Duty and Emotion: Polarities of Filial Identity in Contemporary Sinophone Culture

Talk flyer with a picture of Ruth Mostern and a satellite image of the Yellow River delta

Tuesday, February 20th, 2024 · 4 – 5:30 pm EST

Hybrid Talk on Zoom and in the Lindner Family Commons in Room 602

Elliott School of International Affairs

1957 E St. NW Washington, DC, 20052

 

About this event:

One of the great themes of modern Chinese and Sinophone culture is the emergence of new forms of individual identity that break free of the confines of what May Fourth intellectuals such as Lu Xun, Wu Yu, Chen Duxiu, Ba Jin, and others have imputed to filiality 孝, one of the cornerstones of traditional Chinese thought, ethics, and subject-formation. But filiality has not retired from the scene of intellectual discourse as quickly and easily as some had thought it would. The modern era is in one sense a battle between the time-honored obeisance to one’s elders on the one hand and individualism on the other. This Manichean conflict presumes that we think of filiality in terms of duty: devotion to one’s parents and ancestors; heterosexual bonding and marriage; the production of biological heirs, especially sons; and honorable deeds that bring pride to parents and family.

Deeply engrained in Chinese society since pre-Confucian times, and codified by Confucius, Mencius, and their followers, the filial structure of selfhood and conduct is virtually synonymous with the fundamental essence of Chinese culture in its purest form. This is only true if we conceive of filiality as a prescribed protocol for upright behavior. But what about the feelings associated with filiality? In a recent book that promises to redraft our perspective on filiality, Maram Epstein seeks to place affect, or the emotional component of human existence, at the forefront of our understanding of the nature of filiality, suggesting that the modern repudiation of filiality has tainted our entire thought-structure as to what filiality means historically and how it functions.

Epstein’s work on Ming and Qing China has prompted Professor Lupke to reflect on his own understanding of filiality, asking how it fosters emotional bonds such as affiliations to one’s parents in positive ways. In this presentation, Professor Lupke will use his refreshed attention on affect to explore the emotional terrain of filial relationships in contemporary Sinophone works. He will examine works by Huang Chunming, Bai Xianyong, Wang Wenxing, Hou Hsiao-hsien, and the contemporary US-based poet Zhang Er. At issue is the crucial role that overwrought emotions play in the filial dynamic in intergenerational relations that we see so much of in the Sinosphere and in Sinophone cultural production.

 

About the speaker:

Christopher Lupke (Ph.D. Cornell University) is Professor of Chinese Cultural Studies at the University of Alberta. A scholar of modern and contemporary Chinese literature and cinema, he is the author of The Sinophone Cinema of Hou Hsiao-hsien: Culture, Style, Voice, and Motion (Cambria Press; 2016). He has written, edited, co-edited, or translated seven books including The Magnitude of Ming, New Perspectives on Contemporary Chinese Poetry, Chinese Poetic Modernisms, Dictionary of Literary Biography: Chinese Poets since 1949, and the multi-volume reference work Wiley-Blackwell Companion to World Literature. He also has edited or co-edited five special journal issues. Lupke’s translation of Ye Shitao’s monumental A History of Taiwan Literature was awarded the Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Award from the MLA and his career- long dedication has won him the Michael Delahoyde Award for Distinguished Editing from the Rocky Mountain MLA. Lupke’s current research focuses on the Confucian notion of “filiality” in contemporary Chinese culture, a bedrock philosophical notion and popular value that dates to before the times of Confucius in China and maintains its relevance in Chinese society today.

Registration

The event is open to the public. Guests who register for the event will receive details for joining the Zoom meeting.

 

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China Peripheries Seminar

Talk flyer with a picture of Ruth Mostern and a satellite image of the Yellow River delta

01: Wednesday, January 31, 9-11 am

02: Thursday, February 8, 1-3 pm

03: Wednesday, February 14, 11 am-1 pm 

Virtual Events via Zoom

About the event:

The China Peripheries Seminar is a series of policy-oriented talks that provide nuanced, expert discussion of politics on the ethnically diverse and currently highly contested regions along China’s geographical edges. This year’s seminar focuses around three key transformations taking place in China and Greater China today in the fields of environment, migration, and Islam.
The three sessions will discuss developments in China’s territorial peripheries (Xinjiang, Tibet, Inner Mongolia, and Hong Kong) and explore dynamics on China’s internal and overseas frontiers. Each session will look at the specific ways that policies affect grassroot politics, and vice versa. Several of our speakers come from a new generation of scholars who are themselves from China’s territorial peripheries and who combine deep insider-outsider knowledge with analysis of policy.

About the Speakers

Professor Ho-Fung Hung is a highly regarded sociologist of China and author of City on the Edge: Hong Kong under Chinese Rule (2022), which places grassroots protest in contemporary Hong Kong into deep historical context.

