’ activities. Moreover, this paper uncovers the stories of individual Korean ‘comfort women’ who appear as the subjects in these still and motion pictures.

The papers are available directly below, or at this link. If you have not received the password, or have questions about accessibility, please feel free to contact Helina Mazza-Hilway (mazzah@uchicago.edu) or Susan Su (susansu@uchicago.edu).

This event is sponsored by the Committee on Korean Studies at the University of Chicago Center for East Asian Studies with support from a Title VI National Resource Center Grant from the United States Department of Education.

Sandra Park

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US Army Chaplain George Burrey shaking hands with ROK Army Chaplain, 1953

Sandra Park (PhD Student, History)
“Crusading for the Twentieth Century: Christianity, Chaplaincy and Militarism in Cold War South Korea, 1945-1973”
Friday, January 26th, 3-5pm in CEAS 319
Discussant: Jun-Hee Lee (PhD Candidate, History)
Co-sponsored with the East Asia Transregional Histories Workshop

Please join us Friday (1/26) from 3-5pm, as we host Sandra Park. She will present a draft of her dissertation proposal, which she summarizes as follows:

My anticipated dissertation, “Crusading for the Twentieth Century: Christianity, Chaplaincy and Militarism in Cold War South Korea, 1945-1973,” elucidates the origins of Christianity’s increasing social and political influence from the Korean War (1950-1953) through 1973, when the Billy Graham Seoul Crusade attracted over three million people (the largest gathering in global Church history). Two decades before the Seoul Crusade, Graham visited American GIs and Korean Christians during the Korean War in 1952. At the time, wŏllam (those who went south) Korean Christian leaders like Han Kyung-Chik (who interpreted for Graham) and Hwang Ŭn-gyun articulated the conflict with communism in North Korea in eschatological language, invoking the imagery of medieval European crusades. My proposal engages the trope of “crusades” articulated during the Korean Cold War as reflective of the ways in which Christianity and militarism were folded into each other. At this stage, I expect to trace three currents that were formative to the relationship between Christianity and militarized politics in Cold War South Korea: the discursive, transpacific politics of Billy Graham and Han Kyung-Chik (1945-1950), the institutional history of the Republic of Korea (ROK) military chaplaincy from its inception in 1951, and the hegemonic culture of militarism and dissent.

The paper is available directly below, or at this link. If you have not received the password, or have questions about accessibility, please feel free to contact Helina Mazza-Hilway (mazzah@uchicago.edu) or Susan Su (susansu@uchicago.edu).