February 2010 | March 2010 | May 2010 | Jackson School calendar | archive and advanced search

The East Asia Center hosts a broad array of events covering the arts, humanities and social sciences. These events range from academic lectures by professors from the U.S. and East Asia to film festivals featuring documentary and feature films.

 


This Week

Click on the title for more details.

All Events

February 2010

MOVIE: Shichinin no samurai (Seven Samurai)

Thursday February 4, 2010
7:00 PM
Kane Hall 210, UW Seattle campus

Professor Ted Mack will give a preshow introduction

Sponsored by the East Asia Center, East Asia Resource Center and Japan Studies Program of the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington

For information, please visit http://jsis.washington.edu/smak/.

Classic Japanese film co-written, edited and directed by the incomparable Akira Kurosawa and starring Toshio Mifune. (1954) 160 minutes. 16th century Japanese farmers face a band of roving thieves. Their solution is to hire samurai for protection. The farmers are poor and can only offer food and lodging but they soon recruit Kambei Shimada who determines that they will need a total of seven samurai to properly guard the village...

This screening is preceded by a brief introduction by Professor Ted Mack of the Department of Asian Languages and Literature.

Part of the SMAK 2010 International Film Series (See Movies at Kane) showing every Thursday night: January 14---March 18, 2010.

No tickets required / Free and open to the public

Please note that this event does not provide clock hours to teachers.

All showings at 7:00 p.m., Kane Hall, Room 210, University of Washington, Seattle.See Movies at Kane


return to top

Train Man (Densha otoko)

Sunday February 7, 2010
1:30pm - 5:00pm
Seattle Asian Art Museum, Volunteer Park, Stimson Auditorium

Introduced by Ted Mack, Associate Professor, Department of Asian Languages & Literature , University of Washington

Sponsored by the Seattle Asian Art Museum and the East Asia Center and Japan Studies Program at the Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington

For details, see seattleartmuseum.org

"Train Man" (Densha otoko), Japan, 2005. Directed by Shosuke Murakami, 101 min. When a nerdy young man helps a woman being harassed on a train, he starts dating for the first time ever and goes online for advice. Introduced by Ted Mack, an associate professor of modern Japanese literature at the University of Washington.

Part of the "Guilty Pleasures: Popular Films from Asia" series, these events bring you great, recent films that you may have never heard of but were big hits with Asian communities around the world. An expert on Asian film from the University of Washington will be your tour guide, introducing each film. All are DVD, with English subtitles. Cosponsored by the Jackson School of International Studies.

Series tickets: SAM members $30, nonmembers $35. Individual tickets: $7 at the door.


return to top

"Landscape Conservation in Taiwan" & "The Logic of Desire in East Asia"

Thursday February 11, 2010
3:30PM-5:00PM
Thomson 317

Hsien-Hsin Cheng, Department of Urban Planning, National Cheng Kung University & Cheng-Che Chen, Director of the Institute of Environmental Art, Nanhua University; Chung-Ching Ou, Department of Public Relations and Design, Transworld Institute of Technology & Sue-Chi Huang, Department of Ethnomusicology, Nanhua University

peytoc@uw.edu

Landscape Conservation in Taiwan

Regional conservation recently has been increasingly emphasized in Taiwan. With perceptions from the history of conservation, preservation methods have extended from single buildings to whole districts, and from building preservation as the main subject to the maintenance of a whole historical environment. This presentation intends to discuss the regional conservation issue from the perspective of maintaining the urban landscape. *up to here

This talk probes the history of urban landscape conservation in Taiwan, finds out the key point and the system, and analyzes the quintessence of Taiwanese urban landscape execution. Besides, discovers the complement to modern urban planning in conservation field by landscape system, and how to employ the urban planning method to support landscape system as conservation of regional vernacular form. The presentation mainly focuses on the statements of comprehensive history development. The context will concentrate on the individuality of municipality, comprehensive adjustment of practical training, citizen’s participation etc, in order to create a new vision for the current regional conservation.

The Logic of Desire in East Asia

Because of the West’s mainstream status in global culture, Westerners often draw “fillers” from “the East” to produce a narrative of the region as part of a desire to understand “the East.”  Examples of such fillers include Japanese, Chinese, and Thai foods, Asian actors in Hollywood, such as Jet Li and Zhang Ziyi, kungfu, and Eastern culture.  These fillers in turn serve as part of social construction of cultural relationships around the world.


return to top

The Honorable Survivor: Mao's China, McCarthy's America and the Persecution of John S. Service