Assistant Professor Wei-Ting Yen studies political economy issues and social policy development in the developing world. She had fieldwork experiences in Indonesia, Cambodia, and Taiwan. Her main research agenda is to understand the demand side politics of how young democracies create social protection regimes for their citizens, the majority of whom have job insecurity and income instability.

Professor Emily Yeh is a leading scholar of environment and policy in contemporary Tibet. Her 2013 monograph Taming Tibet: Landscape Transformation and the Gift of Chinese Development illuminated how environmental policy played out on the ground of a Chinese frontier, and her current research concerns entrepreneurship on the edges of the Chinese economy.

Professor Guldana Salimjan is the PI of the Xinjiang Documentation Project and author of multiple articles on the politics of environmental policy, tourism, and Han settlement in Xinjiang. 

Assistant Professor David Stroup is the author of Pure and True: The Everyday Politics of Ethnicity for China’s Hui Muslims. His current research focuses on how the renegotiation of ethnic boundaries in ethnic Hui Muslim communities in the context of urbanization interacts with China’s state policies on ethnic and religious identification. His areas of specialization within the field of comparative politics include: nationalism and ethnic politics, everyday ethnicity, the politics of authoritarianism, and state-society relations.

Dr. Tsering Topgyal is the author China and Tibet: The Perils of Insecurity (2016) and the forthcoming China’s Tibet Policy: Securitizing Self-Identity, Securing Tibet. He is a political scientist with core research and teaching interests in Chinese politics and foreign policy and Asia-Pacific affairs with particular attention to security and ethno-nationalism in the region.

About the organizer:

Associate Professor Eric Schluessel (History and International Affairs at George Washington University) is a social historian of China and Central Asia, and his work focuses on Xinjiang (East Turkestan) in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. 

Registration

The event is open to the public. Guests who register for the online event will receive details for joining the Zoom meeting.

 

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Korea Policy Forum: Linking the European and Asian Theaters?

Flyer announcing Korea Policy Forum Event entitled "Linking the European and Asian Theaters?: Strategic Implications of New North Korea-Russia Relations" on Wednesday, December 13, 2023 at 2 pm at Lindner Family Commons (Room 602) or Virtual via Zoom.

Wednesday, December 13th, 2023
2:00 PM – 3:30 PM (EST)
Hybrid Event
1957 E ST NW, Washington DC
Linder Family Commons, Room 602
Virtual via Zoom

The summit meeting between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin last September, coupled with the subsequent deepening cooperation between the two nations, carries significant ramifications for the geopolitical landscape in both Northeast Asia and Europe. The potential for North Korea to extend military support to Russia’s actions in Ukraine, combined with the possibilities of enhanced economic and military technology collaboration between Russia and North Korea, poses a substantial challenge to U.S. global geostrategic considerations. These developments also bear noteworthy consequences for the recently established trilateral cooperation framework among the U.S., South Korea, and Japan. The GW Institute for Korean Studies, East Asian National Resource Center, Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies, and the Research Institute for National Security Affairs at the Korea National Defense
University warmly invite you to join us for an engaging discussion on this important topic.

A full program is available here.

Registration

This event is on the record and open to the public.
The event will be recorded and made available on GWIKS’ YouTube channel.

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Ruth Mostern Talk

Talk flyer with a picture of Ruth Mostern and a satellite image of the Yellow River delta

Friday, December 1, 2023 · 4 – 5pm EST

Virtual Talk on Zoom

About this event:

From Neolithic times to the present day, the Yellow River and its watershed have both shaped and been shaped by human society. Using extensive documentary records combined with archaeological evidence and observations from environmental science to create data-informed maps and timelines, it is possible to trace the long-term effects of environmentally significant human activity on the Yellow River. This talk, based on Mostern’s 2021 book, The Yellow River: A Natural and Unnatural History, explains the long history of the human relationship with water and soil and the consequences, at times disastrous, of ecological transformations that resulted from human decisions. This work underlines how governments consistently ignored the dynamic interrelationships of the river’s varied ecosystems—grasslands, riparian forests, wetlands, and deserts—and the ecological and cultural impacts of their policies. This work, about patterns, transformations, and devastating ruptures throughout ecological history, also has implications about the way we continue to affect the natural systems upon which we depend.

 

The Yellow River: a natural and unnatural history can be purchased from Yale University Press.

