Category: 2021-2022

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GW Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures

Kim-Renaud East Asian Humanities Lecture Series

Friday, November 19, 2021 | 4:00 pm – 5:30 pm EST

Zoom Event

Join us for a book talk with author Chenshu Zhou on her book “Cinema Off Screen: Moviegoing in Socialist China“

About

In this talk, I will introduce main arguments from my recent book Cinema Off Screen: Moviegoing in Socialist China, published by the University of California Press in July 2021. Building on archival research and interviews done for my dissertation in 2013-2014, Cinema Off Screen is the first English monograph that examines film exhibition in China from the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949 to the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s. Through an analysis of both institutional operations and audiences’ lived experiences, I argue for the need to consider the mediation of non-filmic exhibition interfaces – elements of film exhibition that are not the film being shown such as the screening space, technological artefacts, and the human body. One screening paradigm that is particularly revealing of the “cinema off screen” was rural open-air cinema. This talk will zoom in on two exhibition interfaces – the rural projectionist’s labor and the open-air atmosphere – which demonstrate the limitations of any approach to cinematic experiences that centers on the film as the sole object of attention.

Registration

The event is open to the public. Registered guests will receive details for joining the Zoom meeting.

Speaker

Dr. Chenshu Zhou, author, Cinema Off Screen: Moviegoing in Socialist China

Speaker

Chenshu Zhou is an assistant professor in the History of Art Department and the Cinema and Media Studies Program at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research centers on cinematic and media experiences in modern China. Her writings and translations have appeared in journals such as positions: asia critique, Journal of Chinese Cinemas, and Chinese Literature Today. Her book Cinema Off Screen: Moviegoing in Socialist China was recently published by the University of California Press in July 2021.

Monday, November 1, 2021 | 5:00 pm – 6:30 pm EDT

Zoom Event

Join us for a book talk with author Elizabeth Miki Brina on her book “Speak, Okinawa“

About the Book

A searing, deeply candid memoir about a young woman’s journey to understanding her complicated parents—her mother an Okinawan war bride, her father a Vietnam veteran—and her own, fraught cultural heritage.

Elizabeth’s mother was working as a nightclub hostess on U.S.-occupied Okinawa when she met the American soldier who would become her husband. The language barrier and power imbalance that defined their early relationship followed them to the predominantly white, upstate New York suburb where they moved to raise their only daughter. There, Elizabeth grew up with the trappings of a typical American childhood and adolescence. Yet even though she felt almost no connection to her mother’s distant home, she also felt out of place among her peers.

Decades later, Elizabeth comes to recognize the shame and self-loathing that haunt both her and her mother, and attempts a form of reconciliation, not only to come to terms with the embattled dynamics of her family but also to reckon with the injustices that reverberate throughout the history of Okinawa and its people. Clear-eyed and profoundly humane, Speak, Okinawa is a startling accomplishment—a heartfelt exploration of identity, inheritance, forgiveness, and what it means to be an American.

This event will be on the record and a recording will be available on the NRC YouTube channel after the event. 

Registration

The event is open to the public. Registered guests will receive details for joining the Zoom meeting.

Speaker

Elizabeth Miki Brina, author, Speak, Okinawa

Discussant

Steve Rabson, Professor Emeritus of East Asian Studies, Brown University

Moderator

Kuniko Ashizawa, Adjunct Professorial Lecturer, American University, George Washington University 

Speaker

Elizabeth Miki Brina is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Bread Loaf Scholarship and a New York State Summer Writers Institute Scholarship. She currently lives and teaches in New Orleans.