Thursday February 11, 2010
11:30AM
Thomson 317

Lynne Joiner- Emmy-winning broadcast journalist and documentary filmmaker

peytoc@uw.edu

HONORABLE SURVIVOR tells the true story of John S. Service, a China-born U.S. Foreign Service officer during WWII who got caught up in the fate of nations. He predicted Mao's successful revolution-and warned of the coming renewal of Chinese civil war which could jeopardize America’s fight against Japan. Secretly sent to Mao’s guerrilla stronghold in Yan’an, Service urged the U.S. to adopt a policy recognizing the reality of both Nationalist and Communist China territories. In the anti-Communist hysteria that gripped the nation in 1950, John Service became Senator Joseph McCarthy’s first victim for the so-called "loss" of China. Fired for “doubtful loyalty”, the diplomat battled all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court to win his job, but his career was “neutralized” by the FBI, anti-Communist politicians, the China lobby and Chiang Kai-shek’s secret police. Only after the historic handshake between Nixon & Mao in 1972 was Service's reputation fully restored.
 


return to top

Blood Brothers: Racial Passing and Male Bonding in Japanese Yakuza Films

Friday February 19, 2010
3:30p - 5:00p
THO 317

Christopher D. Scott, Asian Languages and Cultures, Macalester College

Sponsored by the East Asia Center and Japan Studies Program

Contact: East Asia Center, eacenter@uw.edu, 206-543-6938

Like the Western gangster film, the Japanese yakuza film has long been a site for the co-articulation of racial, ethnic, gender, sexual, and class differences. Not surprisingly, Korean residents of Japan (so-called zainichi Koreans) have played a central role in the development of this genre, especially from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, when the yakuza film was at the height of its popularity and when Japan began to reexamine its (post)colonial past in response to domestic and international crises. This talk looks at three yakuza films from this period that focus on racial tensions and gender anxieties between yakuza and zainichi Koreans. Particular focus will be placed on how the acts of racial passing and male bonding in these films reflect larger concerns about Japanese national identity and masculinity through the bloody body of the zainichi Korean male subject.

Christopher D. Scott is Assistant Professor in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures at Macalester College, where he teaches courses in Japanese, modern Japanese literature and film, race and ethnic studies, and translation studies. This talk is from his current book project, Invisible Men: Race, Masculinity, and Zainichi Korean Subjectivity in Postwar Japanese Culture.


 


return to top

Rethinking Daoist Visual Culture

Friday February 19, 2010
11:30AM- 1:00PM
Thomson 317

Shihshan Huang: Asst. Prof. of Chinese Art Department of Art History Rice University

peytoc@uw.edu

Shihshan Susan Huang received her Ph. D. from Yale University and taught at the University of Washington prior to her present position at Rice University. Her interest is in an interdisciplinary approach to East Asian visual culture that utilizes art, religion, and history. Huang presently is researching Daoist and Buddhist art in medieval China. Her current book-length project, Daoist Visual Culture in Medieval China, examines the ways in which Daoist art reflects the visual vocabulary of Daoism in relation to its internal and external practices.

If you plan to attend the free lunch from 11:30-12:00, please notify Peyton Canary at peytoc@uw.edu by noon on Thursday, February 18.
 


return to top

If You Are the One (Fei Cheng Wu Rao)

Sunday February 21, 2010
1:30pm - 5:00pm
Seattle Asian Art Museum, Volunteer Park, Stimson Auditorium

Introduced by James Tweedie, Assistant Professor, Comparative Literature , University of Washington

Sponsored by the Seattle Asian Art Museum and the East Asia Center and China Studies Program at the Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington

For details, see seattleartmuseum.org

If You Are the One (Fei Cheng Wu Rao), China, 2008. Directed by Feng Xiaogang, 130 mins. After a middle-aged man suddenly becomes a millionaire, he advertises online for a partner and meets a series of real characters. Introduced by James Tweedie, an assistant professor of comparative literature and a member of the cinema studies faculty at the University of Washington.

Part of the "Guilty Pleasures: Popular Films from Asia" series, these events bring you great, recent films that you may have never heard of but were big hits with Asian communities around the world. An expert on Asian film from the University of Washington will be your tour guide, introducing each film. All are DVD, with English subtitles. Cosponsored by the Jackson School of International Studies.

Series tickets: SAM members $30, nonmembers $35. Individual tickets: $7 at the door.


return to top

Book Reading & Signing with Peter Hessler: "Country Driving: A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory"

Thursday February 25, 2010
12:00 pm
University of Washington Bookstore, 4326 University Way NE

Sponsored by the East Asia Center and the East Asia Resouce Center

For more information, please contact the UW Bookstore at 206.634.3400

Once simply a vast rural nation, China is now a vast rural nation with improving roads. Peter Hessler, former Beijing correspondent for The New Yorker, acquired a Chinese driver's license in 2001, and used it to explore the country's changing landscape. Over the course of seven years, he drove thousands of miles to discover the way the automobile was changing an ancient country and an ancient culture unused to such—relatively speaking—easy travel. Hessler's latest book, Country Driving: A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory, describes his journeys and observations.

