Transregional
A special dialogue on new research about the Tokyo War Crime Trials by Professor David Cohen and Professor Yuma Totani. Readings have been prepared for this event. Please email eastasian.studies@yale.edu for copies. Professor David Cohen is Director of the WSD HANDA...
Beyond Diplomacy: Tokugawa Japan’s Changing Relations with Southeast Asia in the Seventeenth Century
The early seventeenth century saw an unprecedented surge in connections between Japan and states across Southeast Asia. Japanese merchants, mercenaries and migrants started to appear in large numbers in ports across the region while the first Tokugawa shogun exchanged regular correspondence with a diverse array of rulers and officials. This began to change, however, in the 1620s as the Tokugawa regime severed these connections by rejecting a string of incoming diplomatic letters and embassies. This paper explores this process of diplomatic retreat but argues that it was accompanied by a...
In the last twenty years, Western scholars have begun to pay more attention to the importance of Manchu-language sources in the study of the history of the Qing dynasty (1644-1912). The recent discovery of the value of these materials ought more properly be regarded as a rediscovery, however, since in the early 19th century the first European sinologists had already begun to take a serious interest in the Manchu language, noting then its value for the study of Chinese history and the classics. The pioneer in this regard was the remarkable Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat (1788-1832). It was two...
The Council is pleased to present the Sixteenth Annual John W. Hall Lecture in Japanese Studies. In 1611, the English East India Company, founded in 1600, dispatched its first ship destined for Japan, which duly arrived in summer 1613. The Company had prepared an elaborate letter from the King to the Japanese ruler, as well as an appropriate gift. Ieyasu was presented with a silver gilt ‘prospective glasse’. It was the first telescope to leave Europe, and the first to be built as a presentation object. The talk will consider the meaning of such a object - what the English meant by it, and why...
Contrary to popular imaginings the Dharma has not historically been an inherently environmental religion. Rather, early Buddhism was a prosperity theology that succeeded largely on account of its willingness to exploit both people and natural resources on the commodity frontier. As such, by investigating the links between Buddhism and agricultural expansion this talk will explore how Buddhists radically transformed Asia’s environment. Johan Elverskog is Altshuler University Distinguished Teaching Professor and Chair of Religious Studies at SMU. He is the author of numerous books and articles...
Ideas that climatic events were behind the appearance of nomads as raiders and conquerors of settled lands have been around for a long time. Unfortunately, historical records are seldom direct in linking cause and effect, and such theories remained highly speculative. Recent advances in historical climatology and other applications of modern science to the past are changing that picture. But does the input of science produce better history, or just a different version of it? This question will be discussed in relation to the history of nomadic conquests of China and in particular to the...
7:00 PM - CHINA TOWN HALL WEBCAST ON U.S.-CHINA RELATIONS China’s rapid development and Sino-American relations have a direct impact on the lives of just about everyone in the United States. CHINA Town Hall: Local Connections, National Reflections, is a national day of programming designed to provide Americans across the United States and beyond the opportunity to discuss these issues with leading experts. This year’s national program consists of a live webcast, featuring Jimmy Carter, the 39th President of the United States, discussing 35 years of U.S.-China relations. National...
Please join Academy Award-winning director Oliver Stone and American University History Professor Peter Kuznick for a screening and discussion about Episode 3: The Bomb (60 mins) from their Showtime television series, The Untold History of the United States (2012). The dynamic 10-part series re-examines commonly told narratives about America’s place in the world and the world that America helped shape. Episode 3: The Bomb explores America’s controversial decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan. The filmmakers will be present for a post-screening discussion moderated by Professor Matthew...
The South China Sea appears to be on the verge of conflict. In the past two years Chinese Coastguard ships have rammed their Vietnamese rivals, blockaded Philippine outposts, disrupted Malaysian oil surveys and threatened Indonesian fisheries protection vessels. The Chinese government claims ‘indisputable sovereignty’ over the vast majority of the Sea while its southern neighbours assert that all or some of the islands in the Sea rightfully belong to them. This presentation will locate the origins of the disputes in the nationalist anxiety that marked the confused transition from empire to...
