East Asia in Motion: Literature, Cinema, Dance

East Asia in Motion: Literature, Cinema, Dance

Friday, February 27, 2009 - 6:00pm to Sunday, March 1, 2009 - 12:00pm
Auditorium, Whitney Humanities Center See map
53 Wall Street
New Haven, CT 6510

A three-day symposium at Yale University (February 27th - March 1, 2009)

This symposium seeks to extend the breadth of current scholarship on East Asia by focusing on literary, cinematic, and choreographic manifestations of movement. Oriented around the multivalent theme of “movement,” participants practicing a range of analytical and creative methodologies will collaboratively interrogate the limits of “East Asia” as presently configured while simultaneously exploring new avenues for engaged scholarly inquiry. By putting pressure on the multiple ways in which the cinematic, literary, choreographic, and political overlap and interpenetrate through the figure of movement, we hope to remain critically mindful of the extent to which any discursive motion, “East Asian” or otherwise, is always contoured and compelled by a range of ideological forces. Presentations will gesture beyond the staid borders of the “national” and outstrip the confines of singular academic disciplines. This will be done in the hope that the symposium’s theme of “movement” might provide a provisional pivot point in response to which participants can venture individual contributions to a dynamic, rigorous communal conversation about the ways in which East Asia moves and means in a planetary context.

The symposium will move beyond the borders of a normal academic conference by featuring the transnational work of two artists: the independent, avant-garde filmmaker Kanai Katsu, showing his work in North America for the first time; and the Chinese choreographer and dancer Shen Wei, who helped choreograph the Opening Ceremony of the Beijing Olympics. Papers for the two Saturday panels will be made available for participants beforehand so as to concentrate on discussion.

DAY 1: Featuring presentation by artist Kanai Katsu

7:00pm Independent Movement: The Cinema of Kanai Katsu
The Desert Archipelago (Mujin rettō), 1969, 35mm, 55 min. and
Good-Bye, 1971, 16mm, 52 min.

9:00 pm Roundtable discussion on Kanai Katsu
Kanai Katsu – Japanese filmmaker and director
Markus Nornes – University of Michigan
Naoki Yamamoto – Ph.D student, Yale University
Seung-hoon Jeong – Ph.D student, Yale University
Aaron Gerow – Yale University

DAY 2: Featuring presentation by artist Shen Wei

10:00am Panel One: Moving Images of Empire
Michael Bourdaughs – University of Chicago
Jonathan Hall – University of California, Irvine
Yingjing Zhang – University of California, San Diego

2:00 pm Panel Two: Becoming Animal: Zones of Exchange and the Post-Human Organism
Victor Fan – Ph.D student, Yale University
Christine Marran – University of Minnesota
Christine Yano – University of Hawaii

7:00 pm Lecture-Demonstration by Shen Wei
Choreographer, director, dancer, painter and designer, Shen Wei will discuss his artistic vision, past and current projects, and about the ways in which his work pushes the boundaries of what it means to “move” as a dancer in a transnational context.

8:30 pm Roundtable discussion on Shen Wei
Shen Wei – founder and director of Shen Wei Dance Arts
Paize Keulemans – Yale University
Reggie Jackson – Yale University
Karen Shimakawa – New York University

DAY 3:

10:00am Closing Roundtable: Moving Forward - Further Questions and Trajectories
Shu-mei Shih – University of California, Los Angeles
Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto – New York University

For More Information

Department of East Asian Languages and Literature, Whitney Humanities Center
Region: 
China, Japan, Korea, Transregional