About the speaker: 

Ruth Mostern is Professor of History and Director of the World History Center at the University of Pittsburgh. She is the author of two single-authored books: Dividing the Realm in Order to Govern: The Spatial Organization of the Song State, 960-1276 CE (Harvard Asia Center, 2011), and The Yellow River: A Natural and Unnatural History (Yale University Press, 2021), winner of the Joseph Levenson Prize from the Association for Asian Studies in 2022. She is also co-editor of Placing Names: Enriching and Integrating Gazetteers (Indiana University Press, 2016), and of a special issue of Open Rivers Journal (2017). She is the author or co-author of over thirty articles published in books and peer reviewed journals. Ruth is Principal Investigator and Project Director of the World Historical Gazetteer, a prize-winning digital infrastructure platform for integrating databases of historical place name information. Her research has been funded by entities that include the US National Endowment for the Humanities, the US National Science Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, and others. She has held visiting positions in China, Australia, and the United States. At present she is working on three distinct research projects: one about the history of climate, erosion, and settlement in northwest China; one about the global history of placemaking, and one about the limits of sustainability in the Anthropocene. Ruth received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 2003 and was Founding Faculty at the University of California, Merced, where she spent 13 years before moving to Pitt in 2017.

Registration

The event is open to the public. Guests who register for the online event will receive details for joining the Zoom meeting.

 

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Levi McLaughlin Talk

Event flyer for lecture "After the Assassination of Abe Shinzo: How Efforts to Dissolve the Unification Church are Shaping Religion and Politics in Japan" with Levi McLaughlin, Associate Professor at North Carolina State University. The talk is on Thursday, Nov 16 at 4 pm on Zoom.

Thursday, November 16, 2023 | 4:00 pm – 5:00 pm EDT

Virtual Event via Zoom

Join us for a discussion with Dr. Levi McLaughlin on the murder of Shinzo Abe, the Unification Church and Japanese religion and politics.

In Japan today, political and religious opponents, lawyers, former adherents, and a host of other activists are advocating for the legal dissolution of the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, the controversial South Korea-based religion formerly known as the Unification Church. This talk will discuss legal, political, and religious ramifications occasioned by efforts to remove religious juridical persons status from the church and the tumultuous events that inspired them.

About the Speaker

Dr. Levi McLaughlin is Associate Professor at the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at North Carolina State University. He received his Ph.D. from Princeton University after previous study at the University of Tokyo, and he holds a B.A. and M.A. in East Asian Studies from the University of Toronto.

He has worked as a research assistant at Kokugakuin University in Tokyo and was a visiting research fellow at the University of Michigan’s Center for Japanese Studies, the Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore, and the Center for Asian and Pacific Studies at the University of Iowa. He was previously an Assistant Professor of Religion at Wofford College. McLaughlin’s research focuses primarily on religion in modern and contemporary Japan and considers how the category “religion” takes shape in the contexts of politics, education, and related spheres.

McLaughlin’s research has appeared in English and Japanese in The Asia-Pacific Journal, Asian Ethnology, Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Sekai, the Social Science Japan Journal, and other publications. Levi is co-author and co-editor of Kōmeitō: Politics and Religion in Japan (IEAS Berkeley, 2014) and co-editor of the special issue “Salvage and Salvation: Religion and Disaster Relief in Asia” (Asian Ethnology, June 2016). His book Soka Gakkai’s Human Revolution: The Rise of a Mimetic Nation in Modern Japan was published by the University of Hawai`i Press in 2019.

Registration

The event is open to the public. Guests who register for the online event will receive details for joining the Zoom meeting.

 

Speaker

Dr. Levi McLaughlin is Associate Professor at the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at North Carolina State University

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[4/22/2022] The Tales of the Heike, Women, and Cultural Heritage

GW Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures

Kim-Renaud East Asian Humanities Lecture Series

Friday, April 22, 2022 | 3:30 pm – 4:30 pm EDT

Virtual Event via Zoom

Join us for a talk with Dr. Roberta Strippoli (University of Naples L’Orientale) on the The Tales of the Heike

About

This talk will explore several stories featuring women that appeared for the first time in the The Tales of the Heike, a 14th century Japanese narrative about the war between two military clans, the Heike and the Genji, which took place two centuries earlier.

The Tales of the Heike features dozens of female characters. This may seem surprising, considering that the main plot is primarily a matter of enmities between men. With a few exceptions, these women do not take part in battles, and are for the most part only obliquely involved in the main plot of the tale. Yet their stories are numerous, compelling, and found throughout the text. It is a woman called Tokiko who commits suicide with her grandchild, the emperor Antoku, during the final battle, and it is another woman, Kenreimon’in, the last surviving member of the Taira family, who is left at the end to pray for the dead, to make sense of what happened, and, by recounting the events, to make sure that they will not be forgotten by future generations.

Cultural forms such as literary texts, theatrical plays, and illustrated scrolls grew from these stories centuries after the itinerant performers who chanted The Tales of the Heike had spread it all over Japan. Importantly, local legends also developed, and monuments, landmarks, and heritage sites connected to them can now be found all around Japan. For example, the dancer Giō, who probably never existed, has four graves in disparate regions. The talk will look at some examples of this cultural heritage, detailing their stemming from Heike stories and their development and transformation into local legends and monuments.

Registration

The event is open to the public.

