Category: Announcement

Group of people standing for a portrait

Taiwan Makes History I: The Gender of Empire

Posted on | by EALCS Admin

Join us for the first event in the Center for Taiwan Studies three-part panel series Taiwan Makes History on “The Gender of Empire,” guest directed and moderated by Kirsten Ziomek (Adelphi University)! 

We will welcome historians Fang Yu Hu (University of Tennessee at Chattanooga), Tadashi Ishikawa (University of Central Florida), and Sayaka Chatani (National University of Singapore) to discuss how the lens of gender can change our understanding of the Taiwanese colonial research. The panelists will introduce their current research on how the Japanese colonial government in Taiwan attempted to shape and create gender norms and practices. They will discuss methodologies for uncovering how Taiwanese men and women mediated, responded and contested idealized norms and forged their own paths. What were the competing notions of Taiwanese femininity and masculinity circulating at this time? What larger conclusions can be drawn about the experience of the Taiwanese versus other colonial peoples throughout the Japanese empire and beyond?

Date: Tuesday, April 13th, 2021
Time: 4-5 PM PST
Zoom link: http://bit.ly/TaiwanTalks

Announcement of 2021 Annual Meeting for American Oriental Society

EALCS to Host American Oriental Society’s Western Branch Meeting

Posted on | by Thomas Mazanec

We are delighted to announce that EALCS will host the Western Branch Meeting of the American Oriental Society on October 21–23, 2021. The meeting will take place online via Zoom. Please see the Call for Papers below for more information.

ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE 2021 ANNUAL MEETING

The 2021 meeting of the American Oriental Society, Western Branch will be hosted virtually via Zoom on October 21–23, 2021 by the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. All members of the AOS are cordially invited and encouraged to attend and to present papers.* Please send by July 31st a title and 250-word abstract of a proposed paper. Abstracts will be evaluated for the command they show of the chosen topic, methodological rigor and originality, clarity and persuasiveness of expression, and the potential contribution of the research to the field. Proposals for exceptional formats such as roundtable discussions or workshops may also be considered. Successful applicants to the conference will be notified by the end of August. Please note that in light of the special constraints of the meeting this year, the number of papers accepted may be lower than usual.

Abstracts should be submitted through the virtual registration portal at https://tinyurl.com/AOSWB2021. Abstracts are due by July 31, 2021. Notifications of decisions on abstracts will be sent out in August 2021.

Accepted papers will have up to 15 minutes for presentation. Final programs will be e-mailed to participants at the end of September. Sessions will be held on three successive days on October 21–23, each session at 1:00 PM–5:00 PM PDT. The business meeting will be conducted at 3:00 PM PDT on October 22.

For assistance in planning, all attendees, whether or not presenting a paper, should also register before September 30, 2021 through the virtual registration portal at https://tinyurl.com/AOSWB2021. This year, there is no registration fee for attendees, though presenters should be members of the AOS in good standing. Members who wish to contribute to the Daniel Bryant Memorial Fellowship Fund may send their donations to:

Alexei Ditter, Secretary-Treasurer WBAOS
Eliot 114
3203 Woodstock Boulevard
Portland, OR  97202

Other questions about the meeting may be directed to Thomas Mazanec (mazanec@ucsb.edu).

MEETING ARRANGEMENTS: Given the uncertainty of in-person meetings and international travel in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the conference will be conducted virtually via Zoom.

GRADUATE STUDENT AWARD: In order to encourage graduate students to engage in the activities of the Western Branch, the society in 2015 created the “Graduate Student Travel Award of the American Oriental Society, Western Branch.” This year, at least two awards will again be offered. Awardees will also be honored by special recognition during the conference and on the society’s website. The number of awards in future years will depend on the amount of donations made for this purpose. All applications to the Graduate Student Award will be anonymously reviewed by members of the Executive Committee of the Western Branch.

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS: We are glad to announce that the speaker for this year’s guest lecture will be Western Branch president Antje Richter, Associate Professor of Chinese at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

*YOU MUST BE A MEMBER OF THE AMERICAN ORIENTAL SOCIETY TO PRESENT A PAPER AT THE CONFERENCE. Membership information is available in all issues of the Journal of the American Oriental Society and at the American Oriental Society website: https://www.americanorientalsociety.org/.

