Dear all,

We invite you to attend the fourth session of the East Asia: Transregional Histories Workshop, to be held this Thursday, November 10. Please note that this workshop does not have an associated paper. Instead, Spencer will introduce the workshop to textual analysis methods and offer a demonstration to interested participants; he will also reflect on the utility of these methods for historical research.

As always, please do not hesitate to reach out with questions and suggestions.

All best,

Gabriel Groz and Xiangning Li

Join the Pozen Family Center for Human Rights, the East Asia: Transregional Histories Graduate Student Workshop, and the Center for East Asian Studies for a special lunch program featuring Associate Professor of Media Studies at the University of Virginia, Aynne Kokas, on Tuesday, November 8 at 12 pm US CT.

Workshop attendees are invited to read a piece, authored by Professor Aynne Kokas, that is closely related to her book, Trafficking Data: How China is Winning the Battle for Digital Sovereignty.

Professor Kokas offers a framework to discuss when a community’s data is moved abroad without their informed consent, a practice she terms data trafficking. She analyzes Grindr, a LGBTQIA+ dating platform that has changed hands between China and the United States to demonstrate what data trafficking is, how it undermines national sovereignty, and how it erodes human rights. In the United States, corporate policies are the leading indicator for data governance practices, influencing a system known as multi-stakeholderism (DeNardis, 2013). In China, forced localization to government servers drives data governance practices (Mueller, 2017; Zeng et al., 2017; Kokas, 2022). Her article extends how we think about transnational consumer data security by examining how weak data security designed to support the growth of Silicon Valley firms amplifies the capacity of extra-territorial data governance practices asserted by the Chinese government.

Access her article HERE.

Registration is REQUIRED and space is LIMITED. Click HERE to secure your spot! (Lunch provided to registered attendees)

Thursday, Oct. 6 | Hae Uk Ko
Master’s Candidate, The University of Chicago
“Looking at Mirror Images: The Korean Plight to Find its Place in a New World”
Discussant: Graeme Reynolds, Instructor in History, The University of Chicago
(John Hope Franklin Room, 4:00 – 5:30 pm CT)
*Co-hosted event with the Arts and Politics of East Asia Workshop

Thursday, Oct. 20 | Wang You
Harper-Schmidt Fellow, The University of Chicago
“Women Till and Women Weave: Rice, Cotton, and the Gender Division of Labor in Qing Jiangnan”
Discussant: Xavier Ante, PhD Candidate, The University of Chicago
(on ZOOM)

Tuesday, Nov. 8 | Aynne Kokas
Associate Professor, The University of Virginia
“Trafficking Data: How China is Winning the Battle for Digital Sovereignty”
Discussant: Zhao Fang, PhD Student, The University of Chicago & Yukun Zeng, PhD Candidate, The University of Chicago
(CEAS Room 319, 12:00 – 1:30 pm CT)
*Co-hosted event with Pozen Family Center for Human Rights & Center for East Asian Studies

Thursday, Nov. 10 | TBA

Thursday, Dec. 1 | Zeng Yukun
PhD Candidate in Anthropology, The University of Chicago
“Unimagined Community: A Cross-Strait Anthropological History of Reading Classics in Contemporary Chinese Societies”
Discussant: TBA
(JHF room, 4:00 – 5:30 pm CT)