Speaker

Dr. Roberta Strippoli, University of Naples L’Orientale

Speaker

headshot of Roberta Strippoli

Roberta Strippoli has worked extensively on medieval Japanese narrative, in particular otogizōshi, stories that circulated between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries as manuscript scrolls and printed booklets, often illustrated. These stories feature human characters from all walks of life as well as animals, deities, demons, and monsters of various kinds. She has published a collection of otogizōshi in Italian translation titled La monaca tuttofare, la donna serpente, il demone beone. Racconti dal medioevo giapponese [The Errand Nun, the Snake Woman, the Drunken Demon: Tales from Medieval Japan] (Venice: Marsilio, 2001) and a study on the tale of Benkei (Yoshitsune’s trusted companion) in Monumenta Nipponica 70:2, 2015. Her second book, Dancer, Nun, Ghost, Goddess (Leiden: Brill, 2017) is a monograph that explores the reception of the Giō-Hotoke episode from the fourteenth-century military narrative Heike monogatari over six centuries and across literary, visual, and performance genres.

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[4/25/2022] Two Generations of Trailblazing Chinese American Women at the ADB

Monday, April 25, 2022 | 5:00 pm – 6:00 pm EDT

Hybrid Event:

Lindner Family Commons (1957 E Street, NW, Room 602)

and Online via Zoom

NOTE: All non-GW affiliated attendees attending the event IN-PERSON must comply with GW’s COVID-19 policy in order to attend this event, including showing proof of vaccination and masking indoors. For frequently asked questions, please refer to GW’s guidance

Join us for a special conversation with Ambassador Chantale Wong as she begins her tenure as US Director of the Asian Development Bank. 

How will the Asian Development Bank (ADB) address poverty and climate change amidst evolving regional geopolitics, post-pandemic recovery, and impacts of the Russian invasion of Ukraine? Please join us for a special conversation with Ambassador Chantale Wong as she begins her tenure as US Director of the Asian Development Bank with a special appearance by her mentor and predecessor Ambassador Linda Tsao Yang.

Both women have blazed new trails: Linda Tsao Yang, US Executive Director to the ADB from 1993-99, was the first woman and minority representative of the US on the board of a multilateral financial institute, while Chantale Wong is the first out LGBTQ+ woman of color to be appointed to an ambassador-level position in the United States (see full bios below). Ambassador Julia Chang Bloch, USCET’s Executive Chair and a trailblazer in her own right as the first US Ambassador of Asian descent, will lead the conversation, touching on themes of mentorship, overcoming barriers, and the role of the US at the ADB. Audience members in-person and online will be invited to take part in a lively Q&A session at the event.

USCET’s Asian Women Trailblazers series recognizes the contributions of pioneering Asian American women to American society. This series features conversations with trailblazing Asian American women in leadership positions in government service, education, and journalism. Learn more about this series on the USCET website.

Registration

The event is open to the public. Guests who register for the online event will receive details for joining the Zoom meeting.

 

Featuring

Amb. Chantale Wong, US Exec. Director to the ADB

 

Video Introduction by

Amb. Linda Tsao Yang, US Exec. Director to the ADB (1993-99)

 

Presiding

Amb. Julia Chang Bloch, USCET Executive Chair 

 

Speakers

Chantale Wong headshot

Ambassador Chantale Wong has had a long and distinguished career in public service, currently serving as the US Executive Director to the Asian Development Bank in Manila. Wong is the first out lesbian and first LGBTQ+ woman of color appointed to an ambassador-level position in US history, confirmed by the senate in February 2022. Previously, Wong was appointed by President Obama to serve as Vice President for Administration and Finance, and Chief Financial Officer at the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC). Earlier in her career, Wong has held leadership positions at the Office of Management and Budget, Departments of Treasury and Interior, and the Environmental Protection Agency, in addition to NASA. Chantale joined the staff of the Asian Development Bank in 1999 as an environmental specialist to ensure the Bank’s assessments complied with their environmental and social policies. She led development and publication of ADB’s first Asian Environment Outlook (2001) and was subsequently appointed by President Bill Clinton to its Board of Directors, representing the US as the Alternate Executive Director. Wong is the founding chair of the Conference on Asian Pacific American Leadership (CAPAL), an organization dedicated to encouraging careers in public service by providing training, workshops, mentors, and work opportunities for young AAPIs. Chantale’s passion in visual storytelling earned her the role of official photographer and videographer of the late Congressman John Lewis, the civil rights icon, as he led annual pilgrimages to Alabama.

