Recent News

5/8 The Water Margin and Beyond: Chinese Narrative in Early Modern Japan (workshop)

Workshop: The Water Margin and Beyond: Chinese Narrative in Early Modern Japan
Friday, May 8th, 2026
space limited: RSVP required (contact: William Fleming)

Ellis Tinios (University of Leeds)
“Visualizing China in Print: The Water Margin and the print and book trade in Japan, 1805–38” (Zoom)

William Hedberg (Arizona State University)
“Some New Ways of Looking at Old Ways of Looking at Early Modern Translation”

Fumiko Jōo (Mississippi State University)
“Inventing the Past: Reincarnation and Antiquarianism in Santō Kyōden’s Ukibotan zenden”

Katherine Saltzman-Li (UCSB)
“Visualizing Tōjin in Edo-period Kabuki and Prints”

Yoshitaka Yamamoto (Yale University)
“Zhuge Liang in the Snow: Intersections of Vernacular Chinese Fiction, Painting, and Sinitic Poetry in Early Modern Japan”

Ye Yuan (Oberlin College)
“Colloquial Sinitic: Textual Colloquialism and Ming-Qing Popular Fiction in Early Modern Japan”

Yu Zhang (UCSB)
“When Outlaws Became Exemplary Women: Rewriting Gender and Virtue in Kyokutei Bakin’s (1767-1848) Keisei Suikoden”

William Fleming (UCSB)
“In-Laws of the Marsh: Water Margin Parodies from the Bakumatsu and Early Meiji Periods”

EALCS certificates of language proficiency

Starting this academic year (2025-26), the department will recognize achievement in language study, regardless of a student’s major or minor, with departmental “certificates of language proficiency” and “certificates of advanced language proficiency.” The former will be awarded to students who complete the final quarter of second-year Chinese, Japanese, or Korean with a grade of B or higher. The latter will be awarded to students who receive a B or higher in the final quarter of third-year Chinese or Japanese, or who receive a B or higher in two fourth-year Chinese or Japanese courses (including courses in classical Chinese and Japanese).