General Interest

European map of Asia, 1730

Crossing Borders in East Asia Workshops
(APEA roundtable series #2, a sequel to last year’s discussion on area studies)
Friday, October 24, 3:00-5:00PM in Harris/CEAS 319 (1155 E 60th St)

In the previous Art and Politics roundtable, we examined the tenuousness of our position amid the crises that plague area studies and the ongoing march toward globalization both inside and outside academia. This time, we turn to a more immediate issue: how we can overcome national and linguistic divisions within “Asian studies” to help support one another as graduate students and scholars? What is it that we look for in presentations that focus on topics outside of our regional/national/linguistic specialties, and how can we cater to those needs as presenters? To foster discussion, we’ll look at a few articles on approaches to the transnational/transregional and attempts to carry out such studies in East Asia. Please feel free to come with questions and issues you’d like to discuss! The pieces we’ll focus on are:

Sarah J. Mahler – “Theoretical and Empirical Contributions Toward a Research Agenda for Transnationalism” (from Transnationalism from Below, Smith and Guarnizo, eds.)

Karen Laura Thornber – “Rethinking the World in World Literature: East Asia and Literary Contact Nebulae” (from World Literature in Theory, David Damrosch, ed.)

Both graduate students and faculty are welcome at the roundtable, and light refreshments will be served. We’ll look forward to seeing you there.

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

Orientation meeting and upcoming schedule

Welcome back to campus! Art and Politics will hold its first meeting of the year on Friday, October 10, from 2:30 to 3:30 PM in Room 319 of the Harris School building, 1155 E 60th St. Please come to say hello, enjoy refreshments, and relax after a long week of studying. We will go over the fall quarter workshop schedule, briefly discuss news and our goals for the upcoming year, and have a chance to get acquainted with our new meeting space in Room 319, the media room of the Center for East Asian Studies.

After our meeting, those who’d like to catch a presentation have several options. A VMPEA workshop will be held in Cochrane-Woods beginning at 4:00, where Ken Tadashi Oshima (Architecture, University of Washington) will be speaking on “Nihon no toshi kūkan: Approaches to the City Invisible.” At 4:30, Steven Heine (Religion/History, Florida International University) will be giving a lecture entitled “There Goes Rhymin’ Dōgen (1200-1253): A Medieval Japanese Monk Well-Versed in Chinese Chan Poetics” at the Divinity School.

This year’s Art and Politics schedule is filling rapidly. If you are interested in presenting at the workshop, please contact Nicholas Lambrecht (lambrecht at uchicago.edu) as soon as possible to express your interest. Suggestions for outside speakers are also welcome.

The upcoming schedule for Art and Politics is as follows:

October 10 (F), 2:30-3:30, Orientation and discussion

October 24 (F), 3:00-5:00, Roundtable: Crossing Borders in East Asia Workshops

November 6 (Th), 4:30-6:30, Richard Meyer (President Emeritus, San Francisco Silent Film Festival), “Politics in the Shanghai Film Industry in Republican China: The Case of Wang Renmei”

November 21 (F), 3:00-5:00, Daniel Johnson (Cinema and Media Studies/East Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago), “Convergence Anxiety, I&II” [Note: POSTPONED]

December 1 (M), 4:30-6:00, Yan Haiping (Crosscultural Studies, Shanghai Jiaotong University); cosponsored with the Theatre and Performance Studies workshop, this meeting will take place in Seminar Terrace Room 801 of the Logan Center, 915 E 60th St

December 5 (F), 3:00-5:00, Katherine Alexander (East Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago)

Japanese pavilion at the World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893

Welcome to the 2014-15 Art and Politics of East Asia
Workshop at the University of Chicago!

Art and Politics of East Asia is a long-standing workshop that provides a unique space for graduate students working on the political exigencies of cultural production in China, Korea, and Japan. Our workshop is a hub that brings together students from a wide range of disciplines, including anthropology, comparative literature, history, East Asian studies, art history, cinema, and media studies. We provide a collaborative space for attending to the specific methodological and theoretical problems posed by the study of East Asian texts, media, and performances. At the same time, we continue to examine the pressing issue of what it means to study East Asian artistic forms and media in the wake of area studies and beyond the boundaries of national cultural histories. To these ends we hold bimonthly meetings in which graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, and outside faculty present and discuss their academic work; we also hold roundtable discussions on issues of particular interest to graduate students studying East Asia and help to sponsor graduate student conferences.

For those of you who have participated in Art and Politics events in the past, we anticipate many new developments in the coming year. The administration of the Council on Advanced Studies is undergoing a transition, and will now be streamlined through Graduate Student Affairs. Our friends at the Center for East Asian Studies will also be moving to their new home at 60th and Woodlawn in early September, directly across the Midway from Rockefeller Chapel. CEAS will be headquartered in Room 310 of the building that houses the Harris School of Public Policy, and their location is conveniently served by CTA buses 170, 171, and 172 as well as by the 53rd Street Express Shuttle. CEAS has graciously agreed to allow us to use Room 319 of their updated and upgraded space for our workshop. Further details on this will follow.

The workshop will continue to meet on alternate Fridays from 3:00-5:00pm.

If you are interested in presenting or have questions about the workshop, please contact the student coordinator, Nicholas Lambrecht, at: lambrecht at uchicago.edu.

We hope to see you at many events in the coming year!

Tom Looser global university 2012Harootunian_Memories of Underdevelopment_2012Wang Hui 2007

The workshop with Hyunhee Park originally scheduled this Friday, May 10, has been moved to the end of the month on 5/31.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

The Art and Politics in East Asia Workshop is pleased to present our schedule of presentations for the Spring Quarter!

All workshop meetings will take place from 3:00-5:00 in Judd Hall room 313:

Spring Quarter: 4/01 – 6/15

George Sipos, EALC 4/12

Zhang Ling, EALC 4/19

Anthony Rausch, Hirosaki University 4/26

[**rescheduled below Hyunhee Park, EALC 5/10]

Shinyoung Kwon, History  5/24

Hyunhee Park, EALC 5/31

Heather Bowen-Struyk, University of Michigan 6/07 (2^nd day of reading period)

Art and Politics in East Asia is pleased to announce our final workshop of the quarter:

The Art and Politics in East Asia meeting on February 15 will be an informal students-only discussion session on a topic to be determined.

The talk by Prof. Bowen-Struyks originally for the 15th has been moved to June 7.  Details on both talks to follow.