Transregional
The earliest extant composition by the patriarch of Shingon Buddhism in Japan, Kūkai 空海 (774–835), is the Sangō shiiki 三教指帰 (The ultimate meaning of the three teachings). This elaborate work in kanbun presents an outline of the Three Teachings transmitted from China in hierarchical arrangement, with Confucianism first shown to be inferior to Daoism, and Daoism in turn giving way to Buddhism. The rhetorical achievement of the Sangō shiiki is visible first of all in its epideictic rhetoric, rich in rhyming and alliterative compounds as well as creative adaptation of allusions from the classics...
Is monastic life relevant in contemporary society, where religion is increasingly considered less significant in our secular lives? Can we find valuable aspects of a monastic lifestyle that can be integrated into our daily lives? If so, what are these aspects, and how can we incorporate them? This seminar represents a collaborative effort to gain insight into one of the major monastic traditions: Buddhist monasticism. Throughout this seminar, we delve into various facets of Buddhist monastic life, examining its origins, historical development, monastic identity, rules and regulations,...
Interested in becoming an East Asian Languages & Literatures or East Asian Studies Major? Please join us for this information session to learn more about both programs! Please RSVP to eastasian.studies@yale.edu by October 25th to receive the Zoom link. For more...
Buddhism’s movement out of India and around the globe has provoked great changes in every society it has touched, and its spread ranks among the most significant developments in human history. Translation played a central role in this story, but how did Buddhist translators go about their work? This talk harnesses the only surviving set of records from a pre-modern Buddhist translation bureau to better understand Buddhist translation practices. Among the manuscripts discovered in 1900 in the Silk Road oasis of Dunhuang are lecture notes, outlines, drafts, and reference works tied to the...
This talk will be based on my book project, En Route to the Taj Mahal: Transformation of Architecture and Royal Identity under the Qarakhanids in Pre-Mongol Central Asia. It explores how the Islamic façade (aka pishtaq) –one of the most spectacular and persistent architectural elements of Islam – opens the window to understanding Central Asian cultural history and society. Pishtaq was a monumental high façade, lavishly decorated with Arabic inscriptions, geometric and floral patterns around a central door, the earliest and many instances of which were found in funerary structures. Emerging...
Come learn about the organizations around campus that work on East Asia, and the opportunities they can provide to students! Organizations participating include: Yale-China Building Bridges Council on East Asian Studies The Richard U. Light Fellowship Office of Career Strategy China Hands Paul Tsai China Center, Yale Law School Yale School of Management Executive Education Yale Center Beijing
In the mid-1900s, American missionaries employed the industrial vision of the Black intellectual Booker T. Washington (1856-1915) to instill in Koreans the ideas of “civilization and enlightenment” and economic development. Notably, American mission workers juxtaposed the situations of dispossessed African Americans with those of Koreans. This equation created the conditions through which a rhetoric of “uplift” could be articulated through their similar status on an imagined scale of race and progress. The Korean leader Yun Ch’i-ho (1865-1945), while occasionally criticizing the hypocrisy of...
3:00-3:05 Welcoming Remarks Professor Hannah Shepherd Assistant Professor of History 3:05-3:10 Welcoming Remarks Professor Seungja Choi Coordinator, Korean Language Program 10-Minute Thesis Presentations 3:10-3:25 Postcolonial Memory and Traces of Seoul’s Shinto Shrines John Grisafi PhD candidate Religious Studies 3:25-3:40 A History of Her Own: Reading Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko as a Political Novel Alexandra Galloway Senior English Literature, Korean Language 3:40-3:55 A Historical and Linguistic Analysis of Honorific Speech Style Alternation...
May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. CEAS will observe this month, beginning with the screening of “Men of Iron and the Golden Spike” and “Going Home.” The screening of ”Men of Iron and the Golden Spike,” a symphonic oratorio, will be followed by “Going Home” and then a discussion between Min Zhou and Wei Su, Senior Lector in Chinese, Yale University. Many Americans regard the first Transcontinental Railroad, built between 1863-1869, as one of the most important and daring projects in 19th-century America. Often left out of the discussion of the Railroad’s history...
From “Fuzzy” to “Eclectic” and Everything in Between: Intercultural Encounters in the Pre-Modern World, will be held at Yale University on April 14-15, 2023. We are honored to host Dr. Holly Shaffer, Assistant Professor of History of Art and Architecture at Brown University, as our keynote speaker. All events will take place in person in Loria 250. Please note that neither the panels nor the keynote will be held on Zoom. This graduate conference is hosted by the Pre/Early Modern Forum and generously sponsored by Yale History of Art, Early Modern Studies, Council for East Asian Studies, and...
