Thursday, October 19th : Kyle Gardner “Communication: Roads, Regulation and British Joint Commissioners”

Kyle Gardner

PhD Candidate, University of Chicago

“Communication: Roads, Regulation and British Joint Commissioners” Along the Hindustan-Tibet Road and Leh-Yarkand Treaty Road

Thursday, October 19th 3:00-5:00 PM

John Hope Franklin Room [SSR 224]

Discussant: Usama Rafi, University of Chicago History Department

Please join the East Asia: Transregional Histories Workshop as we welcome our own Kyle Gardner, who will be presenting a draft chapter titled “Communication: Roads, Regulation and British Joint Commissioners” from his dissertation. This chapter explores the particular histories of the Hindustan-Tibet Road and Leh-Yarkand Treaty Road from the mid 19th century onward, considering their development as regulatory mechanisms of empire as well as their status as means of both conveyance and restriction along the frontier.

Kyle’s Paper can be found in the post below.

As always, first-time attendees are welcome. Light refreshments and snacks will be served. If you have any questions or require assistance to attend, please contact Robert Burgos at rburgos@uchicago.edu or Spencer Stewart at sdstewart@uchicago.edu.

 

Thursday, Oct. 5th : Karl Gerth “The Mao Badge Fad: How a State-Sponsored Consumer Fad undermined a Revolution”

Karl Gerth

Hwei-Chih and Julia Hsiu Chair in Chinese Studies and Professor of History, UC San Diego

“The Mao Badge Fad: How a State-Sponsored Consumer Fad undermined a Revolution”

Thursday, October 5th, 4:00-6:00 PM

John Hope Franklin Room [SSR 224]

Discussant: Jake Werner, Collegiate Assistant Professor, University of Chicago

Please join the East Asia: Transregional Histories Workshop in welcoming Karl Gerth [University of California, San Diego] as he presents a part of his new manuscript focused on Consumption in Maoist-era China. Titled “The Mao Badge Fad: How a State-Sponsored Consumer Fad undermined a Revolution,” Professor Gerth provides the following abstract for his paper:

This paper reinterprets one of the most famous phenomena of the Cultural Revolution, the Mao badge fad, when tens of millions of Chinese collected billions of badges of Chairman Mao. The Cultural Revolution was intended to be the single greatest anti-bourgeois campaign of the Mao era. But in its most famous activities such as badge collecting, the Cultural Revolution also nourished a thriving bourgeois consumer culture that encouraged consumer desire, production outside of state planning, and inequality though unequal distribution and conspicuous consumption. Badge collecting was, to use Mao’s expression, the negation rather than the fulfillment of the Socialist Revolution.

Professor Gerth’s paper can be found at this post.

As always, first-time attendees are welcome. Light refreshments and snacks will be served. This event is sponsored by the Committee for Chinese Studies at the Center for East Asian Studies.

If you have any questions or require assistance to attend, please contact Spencer Stewart at sdstewart@uchicago.edu or Robert Burgos at rburgos@uchicago.edu

 

Monday, October 2nd: Workshop Welcome Reception

Happy Beginning of Fall Quarter!

In order to kick off yet another year of the East Asia: Transregional Histories workshop, we will be holding a reception to welcome new and returning participants alike.

Starting from 4 pm, please join us at the University of Chicago Pub [located in the basement of the Ida Noyes building, 1212 E. 59th St.] for light refreshments and conversation. PhD and MAPSS students from all disciplines and specialties are welcome.

If you have any questions or require assistance to attend, please contact Robert Burgos at rburgos@uchicago.edu or Spencer Stewart at sdstewart@uchicago.edu.

Also, don’t forget to “like” our new Facebook page to connect with the workshop and other participants.

 

Fall Quarter 2017 Schedule

The East Asia: Transregional Histories Workshop is proud to present our schedule for the Fall 2017 Quarter! Unless otherwise noted, all meetings take place from 4:00 – 6:00 PM in the John Hope Franklin Room (Social Science 224) and refreshments will be served.

_______________________________________________________

Autumn 2017

10/2  Workshop Welcome Reception

4:00 – 6:00 PM

Location: University of Chicago Pub [Ida Noyes Hall, 1212 East 59th St]

 

10/5  Karl Gerth [Hwei-Chih and Julia Hsiu Chair in Chinese Studies and Professor of History, University of California, San Diego]

Co-sponsored by The Center for East Asian Studies and the East Asian Languages and Civilizations Department

Title: “The Mao Badge Fad: How a State-Sponsored Consumer Fad undermined a Revolution”

4:00 – 6:00 PM

Location: John Hope Franklin Room, Social Science 224

 

10/19  Kyle Gardner [PhD Candidate, University of Chicago]

Title: “Communication: Roads, Regulation and British Joint Commissioners” Along the Hindustan-Tibet Road and Leh-Yarkand Treaty Road

3:00 – 5:00 PM

Location: John Hope Franklin Room, Social Science 224

 

10/27  Scott Relyea [ Assistant Professor, Appalachian State University]

Title: “‘A fence on which we can rely: Asserting sovereignty in early twentieth century China ”

Co-Sponsored with the East Asia Workshop

4:00 – 6:00 PM

Location: John Hope Franklin Room, Social Science 224

 

11/2  Robert Burgos [ PhD Student, University of Chicago]

Title: “Rural Histories and Discourses of Local Identity in Akita, Japan ” [Tentative]

4:00 – 6:00 PM

Location: John Hope Franklin Room, Social Science 224

 

11/16  Jonathan Henshaw [PhD Candidate, University of British Columbia]

Title: “Remembering and Forgetting: Commemorations of the Second World War in Nanjing”

4:00 – 6:00 PM

Location: John Hope Franklin Room, Social Science 224

 

11/30    So You Want to Write a Research Paper? Panel on Beginning a Seminar Paper or Master’s Thesis

4:00 – 6:00 PM

Location: John Hope Franklin Room, Social Science 224

________________________________

Please mark the following days and times down on your calendars and join us for an engaging and productive year!

