The Japanese translation of Sabine Frühstück’s book, Playing War (University of California Press, 2017) is now out from Jinbun Shōbo, Kyoto, 2023. 『「戦争ごっこ」の近現代史—児童文化と軍事思想』
Category: Announcement
New Book by Professor William Fleming: Strange Tales from Edo
New Book by Professor William Fleming: Strange Tales from Edo: Rewriting Chinese Fiction in Early Modern Japan (Harvard University Asia Center, 2023).
Strange Tales from Edo paints a sweeping picture of Japan’s engagement with Chinese fiction in the early modern period (1600–1868). Large-scale analyses of the full historical and bibliographical record—the first of their kind—document in detail the wholesale importation of Chinese fiction, the market for imported books and domestic reprint editions, and the critical role of manuscript practices—the ascendance of print culture notwithstanding—in the circulation of Chinese texts among Japanese readers and writers.
Bringing this big picture to life, Fleming also traces the journey of a text rarely mentioned in studies of early modern Japanese literature: Pu Songling’s Liaozhai zhiyi (Strange Tales from Liaozhai Studio). An immediate favorite of readers on the continent, Liaozhai was long thought to have been virtually unknown in Japan until the modern period. Copies were imported in vanishingly small numbers, and the collection was never reprinted domestically. Yet beneath this surface of apparent neglect lies a rich hidden history of engagement and rewriting—hand-copying, annotation, criticism, translation, and adaptation—that opens up new perspectives on both the Chinese strange tale and its Japanese counterparts.
AMERICAN GIRL: Film Screening and Conversation with Director Feng-I Fiona Roan (4/6)
Please join us for a screening of the film American Girl and a conversation with its director Feng-I Fiona Roan, at 5:00pm in the Multicultural Center on April 6.
Global Storytelling: Narrating Childhoods in Taiwan Workshop (April 6-7, 2023)
Please join us for an exciting event held by the Center for Taiwan Studies and co-sponsored by EALCS.
Global Storytelling brings together student “scholars in training” with international experts and community members to engage in critical, collective reflections about ethnographic methods, qualitative inquiry, and stories of growing up in Taiwan. Hailing from three different continents, participants gather at UC Santa Barbara to learn from and with each other in short presentations, roundtable discussions, methodological training sessions, and collective reflections.
Two keynotes—one on the language of migrant resistance, the other on funereal silence—and a film director’s talk with Feng-I Fiona Roan as well as the screening of American Girl (2021) provide additional texture. Please join us!
More information can be found on the other posters, provided below.
Rachel Levine Awarded Fulbright Dissertation Grant
We are pleased to announce that EALCS graduate student Rachel Levine was recently awarded a Fulbright Dissertation Grant for 2023–2024 to pursue her project, “Breaking Open the Black Box: Shifting Discourse Policy and Praxis in Contemporary Japan” while affiliating with Sophia University, Tokyo, and working under the guidance of Professor Mari Miura (Faculty of Law). Congratulations, Rachel, we are proud of you!
EALCS Statement in Support of UC Graduate Student Negotations
We, the faculty of the East Asian Languages & Cultural Studies, are concerned about the skyrocketing rents and cost of living in Santa Barbara that have adversely impacted the lives of our graduate students. Our graduate students’ work as T.A.s, Teaching Associates, and Research Assistants provide a valuable service in our university’s teaching responsibilities. The living standards of our graduate students will have an important impact on our future ability to attract the highest quality and most accomplished students from around the world. We thereby encourage the UCSB administration to urge UCOP to negotiate in good faith with UAW in order to bring as much financial relief to our graduate students and their families as possible.
