Past Events
Korea: Politics, Culture, and K-Pop
Korea-Related Events Around Philadelphia
Join students and faculty from the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia’s flagship partner school, the William W. Bodine
High School for International Affairs, and visiting exchange students from Michuhol…
Classical Chinese Philosophical Texts
“What are we reading when we read a Chinese philosophical text, and how do we interpret it?”
"Japan's Monarchy and the New Emperor in Historical Perspective"
Ken Ruoff
The constitutional position of Japan’s monarchy was fundamentally redefined after the war, and initially conservatives rejected that the emperor should be “no more than a symbol.” But by the 1970s, the political…
“Toward a Global History of International Relations: A Perspective from Asia”
Tomoko Akami
ICEA Series
"From Shore to Shore: Maritime Transport and Commerce in Japan’s Late Medieval Period"
Michelle Damian
The Seto Inland Sea region was the center for much of the late medieval (14 th – 16 th c) period’s commercial activity. With growing local economic development came the rise of smaller markets throughout the…
A Colonial Muslim History of Qing Central Asia: Revisiting Sayrāmī's Tārīkh-i Ḥamīdī
*** NEW TIME & DATE ***
Professor Eric Schluessel, University of Montana
The Tārīkh-i Ḥamīdī of Mullah Mūsa Sayrāmī (1836-1917) is celebrated as a monument of Uyghur literature and the preeminent Muslim history of nineteenth-century Xinjiang (East Turkestan). Sayrāmī's work is also…
Myth, Management and Materiality in East Asia
East Asian Languages and Civilizations Graduate Conference
Keynote Speaker: Glenda Chao (Ursinus College, History) - 5PM
The Graduate Student Research Colloquium of the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Pennsylvania presents its third annual graduate student conference: Myth…
Murky Waters: Family Abandonment in Quanzhen Daoism
Dr. Jinping Wang, Assistant Professor of History at the National University of Singapore
Quanzhen Daoism was the most influential religion in north China in the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It was also the first Daoist movement that rejected family life completely and…
A Conversation with Duncan Ryūken Williams
Professor Duncan Ryūken Williams, University of Southern California
The conversation will be focused on "American Sutra: Buddhism and the Incarceration of Japanese Americans in World War II"
Between English and Nihongo: The Poetics of Living and Writing between Languages
Professor Jeffrey Angles, Western Michigan University
Since going to a small city in western Japan for the first time at age fifteen, Jeffrey Angles has spent his life back and forth between Japan and the United States, reading Japanese literature, translating, and…
"Sinicization" and Chinese Supremacism in Southern Song Historiography on the Northern Dynasties
Professor Shao-yun Yang, Denison University
The study of historical thought and history-writing in Song China has flourished in recent years, but some areas remain inadequately understood. One of these has to do with the treatment of the early medieval…
Ingrained Habits: The (Bio) politics of American Wheat Promotion and the Transformation of Japan Diet and Identity, 1956-1960
Professor Nathan Hopson, Nagoya University
This presentation explores the history and politics of US-funded food demonstration buses (“kitchen cars”) in postwar Japan, 1954-1960. The kitchen cars’ express mission was to transform the Japanese national diet by…
Commodore Perry’s Expedition as a Shopping Trip: The First Japanese Books in America
Professor Emeritus Peter Kornicki, University of Cambridge
What was Perry’s crew doing while he was negotiating, and what was everybody, including Commodore Perry himself, doing when the ships visited Shimoda and Hakodate? They were shopping! They…
More than "A Feeling of Beauty": Aesthetics in Natsume Sōseki’s Early Literary Thought
Professor Anri Yasuda, The George Washington University
Natsume Sōseki, perhaps the most renowned writer of early-twentieth century Japan, stated that his aim in writing the novel Kusamakura (1906) had been purely aesthetic: “I would be satisfied if a kind of…
"THE GREAT UNITY IDEAL: THE KEY TO CHINA'S IMPERIAL LONGEVITY?"
Dr. Yuri Pines, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
One of the most notable features of imperial China is the exceptional durability of the imperial political system. Having been formed in the aftermath of Qin 秦 unification (221 BCE), this system lasted intact amid…
How Not to Rectify Names
Bryan Van Norden, Yale University
Dr. Van Norden discusses Analects 13.3, the locus classicus for the expression zhèng míng 正名 (commonly translated “rectifying names” or “correcting terms”).
AVATARS OF LI BAI
Anna M. Shields, Princeton University
In the centuries after the fall of the Tang dynasty, readers and scholars shaped the literary legacy of the Tang into new and durable forms that were printed, widely circulated, and influential for centuries. My talk…
Script and Sound in Old Chinese
Please find program and talk abstracts here.
Material for talks and the reading session can be found…
Royal Authority and Heaven's Mandate in the Spring and Autumn Period 春秋時期的王權和天命
Dr. Xinhui Luo, Beijing Normal University
A light luncheon will be served. Please rsvp to lmgreene@sas.upenn.edu
BODIES AND BORDERS: Inclusion, Exclusion and Excision in East Asia
Keynote Speaker: Hentyle Yapp, New York University
Second annual graduate student conference on East Asia at the University of Pennsylvania
The conference is presented by the Graduate Student Research Colloquium of the Department of East Asian Languages and…