Discussant

Steve Rabson is Professor Emeritus of East Asian Studies, Brown University. He has published books and articles about Okinawa and translations of Okinawan literature. The book Okinawa: Two Postwar Novellas (Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 1989 reprinted 1996) includes the novella “Cocktail Party” on which the film is loosely based. Other collections of translations are Southern Exposure: Modern Japanese Literature From Okinawa, co-edited with Michael Molasky (University of Hawaii Press, 2000) and Islands of Protest: Japanese Literature From Okinawa, co-edited with Davinder L. Bhowmik (University of Hawaii Press, 2016). The Okinawa Diaspora in Japan: Crossing the Borders Within (University of Hawaii Press, 2014) is a history of Okinawan migration to mainland Japan with interviews and written accounts of residents describing their experiences. Rabson was stationed as a U.S. Army draftee during 1967-68 at a base in Henoko, Okinawa that stored nuclear weapons.

Moderator

Kuniko Ashizawa teaches international relations and serves as Japan Coordinator of Asian Studies Research Council at the School of International Service, American University. From 2005 until 2012, she was a senior lecturer in international relations at Oxford Brookes University in the U.K. Her research interests include Japan’s foreign, security and development assistance policy, U.S.-Japan-China relations, regional institution-building in Asia, and the role of the concept of state identity in foreign policymaking, for which she has published a number of academic journal articles and book chapters, including in International Studies Review, Pacific Affairs, the Pacific Review, and Journal of Peacebuilding and Development. Her book, Japan, the U.S. and Regional Institution-Building in the New Asia: When Identity Matters (Palgrave McMillan, 2013), received the 2015 Masayoshi Ohira Memorial Prize. Ashizawa was a visiting fellow at various research institutions, including the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the East-West Center in Washington, the Reischauer Center for East Asian Studies, SAIS, and the United Nations University (Institute of Advanced Studies) in Tokyo. She received her PhD in international relations at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University.

Thursday, October 28, 2021

12:30 PM – 1:45 PM EDT | 9:30 AM – 10:45 AM PDT

WebEx Event

Cemented by decades of positive engagement and shared history, the United States and Taiwan enjoy a very robust relationship that spans a multitude of public and foreign policy issues. Important to these efforts are the people-to-people ties between researchers, scholars, and practitioners that explore new avenues for cooperation and collaboration between both sides. Join us for a conversation with scholars from the U.S.-Taiwan Next Generation Working Group, a program administered by UC Berkeley’s Institute of East Asian Studies designed to build a community of American public policy intellectuals across a wide range of sectors with sustained interest in Taiwan affairs, as they identify and discuss new ways to deepen U.S.-Taiwan ties.

This event will be on the record and a recording will be available on the NRC YouTube channel after the event. 

Registration

The event is open to the public. Registered guests will receive details for joining the WebEx meeting.

Speakers

• Sara Newland, Assistant Professor of Government, Smith College
• Brandon Lee, President and CEO, Anacostia Consulting Group
• James Lee, Postdoctoral Research Associate, UC Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation
• Richard J. Haddock, Program Manager, GW

Moderator

Robert Sutter, Professor of Practice of International Affairs, GW

Speakers

Sara Newland is an Assistant Professor of Government at Smith College and a scholar of local politics in China and Taiwan. She has conducted research on public goods and services in rural China, collaboration between civil society organizations and the local state, local government responsiveness in Taiwan, ethnic politics, and political science pedagogy.

Her research has been published in China Quarterly (2016, 2018) and The Journal of Political Science Education (2019). She is also the coeditor, with Vinod Aggarwal, of Responding to China’s Rise: US and EU Strategies (Springer, 2014). She teaches courses on China, East Asia, comparative politics, and political economy. She is an associate in research at the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard. Previously, she was an assistant professor of political science at Villanova University and a China public policy postdoctoral fellow at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, Harvard Kennedy School. She received her B.A. from Wellesley College and her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.

Website | Twitter: @NewlandSara

Brandon Lee is the President and CEO of Anacostia Consulting Group, leading the practice’s environmental, economic, and security issues. His work focuses on analyzing the risks posed in maritime operations domestically and internationally.