This course explores the role of memory as a social, cultural, and political force in contemporary society. How societies remember difficult pasts has become a contested site for negotiating the present. Through the lens of memory, we examine complex roles that our relationships to difficult pasts play in navigating issues we face today. This course explores this politics of memory that takes place in the realm of popular culture and public space. The class asks such questions as: How do you represent difficult and contested pasts? What does it mean to enable long-silenced victims’ voices to...
How can one speak and write about the self in a language that is not one’s mother tongue? Are there limitations or does the author feel a kind of liberation that does not exist in using one’s native language? How does one make language their own? This presentation explores autobiographical writings by Pahk Induk (1897-1980): September Monkey (1954) and the sequels. Pahk was born and lived in Korea until 1926, then she moved to the US first as a student and eventually becoming a permanent resident while writing her autobiographies in English. I explore the technologies of narrating one’s own...
This talk examines some of the cultural and legal ways North Korean refugees are now being groomed to become an assimilable population to the United States, with a focus on North Korean defector Yeonmi Park’s memoir, In Order to Live: A North Korean Girls’ Journey to Freedom (2015). I argue that the North Korean people are increasingly being recognized and imagined as a potential next wave of immigrant Americans, even though there is a simultaneous political and societal refusal to practically actualize this possibility. My analysis demonstrates that contemporary representations of North...
A panel of three distinguished Divinity School alum scholars—Haruka Umetsu Cho ’15 M.Div., Stephanie Wong ’13 M.Div., and Peng Yin ’12 M.A.R.—will present this year’s Bartlett Lecture on Monday, March 6, at Yale Divinity School. Chloë Starr, Professor of Asian Christianity and Theology, will moderate the event, titled “Understanding the Divine from an East Asian Perspective.” Scheduled for 5:30 p.m. in Niebuhr Hall at YDS, the event is part of the YDS Bicentennial observance taking place this year and showcases three exceptional scholars who are shaping debates on Chinese and Japanese...
The Council on East Asian Studies is pleased to present the 4th Seong-Yawng Park GRD ‘65 and Marguerite Clark Park Memorial Lecture. The Seong-Yawng Park GRD ’65 and Marguerite Clark Park Memorial Lecture was made possible by a generous gift from the estate of the Park family. The principal objective of this gift is to foster the study of Korea at Yale by bringing recognition of the Korean peninsula and its affairs and achievements to Yale and the wider community. The lecture will take place from 4:30 to 6:00pm, with a reception follow in the Luce Common Room on the 2nd floor. Anthropology...
To register, visit https://bit.ly/3vGTymO Although known as early as the 7th century, there is little visual evidence for Buddhist practice in Tibet until the 11th when paintings...
No scholar of modern Chinese literary studies in its globalizing mode will miss the recent spotlight on Malaysian Chinese (Mahua) literature. Previously untapped, works from or about the Southeast Asian country are now read for bracing ideas on language, ethnicity, and diaspora. In Malaysian Crossings: Place and Language in the Worlding of Modern Chinese Literature, Chan shows how the minor literary formation’s grasp of its own marginality in the world-Chinese literary space constitutes the threshold—instead of a hurdle—to creating signature aesthetic imprints that foster global outlooks. In...
Shamanism is the oldest human religious phenomenon and practice. Korean shamanism, called Muism, goes back to prehistoric times, and archeological evidence suggests that it was part of Bronze age culture. During the Three Kingdoms period, the role of the shaman was integrated into the position of kings and other political officials. Korean shamanism evolved from a male-centered practice where the role was heavily politicized to primarily being performed by women in much more informal settings during modern times. There has been a systematic suppression and persecution of shamans, called...
The Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies Program and the Council on East Asian Studies of the Yale MacMillan Center present a roundtable on “Kazakhstan After 2022: What’s Next for the Country?” Featuring: Chair: Claire Roosien, Assistant Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Yale University Participants: Botakoz Kassymbekova, Assistant Professor, University of Basel; Erica Marat, Associate Professor and Chair of the Regional and Analytical Studies Department, National Defense University; and Nari Shelekpayev, Assistant Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Yale...
In the war of Japan’s invasion of Chosŏn Korea (1592-1598) in which Ming China was involved, the three countries were all vigorously engaged in diplomacy while fighting on and off. In fact, diplomacy occupied a far longer period than what military confrontation did in this seven-year war. However, historians in the field by and large ignore Chosŏn Korea’s diplomatic agency. In particular, when it comes to a discussion of the diplomatic attempt from mid-1593 to 1596 for truce, Chosŏn Korea is missing. The discussion is almost invariably focused on the negotiations between Japan and Ming China...
Pages