Linda Tsao Yang headshot

Ambassador Linda Tsao Yang served as U.S. Executive Director to the board of the Asian Development Bank in Manila from 1993 to 1999. She was appointed by President Clinton and confirmed by the Senate in 1993, the first woman and the first minority to represent the United States on the board of a multilateral financial institution. Yang Is Chair Emerita of the Asian Corporate Governance Association (ACGA) based in Hong Kong which she chaired from 2001 to 2014. From 2003 to 2010, she served on the board of the Bank of China (Hong Kong) – one of three banknote issuing banks in Hong Kong – as an independent non-executive director. Earlier in her career, she was the first minority appointed to serve as California’s Savings and Loan Commissioner; she was also the first minority appointed to the board of the California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS), the largest public pension fund in the United States. She was Vice-Chairman of the Investment Committee of the board and was unanimously elected by her fellow board members to the position of Vice President of the Board. Yang was an invited panelist on International Economy at the economic summit led by then President-elect Clinton in Little Rock, Arkansas in December 1992. Ambassador Yang is a long time Board member of the 1990 Institute, a strong supporter of the Spring Bud and Microfinance programs, and is now an honorary Co-Chair of the Institute.

Moderator

Julia Chang Bloch headshot

Ambassador Julia Chang Bloch is founding president of the US-China Education Trust. She was the first US ambassador of Asian descent in US history. She has had an extensive career in international affairs and government service, beginning in 1964 as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Sabah, Malaysia and culminating as U.S. Ambassador to the Kingdom of Nepal in 1989. From 1981 to 1988, Ambassador Bloch served at the U.S. Agency for International Development as Assistant Administrator of Food for Peace and Voluntary Assistance and as Assistant Administrator for Asia and the Near East, positions appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. She also was the Chief Minority Counsel to a Senate Select Committee; a Senate professional staff member; the Deputy Director of the Office of African Affairs at the U.S. Information Agency; a Fellow of the Institute of Politics at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, and an Associate of the U.S.- Japan Relations Program of the Center for International Affairs at Harvard.

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[4/29/2022] Colloquium on Thirty Years of Tibet-China Dialogue Engagement

Current Perspectives in a Time of Global Realignment

Hosted by the Research Initiative on Multination States (RIMS), Co-sponsored by the Sigur Center for Asian Studies, East Asia National Resource Center

Friday, April 29, 2022 | 2:00 pm – 5:00 pm EDT

Harry Harding Auditorium

1957 E St NW Room 213

IN-PERSON ONLY

NOTE: All non-GW affiliated attendees attending the event IN-PERSON must comply with GW’s COVID-19 policy in order to attend this event, including showing proof of vaccination and masking indoors. For frequently asked questions, please refer to GW’s guidance.

Over the past decade, the exploratory Sino-Tibetan dialogue process came to a halt, just as assimilationist policies were accelerated across the region. But despite this sharp turn in China’s approach to Tibet, the preceding three decades of experimental talks between Beijing and the exiled Tibetan leadership nonetheless established a precarious but provisional framework for discussing the longstanding Tibet dispute.

On Friday, April 29, 2022, the Elliott School of International Affairs will host a colloquium to appraise the development and effects of the thirty years of dialogue initiatives between Chinese government and representatives of the Dalai Lama and the exiled Tibetan government.

Keynote speaker Sikyong Penpa Tsering, elected leader of the Central Tibetan Administration, will address the challenges and potential for dialogue engagement as current political conditions shift and realign.
The panel and roundtable will feature Arjia Rinpoche, abbot of Kumbum Monastery and former vice chairman of the national-level Chinese Buddhist Association in Beijing; Tenzin N. Tethong, former prime minister-in-exile and leader of the Second Tibetan Delegation to Tibet; Xia Ming, professor of political science at CUNY; Yue Gang, associate professor at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill; and Anne Thurston, senior research professor at Johns Hopkins University SAIS; with roundtable discussant Joseph Torigian, assistant professor at American University.

Gregg Brazinsky, director of the Sigur Center for Asian Studies, will make introductory remarks. The colloquium will be moderated by Tashi Rabgey, research professor of international affairs and director of Research Initiative on Multination States (RIMS).

This event is on the record and open to the public. Doors open at 1.30pm
Light dinner reception following colloquium at 5pm. 

Keynote Speaker

A black and white headshot of Sikyong Penpa Tsering

The Honorable Penpa Tsering became the second democratically elected Sikyong of the Central Tibetan Administration on May 27th, 2021, in an inauguration presided over by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Prior to taking political leadership of the Tibetan exiled government, Mr. Penpa Tsering was a prominent figure in the Tibetan Parliament-in-exile for two decades. After serving as a member of parliament for two terms, he became the Speaker of the Parliament in 2008 and 2016. He was then appointed official Representative for His Holiness the Dalai Lama for North America in Washington DC in 2016. Previously, Mr. Penpa Tsering served as the executive director at the Tibetan Parliamentary and Policy Research Centre (TPPRC), a research institute in New Delhi. The Sikyong was born in the Bylakuppe Tibetan Settlement in Mysore, India. As a global advocate for Tibet as well as a longstanding leading figure in the exiled government, Mr. Penpa Tsering has been advancing a resolution to the Tibet issue through the Middle Way Approach for three decades.