Mr. Lee’s work has included reviewing potential methods to create regional stability and establishing cooperative and defensive approaches to maintaining regional balance of power in the South China Sea; developing feasible, implementable, and achievable policy recommendations to improve maritime capacity in Southeast Asia; and identifying opportunities for maritime capacity building support by the U.S. Coast Guard, the Japan Coast Guard, and Taiwan’s Coast Guard Administration.

Mr. Lee’s work on assessing maritime capacity building in Southeast Asia and opportunities for cooperation between the U.S. and Japan Coast Guards has been turned into a three-volume set for use by the Japan Coast Guard Academy. He has also written an article on maritime capacity building opportunities for the Taiwan Coast Guard Administration in the “Perspectives on Taiwan: Insights from the 2019 Taiwan-U.S. Policy Program” published by the Center for Strategic and International Studies

Prior to this work, he worked as a Policy Analyst for the Institute for European Environmental Policy conducting research on international regulations and policies. Mr. Lee is an AmeriCorps alumnus and received his M.Sc. from the London School of Economics, his M.P.A. from Columbia University, and his B.S. from the University of Utah.

Brandon Lee’s LinkedIn Profile

James Lee is a postdoctoral research associate at the UC Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC), a research center for the UC system that is based at the School of Global Policy and Strategy at UC San Diego. His research is on U.S. grand strategy in Europe and East Asia, with a focus on the Taiwan question in U.S.-China relations. At IGCC, he is working on a project on how Taiwan’s semiconductor industry relates to the United States’ strategic interest in the security of Taiwan. He received his Ph.D. in Politics from Princeton University in 2018, and he was a fellow in the Max Weber Program for Postdoctoral Studies at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy in 2018-2019. He also previously served as the Senior Editor of Taiwan Security Research (TSR) from 2017-2020. Starting in August 2022, he will be an Assistant Research Fellow at the Institute of European and American Studies at the Academia Sinica in Taiwan.

Lee’s research interests are at the intersection of international security, international political economy, and international history. He studies grand strategy and great power politics in periods ranging from the Peloponnesian War to the Cold War to the present day. He is particularly interested in geoeconomics and economic statecraft. His academic research has been published in the Journal of East Asian Studies, the Journal of Strategic Studies, and the Journal of Chinese Political Science. He is currently working on a book that compares the United States’ strategy toward economic reconstruction and development in Western Europe and East Asia during the Cold War.

Lee is also interested in public policy. He has served as a contributor for East Asia Forum, with opinion pieces on Taiwan’s security. At IGCC, he has published a policy brief on 5G and U.S. national security. At the European University Institute, he published a policy brief on the Taiwan question in U.S.-China relations and its implications for the European Union.

James Lee’s Profile

Richard J. Haddock is currently the Program Manager for the East Asia National Resource Center (NRC), which is supported by a Title VI grant from the U.S. Department of Education. In this role, Mr. Haddock is primarily responsible for East Asia learning content development, strategic planning and grant management, liaising with key community and educational stakeholders, and reporting to the Department of Education. He is also a member of the UC Berkeley U.S.-Taiwan Next Generation Working Group, where he is conducting a research project on the current state and future prospects of Taiwan Studies in the United States. He has held positions at the Sigur Center for Asian Studies, the National Democratic Institute’s Asia team, the American Institute in Taiwan’s Public Diplomacy Section, and the U.S. Department of State. Mr. Haddock is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Public Policy and Public Administration at The George Washington University, focusing on digital democracy and e-governance development in the Asia-Pacific. He holds an M.A. in Asian Studies from the Elliott School, with a concentration on domestic politics and foreign policy of East Asia. He graduated from the University of Central Florida with a B.A. in Political Science and minors in Asian Studies and Diplomacy.

Richard Haddock’s Profile

Moderator

Robert Sutter is Professor of Practice of International Affairs at the Elliott School of George Washington University (2011-Present ). He also served as Director of the School’s main undergraduate program involving over 2,000 students from 2013-2019. His earlier full-time position was Visiting Professor of Asian Studies at Georgetown University (2001-2011).

