September 27, 2017
This past Spring, Steve Harrell retired after a successful 30+ year career focusing on minorities in China. Here, Steve reflects on his history and development in the field of anthropology. 1. What inspired you to become a professor? What was the biggest challenge you encountered in your journey there? When I was an undergraduate, majoring
August 31, 2016
Taiwan Society JSIS 583A, Autumn 2016 As a case of rapid social change, evolving identity, and transition from authoritarian to democratic rule, Taiwan is of unusual interest to the social sciences. Using recent scholarship, as well as film and fiction, this course will inquire how Taiwanese identity was forged, how family and social structure have
Program Start Date: Nov 15 2016
Tobie Meyer-Fong Professor, John Hopkins University Tuesday November 15th, 2016 Thomson 317 3:30pm In this talk Professor Meyer-Fong disscuses her book “What remains: coming to terms with civil war in 19th century China”. Drawing upon a rich array of primary sources, What Remains explores the issues that preoccupied Chinese and Western survivors. Individuals, families, and
Program Start Date: Oct 10 2016
Christopher Rea Associate Professor of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia Monday October 10, 2016 12:00pm East Asia Library, Room 2M China’s entry in modernity was not just traumatic, but uproarious. As the Qing last dynasty fell, prominent writers compiled jokes to form collections called “histories of laughter.” In the first years of
Program Start Date: Oct 7 2016
James A. Benn McMaster University Friday October 7, 2016 Thomson Hall 317 11:30am The values associated with tea today— that it is natural, health- giving, detoxifying, spiritual, stimulating, refreshing, and so on— are not new ideas, but ones shaped in Tang times, by poets. Only a handful of poems were written about tea prior to
August 9, 2016
China Studies associate faculty member Zev Handel is organizing the Fourth Workshop on Sino-Tibetan Languages of Southwest China, set for September 8th-10th, 2016. Building on the achievements of the first three workshops, the fourth workshop will be held at the University of Washington in Seattle in 2016. In recognition of the enduring importance of studying the
July 14, 2016
Autumn 2016 GEOG505 Addresses several major spatial topics critical to present-day China’s development, including: population and land relationship, the spatial structures of economic activities and governments; rural-urban relations and transition; central-local relations; the hukou system; population mobility at different spatial scales and urban centers.
Program Start Date: Apr 14 2016
This talk goes over a historic explanation on the social and environmental causes of the 1931 flood. The flood in 1931 is believed to be the deadliest disaster in 20th century China with one-fourth of China’s population affected. But the conventional view that regards the flood as an “unavoidable” natural disaster does not explain why key
Program Start Date: May 13 2016
Since the mid-2000s China’s central government has been nancing an aggressive overhaul of its farming sector. Predicating this drive on a need to increase food security, the state has invested billions to rapidly replace small-scale farming households with large-scale, mechanized and commercialized agricultural operators. In so doing, it is fundamentally altering not just rural societies
Program Start Date: May 19 2016
This talk explained that the story of East Asian development is the means to understanding the nature of economic development worldwide. Joe Studwell dissected the region’s history to show how, for many years, heady economic growth rates masked the most divided continent in the world – a north-east Asian group of states that is the