Past Events
My Life as a Lama
The Autobiography of Arjia Rinpoche
Arjia Rinpoche
Arjia Rinpoche is one of the most prominent Buddhist teachers and lamas to have left Tibet. He was recognized at the age of two by the Panchen Lama as a major reincarnation and was the abbot of Kumbum Monastery. He…
The Daedalus Quartet
In programs of world and Philadelphia premieres, the Daedalus Quartet, Penn’s quartet-in-residence, illustrates how centuries of cultural cross-pollination has enriched our artistic and spiritual life.
Social Sciences Korea
Korean Studies Conference
Miners, Traders, and Multiethnic Kings
Uncovering a Lost History of Japan (1400-1570)
Thomas D. Conlan, Professor of East Asian Studies and History, Princeton University
Restoring Buddhism to Seoul: Court Lady Ch’ŏn’s Influence in Modernizing Korean Buddhism
Korean Studies Colloquium
Hwansoo Kim, Yale University
This talk will examine the work of a largely forgotten Korean Buddhist laywoman, Court Lady Ch’ŏn Ilch’ŏng (1848 – 1934?), who served as one of the highest-ranking ladies in the court of the late Chosŏn dynasty. Ch’…
Collectivizing Kinship
Rural China's Women in the 1950s
Gail Hershatter, Distinguished Professor of History, University of California, Santa Cruz
In the first several decades of the People’s Republic of China, ambitious state initiatives worked to reshape everything about rural communities. State authorities created powerful new…
"Gendering AI and Robots: Robo-Sexism vs. 'Womenomics' in Japan"
Distinguished East Asia Lecture: Jennifer Robertson
In humans and humanoid robots alike, gender—femininity, masculinity—constitutes an array of learned behaviors that are cosmetically enabled and enhanced. In humans, these behaviors are both socially and historically…
Gangnam, the Dreamland of South Korea's Global/polarization in Literary and Audiovisual Narratives
Korean Studies Colloquium
Pil Ho Kim, Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures The Ohio State University
"Families Together and Apart: Divorce, Child Custody, and Contested Disconnection in Contemporary Japan"
ICEA Colloquium Series
Allison Alexy
In contemporary Japan, police and law enforcement are often reluctant to assist in family conflicts. Law enforcement representatives instead push family members to settle problems on their own. Given such a context,…
Elusive Belonging: Marriage Immigrants and “Multiculturalism” in Rural South Korea
Korean Studies Colloquium
Minjeong Kim, San Diego State University
Based on ethnographic fieldwork, Minjeong Kimexamines Filipinas who married rural South Korean bachelors in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Against a backdrop of the South Korean government’s…
The Handmaiden
Korean Cinema Film Screening
Moderated by Dr. So-Rim Lee
From PARK Chan-wook, the celebrated director of OLDBOY, LADY VENGEANCE and STOKER, comes a ravishing crime drama. A gripping and sensual tale of two women - a young Japanese Lady living on a secluded estate, and a…
"Literacy and Bondage in a Qing-dynasty Native Domain, Southwest China"
CEAS Humanities Colloquium
Erik Mueggler
How can we excavate the experiences of enslaved people from archives that systematically exclude enslaved voices, while negotiating the demands of a liberal sensibility that requires subjects to speak for themselves…
Axes and Nukes: An Arms Race and Cuban Missile Crisis à la Korea
Korean Studies Colloquium
Ria Chae
While the US and China were starting the process of normalizing their relations in the early 1970s, the two Koreas engaged in their very first dialogue since the Korean War. Behind the façade of the peaceful talks,…
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…