A Ph.D. graduate in History and East Asian Languages from Harvard University, Sutter has published 22 books (four with multiple editions), over 300 articles and several hundred government reports dealing with contemporary East Asian and Pacific countries and their relations with the United States. His most recent book is Chinese Foreign Relations: Power and Policy of an Emerging Global Force, Fifth Edition (Rowman & Littlefield, 2021).

Sutter’s government career (1968-2001) saw service as senior specialist and director of the Foreign Affairs and National Defense Division of the Congressional Research Service, the National Intelligence Officer for East Asia and the Pacific at the US Government’s National Intelligence Council, the China division director at the Department of State’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research and professional staff member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Sponsored by the Sigur Center for Asian Studies, Institute for Korean Studies, East Asia National Resource Center, Cisneros Hispanic Leadership Institute, and GW Department of Sociology

Thursday, October 14, 2021 | 1:00 pm – 2:30 pm EDT

Zoom Event

Join a panel of experts to talk about the history and contemporary trends of transnational migration between East Asia and Latin America.

Transnational migration between East Asia and Latin America has been occurring for centuries, particularly since the trade of slave and indentured labor across the Atlantic and Caribbean. The oftentimes unsung history of East Asian diasporic communities in Latin America is one marked by geopolitical and geoeconomic pressures, discrimination and confusion, adaptation and resilience, and citizenship and nation-building. This event brings together a panel of experts to call attention to the transnational histories of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean communities in the Spanish Caribbean, Central America, and South America.

This event will be on the record and a recording will be available on the NRC YouTube channel after the event. 

Registration

The event is open to the public. Registered guests will receive details for joining the Zoom meeting.

Speakers

• Evelyn Hu-DeHart, Professor of History, Ethnic Studies, and American Studies, Brown University
  • “Chinese Migration to the Americas and Empires, 16th century to Present”
• Taku Suzuki, Professor in International Studies, Denison University
  • “Transpacific Alienation: Nikkei Communities in Latin America and Japan”
• Rachel Lim, Visiting Assistant Professor, Texas A&M
  • “The Multiple Trajectories of Korean Migrants to and from Mexico”

Moderator

Hiromi Ishizawa, Chair and Associate Professor of Sociology, GW

Speakers

Evelyn Hu-DeHart is Professor of History, American Studies and Ethnic Studies at Brown University. She was Director of the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Brown from 2002-2014, and Director of the Consortium on Advanced Studies in Cuba during the 2014-2015 Academic Year, and again in Spring 2019. In 2020, she was elected International Fellow of the Mexican Academy of Historians. In 2019-20, she was the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Centennial Fellow in the Dynamics of Place to research and write a book on The Chinese in the Spanish Empire, From Manila in the 16th Century to Cuba in the 19th Century. She has received two Fulbright fellowships, to Brazil and Peru, and lectures extensively in the United States, Asia, Latin America and Caribbean and Europe, in three languages (English, Mandarin and Cantonese Chinese, Spanish). She has written, edited, and published 11 books, on three main topics, in 4 languages and 5 continents: indigenous peoples on the U.S.-Mexico border; Asians in the Americas, with special attention to the Chinese diaspora in Latin America and the Caribbean; diversity, multiculturalism, race, race relations and minority politics in the U.S. Select publications include: Across the Pacific: Asian Americans and Globalization (1999; e-version 2010); Asians in the Americas: Transculturation and Power (2002); Voluntary Associations in the Chinese Diaspora (2006); Asia and Latin America (2006); Afro-Asia  (2008); and Towards a Third Literature: Chinese Writings in the Americas (2012). She received her B.A in Political Science from Stanford University and her PhD in Latin American/Caribbean history from the University of Texas at Austin.