Over the last two decades, rapid urban expansion building on landgrabs has become ubiquitous in China. The pursuit of urban-centered economic growth has created crises of land deprivation and rural identity in Chinese rural society. Land-related protests have become the focal point of movements for the protection of Chinese farmers’ rights. Drawing on ethnographic materials concerning a series of influential protests over landgrabs in Wukan village, this paper presents a critical rethinking of the economy and an examination of how the restoration of villagers’ collective identity has led to...
The U.S. Constitution enshrined press freedoms in the First Amendment, ratified by the states in 1791. In the subsequent 223 years, the world’s leading economies, whether Britain or the U.S., generally held to be self-evident that a free press was necessary and good for the proper functioning of society and to provide a check on government’s power. Now China is poised to take the pole position as the world’s biggest economy, and its leaders have clearly shown their disdain for press freedoms, with new restrictions on one of the world’s most controlled media environments being introduced just...
Focusing upon Anna May Wong, an early Twentieth-century Chinese-American screen and stage performer, this talk will delve into the intricacies of her vocal and visual performance at the transition from the silent to the talkie era in the international arena. Wang’s previous writings have formulated concepts such as “yellow yellowface” performance (2005) and “minor” stardom (2010, drawing on Deleuze and Guattari’s “minor literature”) to understand her ironic performance of Orientalist stereotypes and her performative production of gradational (as opposed to radical) difference from...
Come join us for the unique opportunity to gain perspective on the situation in North Korea while also enjoying an evening of great piano music! Hanppuri: Korean International Students Organization, an undergraduate student organization on campus, is hosting Professor Cheol Woong Kim for a speaker event and concert on Wednesday, September 17. Professor Kim is a North Korean refugee and pianist, who escaped North Korea for the freedom to play the music he wanted to play. In the past, he has performed at the Carnegie Hall and in front of President George W. Bush during his visit to Korea. Come...
Come enjoy the festivities as the Council on East Asian Studies kicks off the fall term! Please join us in welcoming our new students, postdocs, and visiting scholars for the 2014 - 2015 academic year! Please RSVP to eastasian.studies@yale...
Ewha Womans University Attendees: Eunice Kim special adviser to Ewha President and Professor of Ewha Law School Ki-Jeong Song, Professor, Department of French Studies, Director of Ewha Institute for the Humanities Pilwha Chang, Korean Women’s Institute, “Surviving to Reconstruct; 40 years of Women’s Studies and Social Change in Korea” Eunshil Kim, Korean Women’s Institute, “The Politics of Unspeakability and the Subject of Defilement” Kyungmi Kim, Ewha Institute for the Humanities, “Sense of Justice in Women’s Petitions of Joseon Dynasty” Ae-Ryung Kim, Ewha Institute...
7:00 PM - CHINA TOWN HALL WEBCAST ON CHINESE INVESTMENT IN THE UNITED STATES The 2015 program will feature a live webcast panel discussion with Robert Rubin, Secretary of the Treasury under President Bill Clinton; Sheldon Day, Mayor, Thomasville, Alabama; Daniel Rosen, Founding Partner, Rhodium Group; and Stephen Orlins, President, National Committee on U.S.-China Relations. The panel will discuss Chinese foreign direct investment (FDI) in the United States. 8:00 PM - PANEL DISCUSSION AND Q&A WITH AUDIENCE PANELISTS Jeremy Wallace Associate Professor of Government, Cornell...
Come enjoy the festivities as the Council on East Asian Studies kicks off the fall term and please join us in welcoming our new students, postdocs, and visiting scholars!
What effect did Christianity have on modern Chinese literature, and what sort of Christianity emerges from Chinese Christian literature? Is Endō Shusakū the only Japanese Christian writer (and does Martin Scorsese’s film do justice to Endō’s novel Silence)? This course tackles such questions by tracing the development of a Christian literature in China and Japan from late Imperial times to the beginning of the twenty-first century, with particular focus on the heyday (in China) of the 1920s and ’30s, and on the Japanese side, on Endō’s postwar novels. Using texts available in...
By arrangement with faculty and with approval of the DGS.
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