Opening Remarks

A black and white headshot of Professor Gregg Brazinsky

Gregg Brazinsky (he/him) is Professor of History and International Affairs. He is director of the Asian Studies Program, acting director of the Sigur Center for Asian Studies, and acting co-director of the East Asia National Resource Center. He is the author of two books: Nation Building in South Korea: Koreans, Americans, and the Making of a Democracy and Winning the Third World: Sino-American Rivalry during the Cold War. His articles have appeared in numerous journals including Diplomatic History and the Journal of Korean Studies. He has written op-eds for The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune and several other media outlets. He is currently working on two books. The first explores American nation building in Asia–especially Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea. The second explores Sino-North Korean relations during the Cold War.

Moderator

A black and white headshot of Tashi Rabgey

Tashi Rabgey is Research Professor of International Affairs at the Elliott School and director of the Research Initiative on Multination States (RIMS). She is also founding director of the Tibet Governance Lab, an incubator for research on policy challenges and innovation in the governance of contemporary Tibet. From 2008-2014, Dr. Rabgey led the development of the TGAP Forum, a research initiative that engaged PRC scholars and official policy researchers in Beijing on questions of Tibet’s governance and policy issues. The academic dialogue process generated new insights on the institutional structure and dynamics of China’s policymaking in Tibet and other regional autonomies. Dr. Rabgey holds law degrees from Oxford and Cambridge and a PhD from Harvard University. She was a Public Intellectual Fellow with the National Committee on US-China Relations from 2011-13 and a visiting scholar at Sichuan University in 2015. Dr. Rabgey is currently working on territoriality and problems of scale in asymmetric states and has recently been a visiting professor at the University of Kurdistan Hewlêr (Iraq).

Panelists

A black and white headshot of Tenzin N. Tethong

Tenzin N. Tethong served as leader of the Second Delegation of Tibetan Exile Representatives that was invited by Beijing to visit Tibet in 1980. Following these early years of serving the Tibetan government-in-exile, Mr. Tethong was appointed an official Representative of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and served in North America for thirteen years. He was then elected as Kalon (cabinet minister), and then prime minister-in-exile from 1990-95. Prior to his official appointments, Mr. Tethong was cofounder or instrumental in the establishment of major Tibetan institutions in India and the U.S. — from the first educational publication Sheja and the grassroots organization Tibetan Youth Congress, to the US Tibet Committee and the International Campaign for Tibet. Following his extensive government service, Mr. Tethong was a Distinguished Fellow of the Tibetan Studies Initiative and Chair of the Tibetan Studies Committee at Stanford University, as well as a founding member of The Dalai Lama Foundation, through which he worked on advancing the Dalai Lama’s message in the book Ethics for the New Millennium.

A black and white headshot of Arjia Rinpoche

Arjia Rinpoche is a distinguished scholar and one of the most prominent Buddhist teachers to have left Tibet. Recognized as a tulku by the previous Panchen Lama, Arjia Rinpoche served as Abbot of Kumbum Monastery in Amdo while also holding a top-ranking appointment as vice chairman of the PRC National Buddhist Association in Beijing. During the Cultural Revolution, Arjia Rinpoche worked in a forced labor camp for 16 years. In 1998, he went into exile, an experience he has recounted in his memoirs, Surviving the Dragon. After arrival in the United States, Arjia Rinpoche started the Tibetan Center for Compassion and Wisdom (TCCW) in Mill Valley, California.  In 2005, he was appointed by His Holiness the Dalai Lama as Director of the Tibetan Mongolian Buddhist Cultural Center (TMBCC) in Bloomington, Indiana. Since arriving in exile, Arjia Rinpoche has been actively working for the welfare of both Tibetans-in-exile as well as Mongolians through organizations like the Cancer Care Treatment Center for Mongolian children. He has also been speaking at universities on subjects ranging Buddhist philosophy to the practice of ethics to the history of Mongolia.

A black and white headshot of Xia Ming

Ming Xia is a Professor of Political Science at the City University of New York. He holds a master’s degree from Fudan University and a PhD from Temple University. He was a research fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the Sigur Center for Asian Studies at the George Washington University and the Asian Research Institute at the National University of Singapore. He was also visiting professor of the School of International Relations and Public Affairs at Fudan University and guest professor at Jishou University in Hunan. Dr. Xia is the author of The Dual Developmental State: Development Strategy and Institutional Arrangements for China’s Transition and The People’s Congresses and Governance in China: Toward a Network Mode of Governance. Dr. Xia is also a special contributor to iSun Affairs based in Hong Kong and has been a columnist for the electronic journal China in Perspective. He writes for the BBC World Service Chinese Branch and is the Associate Editor for the quarterly Chinese journal, The Journal of Modern China Studies. Dr. Xia was one of the producers of an HBO documentary movie and an Oscar-nominee, China’s Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province.