Taku Suzuki is Professor of International Studies at Denison University in Granville, Ohio. He has conducted research on the Okinawan immigrant communities in Bolivia and Okinawan-Bolivian immigrant communities in Japan, war and peace tourism in Okinawa, and post-WW II Okinawan repatriation from the Japanese colonial Micronesia. He is the author of Embodying Belonging: Racializing Okinawan Diaspora in Bolivia and Japan (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2010). Currently, he is researching on digital divide within central Ohio’s Bhutanese refugee community that has impacted the community’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the struggles among Kurdish, Iranian, and other asylum seekers who pursue legal status in Japan. He earned Ph.D. in Sociocultural Anthropology from the University of Minnesota, and he was a Freeman Postdoctoral Fellow in Asian Diaspora Studies at Wesleyan University.

Rachel Lim is Visiting Assistant Professor and Accountability, Climate, Equity, and Scholarship (ACES) Fellow in the Department of History at Texas A&M University. Her research and teaching interests include migration, globalization, and comparative race and ethnicity at the intersection of Asia and the Américas. Her current book project, Itinerant Belonging: Korean Transnational Migration to and from Mexico, uses interdisciplinary research methods to examine the history of Korean migration to Mexico, from the start of the twentieth century to the present. Rachel received her PhD in Ethnic Studies from the University of California, Berkeley, and she has written for multiple scholarly and popular venues, including The Journal of Asian American Studies, Verge: Studies in Global Asias, and The Washington Post.

Twitter: @Lim_Rachel_H

Moderator

Hiromi Ishizawa is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Sociology department at GW. Her research interests are in the areas of social and family demography, immigration, sociology of language, and urban sociology. Her primary research goal is to understand diversity in immigrants’ pathways of incorporation into a host society. In particular, she focuses on the residential and familial contexts in which immigrants and their children reside, and how these contexts affect whether, and the manner in which, they are integrated into a host society.

Thursday, September 30, 2021

11:30 AM – 12:45 PM EDT

WebEx Events

The Sigur Center for Asian Studies will host Dr. Shelley Rigger to launch her new book, The Tiger Leading the Dragon: How Taiwan Propelled China’s Economic Rise as the sixth edition of the 2021 New Books in Asian Studies series. This event will also feature Richard Haddock, Program Associate at the East Asia National Resource Center, as a moderator. 

Dr. Rigger’s new book discusses how the once-secretive, isolated People’s Republic of China became the factory to the world. Dr. Rigger convincingly demonstrates that the answer is Taiwan. She follows the evolution of Taiwan’s influence from the period when Deng Xiaoping lifted Mao’s prohibitions on business in the late 1970s, allowing investors from Taiwan to collaborate with local officials in the PRC to transform mainland China into a manufacturing powerhouse. After World War II, Taiwan’s fleet-footed export-oriented manufacturing firms became essential links in global supply chains. In the late 1980s, Taiwanese firms seized the opportunity to lower production costs by moving to the PRC, which was seeking foreign investment to fuel its industrial rise. Within a few years, Taiwan’s traditional manufacturing had largely relocated to the PRC, opening space for a wave of new business creation in information technology. The Tiger Leading the Dragon traces the development of the cross-Taiwan Strait economic relationship and explores how Taiwanese firms and individuals transformed Chinese business practices. It also reveals their contributions to Chinese consumer behavior, philanthropy, religion, popular culture, and law.

Shelley Rigger is the Brown Professor of East Asian Politics at Davidson College in Davidson, North Carolina. She has a PhD in Government from Harvard University and a BA in Public and International Affairs from Princeton University. She has been a visiting researcher at National Chengchi University in Taiwan (2005) and a visiting professor at Fudan University in Shanghai (2006). Rigger is the author of two books on Taiwan’s domestic politics: Politics in Taiwan: Voting for Democracy (Routledge 1999) and From Opposition to Power: Taiwan’s Democratic Progressive Party (Lynne Rienner Publishers 2001). She has published articles on Taiwan’s domestic politics, the national identity issue in Taiwan-China relations and related topics. Her current research studies the effects of cross-strait economic interactions on Taiwan people’s perceptions of Mainland China. Her monograph, “Taiwan’s Rising Rationalism: Generations, Politics and ‘Taiwan Nationalism’” was published by the East West Center in Washington in November 2006.