Blue, Orange, and Yellow Logo for GSA UCSB

Support for Asian and Pacific Islander Graduate Student Alliance

Posted on | by Thomas Mazanec

We, the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies, express solidarity with the Asian and Pacific Islander Graduate Student Alliance here at UC Santa Barbara. We affirm and support the statement they issued in the wake of the recent hate crime in Atlanta:

Dear APIGSA members,

In the horror and trauma of last night’s anti-Asian attack in Atlanta, we share your grief. We condemn the blatant racism, misogyny, and anti-sex worker violence. We mourn the loss of Daoyou Feng, Hyeon-Jeong Park, Julie Park, Xiaojie Tan, Delaina Ashley Yaun, Paul Andre Michaels, and the two as-yet unnamed victims, and hold their families and communities in our hearts today.

We also acknowledge that a restorative justice-modeled response rejects calls to expand the carceral state. We witness in anger the police response to this domestic terrorist’s actions, which was to refer to him as having “a really bad day.” We remember that the carceral state is a product of white supremacy and anti-Blackness, and that it does not and cannot protect our communities. We call for models of justice that look beyond current violent systems towards a more just and liberatory future.

If you, or allies in your orbit, are in a position to do so, please consider donating to the following resources:

  • this specifically Atlanta-based group for Asian organizing
  • an ongoing Google doc of Asian orgs grouped by state and community
  • this list of 61 ways to donate to Asian communities organized by goal (community restoration, legal defense, etc.)
  • this Twitter thread for resources focused on immigrants, lower-income Asians, and sex workers
  • an Instagram thread with organizations and calls to action for non-Asian allies

Lastly, here is a thread on the entwined histories of anti-Asian and anti-Black racism and the need for solidarity.

Our work does not end here. As stated in our mission statement, APIGSA strives to create and maintain spaces of support for graduate students of Asian panethnicity, advocating for a more critically accurate representation of Asian, Asian American, and Pacific Islander students. Our work includes connecting our struggles and directing our anger in service of broader resistance movements.

We will be reaching out over the next few days with more offerings to help support each other. In the meantime, we appreciate any input on ways that APIGSA can continue to provide a stronger, more holistic representation of the issues concerning AAPI lives. We are here as community members, as resources, and as advocates.

In solidarity,
APIGSA board
https://apigsa-ucsb.wixsite.com/apigsa/about

IHC Funding Award Winners, Winter 2021, orange banner

Yan Liu Wins Interdisciplinary Humanities Center Award

Posted on | by Thomas Mazanec
Congratulations to our graduate student Yan Liu for receiving a Visual, Performing, and Media Arts award from the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center for his project “Hong Kong at the Crossroads”!
Here is a description of his project:
Since February 2019, the Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Movement in Hong Kong had continued unabated until the first half of 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic broke out and a new national security law was passed. The Movement, therefore, has entered a new era. With Hong Kong at the crossroads, protesters have been trying to find out ways to effect political change while abiding by the law. This project intends to produce a documentary that offers the latest and most comprehensive account of Hong Kongers’ experiment with innovative forms of protest and assembly against the renewed backdrop.
Read more about all the IHC graduate awards (which include EALCS-affiliated project Gaming+) here:
Flyer for "Teresa Teng and the Network Trace" at UC Berkeley by Andrew F. Jones on 2/17 at 6:30-8PM

Lecture Series: Sound and Screen from Taiwan

Posted on | by Thomas Mazanec

Prof. Hanpging Xu has helped put together a lecture series titled Sound and Screen from Taiwan under the sponsorship of the Center for Taiwan Studies as well as the Confucius Institute. For the Winter quarter, we have three exciting lectures lined up, respectively on February 17th (6:30-8:00 p.m.), February 25th (4:00-5:30 p.m.), and March 8th (6:30-8:00 p.m.):

  1. Professor Andrew Jones (Berkeley) will speak on pop diva Teresa Teng (邓丽君) and the sonic regime of geo-political affect and power across the Taiwan Strait.
  2. Professor Yingjin Zhang (UCSD) will take a sociological and culturalist approach to situate the Taiwan film industry in the context of globalization.
  3. Professor Tze-lan Deborah Sang (Michigan State University) will discuss Taiwanese documentary films through the lens of critical queer studies.

For more details, see the flyers below, visit our Events page, or contact Prof. Xu.