Discussant

A black and white headshot of Anne F. Thurston

Anne F. Thurston spent the past twenty years as a professor in the China studies program at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). She previously taught in the political science department at Fordham University and later served as the China staff at the Social Science Research Council. Dr. Thurston is a member of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations. She has worked and traveled widely in China, and authored, co-authored, or edited a number of books, including Enemies of the People: The Ordeal of China’s Intellectuals during the Great Cultural Revolution; The Private Life of Chairman Mao, with Dr. Li Zhisui; The Noodle Maker of Kalimpong, with Gyalo Thondup; and, most recently, Engaging China: Fifty Years of Sino-American Relations. She holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Berkeley.

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[4/8/2022] Translation and Difference in the Tosa Diary’s Tale of Nakamaro

GW Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures

Kim-Renaud East Asian Humanities Lecture Series

Friday, April 8, 2022 | 3:30 pm – 4:30 pm EDT

Rome Hall Room 459 (In-Person ONLY)

NOTE: All non-GW affiliated attendees attending the event must comply with GW’s COVID-19 policy in order to attend this event, including showing proof of vaccination. While masks are no longer required, it is highly encouraged indoors. For frequently asked questions,  please refer to GW’s guidance

Join us for a talk with Dr. Gustav Heldt on the The Tosa Diary‘s Tale of Nakamaro

About

Having spent his entire adult life as an official in the Tang empire, Abe no Nakamaro (698-770) has come to represent the maximum extent to which a Japanese person might engage with the continent in premodern times. The most detailed and thought-provoking depiction of his life there occurs in an anecdote related by the fictional female diarist of Tosa nikki (The Tosa Diary, ca. 935) in which he bids farewell to his former friends with a waka poem he composes prior to setting out on what would be a failed attempt to return home to Japan. The separate acts of poet composition, inscription and translation detailed in this anecdote have attracted considerable interest among Anglophone scholars on account of the insights they appear to offer into premodern Japanese notions of linguistic difference within a wider East Asian context. Whereas these other scholars have all focused on Nakamaro’s inscription of his poem in Chinese characters, however, little attempt has been made to explain why someone who had spent the majority of his adult life overseas would need a translator to convey the poem’s import to his audience. In attempting to answer this question, my talk will focus on the intertextual links between his waka and earlier Tang poems, as well as the connections between the setting in which it is composed and historical conditions governing Japan’s relations with the continent at the time Tosa nikki was written.

Registration

The event is open to the public. All attendees must follow GW’s COVID policy to attend this event.

Speaker

Dr. Gustav Heldt, Associate Professor of Japanese Literature, University of Virginia

Speaker

Gustav Heldt is Associate Professor of Japanese at the University of Virginia. My area of specialization is in the language, literature, and cultural history of Japan prior to contact with the West with related interests in gender, poetics, ritual practices, comparative historiography, and myth. At the University of Virginia I have regularly teach courses such as JPTR 3010 (Survey of Japanese Literature), JAPN 4710 (Introduction to Literary Japanese), EAST 1010 (East Asian Canons and Cultures), as well as seminars on more specialized topics such as Japanese myth, the Tale of Genji, and Japanese court women’s literature. My first book The Pursuit of Harmony: Poetry and Power in Early Heian Japan explored the links between classical Japanese court poetry and the ritual enactment of authority by powerful members of the Heian court. Since then I have written a translation of Japan’s earliest surviving narrative, the Kojiki, and co-edited a volume on cultural exchanges across Eurasia in the middle ages. My current book project is an in-depth study of Tosa nikki, Japan’s earliest surviving vernacular diary.

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[4/18/2022] 50 Years After the Nixon-Mao Summit: Views from Japan, Taiwan, and India

Sponsored by the Sigur Center for Asian Studies and East Asia National Resource Center

Monday, April 18, 2022 | 12:30 pm – 1:45 pm EDT

Zoom Event

The United States President Richard Nixon’s 1972 visit to the People’s Republic of China ended 25 years of no communication between the U.S. and the PRC and opened the door to the normalization of relations between the two counties. While normalization did not come about until 1979, the historic meeting between Richard Nixon and the Chairman of the PRC’s ruling Communist Party, Mao Zedong, marked a historic turning point. While much has been made about the impact upon the PRC and the U.S., less attention has been paid to the rippling effects across Asia. To address these effects, we bring together a panel of experts who will discuss the impacts that the summit had upon Japan, Taiwan, and India when it occurred and in the decades following.