Richard J. Haddock is currently the Program Associate for the East Asia National Resource Center (NRC), which is supported by a Title VI grant from the U.S. Department of Education. In this role, Mr. Haddock is primarily responsible for East Asia learning content development, strategic planning and grant management, liaising with key community and educational stakeholders, and reporting to the Department of Education. He is also a member of the UC Berkeley U.S.-Taiwan Next Generation Working Group, where he is conducting a research project on the current state and future prospects of Taiwan Studies in the United States. He has held positions at the Sigur Center for Asian Studies, the National Democratic Institute’s Asia team, the American Institute in Taiwan’s Public Diplomacy Section, and the U.S. Department of State. Mr. Haddock is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Public Policy and Public Administration at The George Washington University, focusing on digital democracy and e-governance development in the Asia-Pacific. He holds an M.A. in Asian Studies from the Elliott School, with a concentration on domestic politics and foreign policy of East Asia. He graduated from the University of Central Florida with a B.A. in Political Science and minors in Asian Studies and Diplomacy.

Friday, September 24, 2021

12:00 PM – 1:00 PM EDT

Zoom Event

The George Washington University is pleased to present the 2021 Mid-Autumn Festival Virtual Celebration in special partnership with the GW Asian and Pacific Islander Alumni Network. Grab a few mooncakes and a cup of tea this lunch break and ZOOM into our celebration of the largest Asian holiday in the fall! This Mid-Autumn Festival, we will learn about how GW students celebrate this large traditional holiday as well as have the treat of seeing them showcase their talent.

This free virtual event will be held in English and is open to the public.

The program begins at 12:00pm EDT on Friday, September 24th. Registered guests will receive an email with instructions for joining the webinar prior to the event. Registration closes at 12:00pm EDT on September 24th, 24 hours before the event begins. Media inquiries must be sent to gwmedia@gwu.edu in advance. If you need specific accommodations, please contact gsigur@gwu.edu with at least 3 business days’ notice.

Friday, October 1, 2021 | 8:30 am – 9:45 am EDT

Livestream via ZOOM

Speakers

Brooke Freeman – International Inclusion and Autism Specialist – She is a Special Education teacher at Dulwich College Shanghai and is well known throughout Shanghai as an advocate for those with additional needs. Mrs. Freeman has worked in schools in China, Africa and in the United States over the last 11 years. She graduated from Wilkes University with a bachelor’s degree in Elementary Education and teaching licences. Her first 4 years after graduation she worked in a county special services school for students that were not able to be in mainstream classes. During her time teaching in the US, she became double mastered in Special Education and Physical and Health Science. After meeting her husband Michael, she took her career abroad and became an International Educator and the Director of Student Support. Brooke plans to become a Doctoral student in 2022.

Michael Freeman currently is an education consultant for international and private schools. His focus is developing and implementing secondary/transition education curriculum, developing school climate, teacher training /professional development, and school leadership planning strategies. He also privately consults and advocates for parents in regards of IEP expectations, rights, strategies, and other challenging special education topics. Michael has worked or consulted in Africa, Asia, and The United States of America. He has held roles as special education teacher, administrator, home resident manager for people with disabilities, and education consultant. Michaels has over a decade of experience serving youths with disabilities. He is passionate about creating opportunities for youths with disabilities and developing the youth and family. Michaels believes that everyone has a gift and strength to offer the world; it is just discovering the intelligence. Michael Freeman is a doctoral candidate, and his concentration is leadership, special education, and transition education.