Peter Hessler is a staff writer at The New Yorker, where he served as the Beijing correspondent from 2000 to 2007, and is also a contributing writer for National Geographic. He is the author of River Town, which won the Kiriyama Book Prize, and Oracle Bones, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. He won the 2008 National Magazine Award for excellence in reporting.

Sponsored by the East Asia Center and East Asia Resource Center at the Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington.

Please note that this event does not provide clock hours.

return to top

Community Livelihood in Liangshan: The Intersection of History, Policy, Ecology, and Ethnicity

Thursday February 25, 2010
3:30PM
Thomson 317

Presenters:

Stevan Harrell, UW Anthropology and China Studies;
Brian Collins, UW Earth and Space Sciences;
R. Keala Hagmann, UW School of Forest Resources;
Amanda C. Henck, UW Earth and Space Sciences;
Thomas M. Hinckley, UW School of Forest Resources;
Steven J. Rigdon, UW School of Forest Resources;
Haldre Rogers, UW Department of Biology;
SaraJo Shepler, UW School of Forest Resources;
Heather Simmons-Rigdon, USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service;
Christine Jane Trac, Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Sciences;
Lauren S. Urgenson, UW School of Forest Resources
 


return to top

March 2010

Book Reading & Discussion with Author Rieko Matsuura

Monday March 1, 2010
3:30p - 5:00p
Walker-Ames Room, Kane Hall

Sponsored by the East Asia Center and the Japan Studies Program

For more information, please contact the East Asia Center at 206-543-6938 or eacenter@uw.edu.

Rieko Matsuura will be discussing the recent translation of her novel The Apprenticeship of Big Toe P into English. Matsuura, born in Japan in 1958, has written a number of fascinating works of fiction over the past three decades, including Natural Woman, about a lesbian couple, and A Dog's Body, about a woman who becomes a dog. Apprenticeship, the first work of Matsuura's to appear in English, explores one woman's physical, sexual, and psychological journey when she awakens one day to discover that the big toe of her right foot has turned into a penis.

Both Matsuura and her translator, Professor Michael Emmerich of UC Santa Barbara, will be joining us for a reading and roundtable discussion.

For more information, please contact the East Asia Center at 206-543-6938 or eacenter@uw.edu.

 


return to top

The Cult of the Ancestral Agriculturalist during the Qin

Thursday March 4, 2010
3:30PM
Thomson 317

Anthony Barbieri- Low Assoc. Prof. History Univ. of California at Santa Barbara


return to top

Nakagami Kenji and Subculture

Friday March 12, 2010
3:30p - 5:00p
Balmer 202

Presented by Prof. Anne Mcknight, USC

Sponsored by the East Asia Center, Asian Languages & Literature and Japan Studies Program

Contact Diane Atkinson, 206-543-6938, eacenter@uw.edu

In this colloquium, Professor Anne McKnight maps out the connections between Nakagami Kenji’s late works and Japanese subculture and its links to the coming of age stories that travel from Japan to parts of the former empire .

Prof. McKnight is Assistant Professor of East Asian Languages and Literatures and Comparative Literature with the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Southern California. Her research interests focus on modern and contemporary literature's relation to ethnography and media studies, how modern claims about race and ethnicity have underwritten notions of "realism," as well as the rich repertoire of avant‐garde and genre fiction that flees from realism.
 


return to top

May 2010

Global Focus Series: "The US and North Korea: Dealing With Irrationality"

Tuesday May 4, 2010
7:00pm - 8:30pm
Walker-Ames Room, Kane Hall

Guest Speaker: Professor Bruce Cumings

Sponsored by the East Asia Center and the Center for Global Studies

Contact: East Asia Center, eacenter@uw.edu, 206-543-6938

Explore the relationship between the US and North Korea, as well as the North Korean nuclear issue, its historical background and how it affects South Korea, China and Japan.

Professor Bruce Cumings is the Gustavus F. and Ann M. Swift Distinguished Service Professor in History at the University of Chicago. He specializes in modern Korean history and contemporary international relations in East Asia.

Please note that this event does not provide teacher clock hours.


return to top

Spring 2010 Teachers' Conference in Korean Studies for K-12 Teachers

Saturday May 15, 2010
9:00 - 3:00 PM
TBD

Mark Peterson, Clark Sorensen, and Edward Park

Center for Korea Studies

The Center for Korea Studies invites K-12 Washington State teachers and their collegues to a special one day workshop event: Learning to teach about Korea.

Cost: $20 includes presentations, resource packet, Korean lunch, and 6 clock hours.

Please register by May 10 by e-mail to uwcks@u.washington.edu


return to top
East Asia Center
University of Washington
301 Thomson Hall
Box 353650
Seattle, WA 98195
(206) 543-6938 phone
(206) 685-0668 fax
►eacenter@u.washington.edu

William Lavely, Director
Mary Bernson, Director of Outreach
Kristi Roundtree, Associate Director
Program Coordinator
Sophia Barnes, Technology Assistant