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

  • Fintan Hoey, Associate Professor of History, Franklin University Switzerland
    • “From the ‘China Shock’ to ‘Duck Diplomacy’: Japan and the Nixon-Mao Summit”
  • James Lee, Postdoctoral Research Associate at the UC Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC)
    • “50 Years of the One-China Policy”
  • Tanvi Madan, Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy, Project on International Order and Strategy, Brookings Institution

Opening Remarks

Gregg Brazinsky, Professor of History and International Affairs, Director of the Asian Studies Program, Acting Director of the Sigur Center for Asian Studies

Moderator

Deepa Ollapally, Research Professor of International Affairs and the Associate Director of the Sigur Center for Asian Studies

 

Speakers

headshot of Fintan Hoey in professional attire

Fintan Hoey, PhD is an Associate Professor of History at Franklin University Switzerland and in 2019 was a Swiss National Science Foundation fellow at the Wilson Center. In 2015 he published, Sato, America and the Cold War: U.S.-Japanese Relations, 1964-1972 with Palgrave Macmillan. This examines a critical time of change in U.S.-Japanese relations, including the ramifications of the burgeoning Sino-American rapprochement under Nixon and Mao. More recently his work has focused on Japanese policies on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons and on nuclear power generation.

headshot of James Lee in professional attire

James Lee is a postdoctoral research associate at the UC Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC), which is based at the School of Global Policy and Strategy at the University of California, San Diego. He received his Ph.D. in Politics from Princeton University in 2018 and subsequently held a fellowship in the Max Weber Program for Postdoctoral Studies at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. Starting in August 2022, he will be an Assistant Research Fellow (equivalent to Assistant Professor) at the Institute of European and American Studies at the Academia Sinica (中央研究院) in Taiwan.

His research interests are at the intersection of international relations, diplomatic history, economics, East Asian Studies, and Classics. He studies grand strategy, geoeconomics, and great power competition in historical periods ranging from ancient Greece to the Cold War to the present day. He is especially interested in U.S. grand strategy in Europe and East Asia, U.S.-Taiwan relations, and the reception of Thucydides in the field of strategic studies. His research has been published in the International Studies Quarterly, the Journal of Strategic Studies, the Journal of East Asian Studies, and the Journal of Chinese Political Science.

He is also interested in the policy aspects of U.S.-Taiwan relations. He has written policy briefs on the United States’ One-China policy and the security of Taiwan, and his analysis of Taiwan’s security has been featured in Voice of America, East Asia Forum, and the Ploughshares Fund. He is a member of the U.S.-Taiwan Next Generation Working Group, a program organized by the Institute of East Asian Studies at UC Berkeley for specialists on Taiwan’s foreign affairs.

headshot of Tanvi Madan in professional attire

Tanvi Madan is a senior fellow in the Project on International Order and Strategy in the Foreign Policy program, and director of The India Project at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC. Madan’s work explores India’s role in the world and its foreign policy, focusing in particular on India’s relations with China and the United States. She also researches the U.S. and India’s approaches in the Indo-Pacific, as well as the development of interest-based coalitions, especially the Australia-India-Japan-U.S. Quad.

Madan is the author of the book “Fateful Triangle: How China Shaped US-India Relations during the Cold War” (Brookings Institution Press, 2020). Her ongoing work includes a book project on the recent past, present, and future of the China-India-US triangle, and a monograph on India’s foreign policy diversification strategy.

Madan is a member of the editorial board of Asia Policy, a contributing editor at War on the Rocks, and a member of the Australian National University’s National Security College’s Futures Council.

Opening Remarks

portrait of Gregg Brazinsky in professional attire

Gregg Brazinsky (he/him) is Professor of History and International Affairs. He is director of the Asian Studies Program, acting director of the Sigur Center for Asian Studies, and acting co-director of the East Asia National Resource Center. He is the author of two books: Nation Building in South Korea: Koreans, Americans, and the Making of a Democracy and Winning the Third World: Sino-American Rivalry during the Cold War. His articles have appeared in numerous journals including Diplomatic History and the Journal of Korean Studies. He has written op-eds for The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune and several other media outlets. He is currently working on two books. The first explores American nation building in Asia–especially Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea. The second explores Sino-North Korean relations during the Cold War.

Moderator

portrait of Deepa Ollapally

Deepa M. Ollapally is Research Professor of International Affairs and the Associate Director of the Sigur Center for Asian Studies at the Elliott School of International Affairs, The George Washington University. She directs the Rising Powers Initiative which tracks foreign policy debates in major powers of Asia and Eurasia.

She is a specialist on Indian foreign policy, India-China relations, Indo-Pacific regional and maritime security, and comparative foreign policy outlooks of rising powers and the rise of nationalism in foreign policy. Ollapally is the author of five books including Worldviews of Aspiring Powers (Oxford, 2012). Her current research focuses on maritime and regional security in the Indo-Pacific. She is currently writing a book on Big Power Competition for Influence in the Indo-Pacific. She has won grants from Carnegie Corporation, MacArthur Foundation, Smith Richardson Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation and Asia Foundation for work related to India and Asia.

Ollapally has held senior positions in the policy world including US Institute of Peace; and National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore, India. She holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University.

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