Friday, May 12th 4-6 PM : Robert Tierney “Terminal Time, Authenticity and Looking Back at Meiji”

Please join the East Asia: Transregional Histories workshop in conjunction with the Arts and Politics of East Asia Workshop and the Midwestern Japanese Studies Workshop in welcoming:

Robert Tierney

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

“Terminal Time, Authenticity and Looking Back at Meiji”

Friday, May 12th

4-6 PM

CEAS 319 (1155 E. 60th St.)

Discussants:

Alex Jania, University of Chicago

Professor Tierney will be presenting a draft of a chapter in his current book project. The chapter is an exploration of the writing of Nakae Chōmin’s One Year and a Half and its sequel, composed in 1901 after Chōmin was diagnosed with terminal cancer. In the chapter, Professor Tierney explores the concept of “terminal time,” and how Chōmin both reacted to and learned to live with his death sentence as reflected in the two novels.

This event is being held as a part of the Midwestern Japanese Studies Workshop, which also includes presentations by graduate students on Saturday, May 13th starting at 8:30 AM. The workshop and conference are sponsored by the Center for East Asian Studies.

As always, first-time attendees are welcome. Light refreshments and snacks will be served.

If you have any questions or require assistance to attend, please contact Jessa Dahl at jdahl@uchicago.edu or Erin Newton at emnewton@uchicago.edu.

Thursday, April 27th 4-6 PM : Amy Borovoy “Japan Studies in the Postwar Era: Reflections on Modernity and Society in American Social Thought”

Amy Borovoy

Associate Professor of East Asian Studies, Princeton University

“Japan Studies in the Postwar Era: Reflections on Modernity and Society in American Social Thought”

Thursday, April 27

4-6 PM

CEAS 319 (Harris School, 1155 E 60th St.)

Please join the East Asia: Transregional Histories Workshop and the Committee on Japanese Studies in welcoming Professor Amy Borovoy (Princeton University) as she presents a section of her new project. Professor Borovoy has provided the following abstract for her talk:

In the decades following World War II, Japan emerged as a “place to think with” for American social scientists. Until 1945, Japan studies had been centered in Europe. Although understanding “total war” was the initial provocation for American social science research, as in the 1946 classic, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, not long after, social scientists began to see in Japan compelling forms of socio-centrism, social community and cultural identity. By the 1970s, Japan studies had become fruitful terrain for reflecting on the excesses of American liberal individualism. In this project, I analyze this process through a series of canonical texts in anthropology and sociology, from Benedict, to occupation-era village studies, to Thomas P. Rohlen’s ethnography of a Japanese bank and Ezra Vogel’s Japan as Number One. Japan’s modernity offered powerful insights for those wrestling with American post-industrial society, but it was an experiment made possible by a particular historical moment, and one that raised as many questions as it answered.

As always, first-time attendees are welcome. Light refreshments and snacks will be served. This event is sponsored by the Committee on Japanese Studies at the Center for East Asian Studies.

If you have any questions or require assistance to attend, please contact Jessa Dahl at jdahl@uchicago.edu or Erin Newton at emnewton@uchicago.edu.

Thursday, April 20 **3-5 PM** : Alex Jania “A Blood Red Sun Rises”: Affective Nationalism in the 1923 Korean Panic and Massacre

Alex Jania

University of Chicago, History Department

“‘A Blood Red Sun Rises’: Affective Nationalism in the 1923 Korean Panic and Massacre”

Thursday, April 20th

**3-5 PM**

John Hope Franklin Room (SSR 224)

Discussants:

Gregory Valdespino, University of Chicago History Dept.

Please join us at a slightly earlier time as the East Asia: Transregional History Workshop welcomes our own Alex Jania, who will present his second-year seminar paper entitled “‘A Blood Red Sun Rises’: Affective Nationalism in the 1923 Korean Panic and Massacre.” This paper explores the affective nationalism of the Korean Panic and Massacre in order to understand the relationship between emotion, violent ethnic scapegoating, and the imagining of the nation. This study uses the recollections of children who lived through the disaster in Tokyo and Yokohama, in addition to a critical passage from the Tokyo novelist Ema Shū’s disaster memoir When the Sheep Rise in Anger to explore how latent Japanese prejudices against Koreans created an affective environment that led to massacre. Using these sources, the study explores the creation and circulation of hate, fear, insecurity in the Korean Panic and later, excitement, security, and ambiguity in the Korean Massacre. Ultimately, he argues that the desire for a feeling of security and its creation through violence was a powerful, but fraught, part of Japanese affective nationalism following the Great Kantō Earthquake.

Alex’s paper can be found in the post below.

As always, first-time attendees are welcome. Light refreshments and snacks will be served. If you have any questions or require assistance to attend, please contact Jessa Dahl at jdahl@uchicago.edu or Erin Newton at emnewton@uchicago.edu.