Book Launch: The Politics of Rights and the 1911 Revolution in China

Date: Wednesday, October 17

Time: 5:00 pm

Place: HSSB 6020 McCune Room

Please join the Department of History, the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies and the UCSB Confucius Institute to celebrate the publication of The Politics of Rights and the 1911 Revolution in China by Professor Xiaowei Zheng (Stanford University Press, 2018). We will be celebrating this accomplishment on Wednesday October 17 from 5-7 pm in the McCune Room (HSSB 6020). Prof Matthew Sommer (Stanford) and Prof. Tony Barbieri-Low (UCSB) will offer commentary on the book’s significance and contributions.  A reception will follow. Please read “China’s 1911 Revolution” in today’s Current here.

From the Dragon’s Mouth: A Life in Translation

From the Dragon’s Mouth: A Life in Translation
Speaker: Brian Holton, Chinese-Scots and Chinese-English literary translator
Date: Tuesday, October 9
Time: 5:00pm
Place: HSSB 4080, UC Santa Barbara
Brian Holton is a poet and prize-winning translator of Chinese poetry. Famed for his renditions of contemporary poet Yang Lian 楊煉 into English, he is also the the world’s only translator of Classical Chinese into Scots. Join us for an evening in which Brian discusses the art and practice of translation, the experience of working in a minority language like Scots, and his life growing up between Nigeria and Scotland, immersed in a myriad of languages.

Position in Modern Chinese Literature, Film, and Cultural Studies

The Department of East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, seeks to hire an Assistant Professor who specializes in the interconnected fields of modern Chinese literature, film, and cultural studies. PhD preferred. The minimum requirement to be considered an applicant is the completion of all requirements for a PhD in modern Chinese literature, film, cultural studies, or related field (or equivalent degree) except the dissertation (or equivalent) at the time of application. Candidate must have a PhD by time of appointment as Assistant Professor. Specialization in modern Chinese literature, film, cultural studies, or related field. Appointment is expected to begin July 1, 2019.

As an interdisciplinary department made up of scholars of literature, anthropology, history, religious studies, and linguistics, we value innovative theoretical and methodological approaches. The ideal candidate would be a scholar who can both analyze the content of modern Chinese literature and film, and also examine how they are shaped by the evolving forms of media through which they are produced and disseminated. We also welcome applicants who set the production and reception of popular culture in the shifting social and historical contexts of modern China. We encourage applicants whose works address Sinophone cultural and artistic flows crisscrossing the Chinese Mainland, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Southeast Asia, Japan, Korea, North America, and beyond. The successful candidate will be able to teach graduate seminars in modern Chinese literature and film, while also offering broader undergraduate courses.

To ensure full consideration, please submit a cover letter, curriculum vitae, a writing sample, and arrange to have at least three letters of recommendation sent to the Search Committee through UC Recruit, at https://recruit.ap.ucsb.edu/apply/JPF01280. Primary consideration will be given to complete applications received by September 24, 2018. Inquiries about the position may be directed to the Search Committee Chair, Professor Mayfair Yang: yangm@religion.ucsb.edu.

The Department of East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies is especially interested in candidates who can contribute to the diversity and excellence of the academic community through research, teaching and service. For information on our department, please visit our website at https://www.eastasian.ucsb.edu/. The University of California is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.

Sōseki, Modern Japan's Greatest Novelist by John Nathan book cover

“Sōseki” Modern Japan’s Greatest Novelist by Professor John Nathan

Prof. John Nathan published his new book, Sōseki” Modern Japan’s Greatest Novelist from Columbia University Press.

In this biography, John Nathan provides a lucid and vivid account of a great writer laboring to create a remarkably original oeuvre in spite of the physical and mental illness that plagued him all his life. He traces Sōseki’s complex and contradictory character, offering rigorous close readings of Sōseki’s groundbreaking experiments with narrative strategies, irony, and multiple points of view as well as recounting excruciating hospital stays and recurrent attacks of paranoid delusion. Drawing on previously untranslated letters and diaries, published reminiscences, and passages from Sōseki’s fiction, Nathan renders intimate scenes of the writer’s life and distills a portrait of a tormented yet unflaggingly original author. The first full-length study of Sōseki in fifty years, Nathan’s biography elevates Sōseki to his rightful place as a great synthesizer of literary traditions and a brilliant chronicler of universal experience who, no less than his Western contemporaries, anticipated the modernism of the twentieth century.

Full article available here:

Columbia University Press

https://cup.columbia.edu/book/sseki/9780231171427