Classical Tale translation workshop

Chinese Classical Tale Summer Translation Workshop: Call for Applications

The Center for East Asian Studies at the University of Chicago invites applications for a Translation Workshop on the tale written in Classical Chinese (Literary Sinitic). The workshop, to be held July 15-19, 2024, is part of the NEH Translations and Scholarly Editions project for a new complete annotated English translation of Pu Songling’s 蒲松齡 Liaozhai zhiyi 聊齋誌異. It will be led by project co-PI’s Judith Zeitlin (University of Chicago) and Rania Huntington (University of Wisconsin, Madison), with additional faculty sessions conducted by Roland Altenburger (University of Würzburg), Suyoung Son (Cornell), and Jiayi Chen (Washington University, St Louis). Mornings will introduce methods and resources for English translation and annotation, including two sessions in the Regenstein Library and a session on Korean tales written in Literary Sinic; afternoon sessions will focus on workshopping translations in progress by individual student and faculty participants.

The workshop is open to graduate students, advanced undergraduates, faculty, and independent scholars and translators. Required qualifications: command of advanced Classical Chinese and professional fluency in English.

Subsidies for travel and lodging will be provided for a limited number of out of town participants. Preference for subsidies will be given to graduate students and recent PhDs or MFAs (degree granted after 2017), but scholars of all ranks are welcome to apply to the workshop. Participants should prepare two texts for translation to bring with them: one an already completed draft, and one to be completed over the course of the workshop. Texts may be from the tale or anecdotal tradition in Classical Chinese from any period or geographical region. Applicants should submit a current cv and brief statements describing your interest in the workshop, your Classical Chinese training, prior translation experience, and the translation projects you plan to share at the workshop.

Application materials are due by May 1, 2024

Please apply here:  NEH Summer Classical Tale Translation Workshop (wufoo.com)

For questions, please contact Professor Judith Zeitlin <jzeitlin@uchicago.edu>

Contact Information:

Hyeonjin Schubert
Center Administrator Center for East Asian Studies
Contact Email hschubert@uchicago.edu
URL https://ceas.uchicago.edu

RMMLA lit and film panel–cfp extension

RMMLA 2024 Panel Deadline Extension

The deadline for abstract proposals to the 2024 Rocky Mountain MLA panel on “Marginalized Writers and Filmmakers,” previously posted on the MCLC Blog, has been extended to March 21:

https://u.osu.edu/mclc/2024/02/10/chinese-lit-and-film-after-1900-rmmla-cfp/

Please direct any inquiries to:

Charles Laughlin (cal5m@virginia.edu)
Andrew Kauffman (andrew.kauffman@unlv.edu)
Yiming Ma (yimingma@umail.ucsb.edu)

Drama Box and the Social Theatre of Singpore event

Dear colleagues,

It gives me great pleasure to invite you to the panel discussion commemorating the launch of my book, Drama Box and the Social Theatre of Singapore: Cultural Intervention and Artistic Autonomy 1990-2006.

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Founded in 1990, Drama Box is a socially-engaged theatre company known for creating works that inspire dialogue, reflection and change. Published thirteen years ago in Chinese, Drama Box and the Social Theatre of Singapore: Cultural Intervention and Artistic Autonomy 1990-2006 received critical acclaim for its “comprehensive insight” into cultural policies and “excellent analysis” of the company’s theatre practice which “amplifies the voices of marginalised communities.” Now available in English, it has been updated and edited for a wider readership. To commemorate its publication, you are invited to join us for the live streaming of the book launch and panel discussion as speakers working in theatre, education and academia explore the nexus between theatre and crisis.

Online event:
Title of Panel Discussion: THEATRE AND CRISIS
Date: 9 March 2024 (Saturday)
Time: 0800 to 0930 (UK time)
Language: English Continue reading

RMMLA 2024 deadline extensions

The deadline for paper submissions to the following Rocky Mountain MLA panels, previously posted on the MCLC Blog, has been extended to March 15:

Intersecting Ecologies: Navigating Crises, Traumas, and Movements in Asian Comparative Literature and Film

Bridging Worlds: Unpacking Asian-German Interconnections in Comparative Asian Literature and Film 

Posted by: Jasmine Li <yul282@ucsd.edu>

The Nomadic Artist in the Chinese Diasporas

“The Nomadic Artist in the Chinese Diasporas” Virtual Conference
April 18, 2024, 2-5pm EST
April 25, 2024, 5-8pm EST

Information and Registration

Recent interdisciplinary scholarship has increasingly demonstrated the need to highlight the social heterogeneity of multiple Chinese diasporas instead of a singular Chinese diaspora. Established and emerging scholars from Australia, China, the United Kingdom, and the United States will discuss the artworks of Xiao Lu, Song Ling, Li Yuan-Chia, Richard Show-Yu Lin, Kim Lim, Cai Guo-Qiang, Hong Xian, Huang Yao, Hung Liu, Tehching Hsieh and others. The presentations are intended to contribute to an examination of such critical but contested concepts as migration and transmigration, displacement, exile, homeland, mobility, transnationalism, nationality, coloniality, citizenship, and cosmopolitanism in cultural and art historical studies.

Co-organized by

Department of Art History and Archaeology, University of Maryland
The Judith Neilson Chair of Contemporary Art, University of New South Wales, Sydney

Co-sponsored by

Center for East Asian Studies & Center for Global Migration Studies, University of Maryland
The Endowment of the Judith Neilson Chair of Contemporary Art, University of New South Wales, Sydney

Speakers

Paul Gladston, Eleanor Stoltzfus, Lydia Ohl, Nan Zhong, Wenny Teo, Tiffany Wai-Ying Beres, Dorothy Moss, Yu-chieh Li

Techno-Futures symposium

Symposium Announcement
Techno-Futures: Collaborations in Performance, Technology, and Creative Scholarship
March 7-9, 2024
University of Maryland (in person and online)

A weekend of events investigating new horizons in the application of technology in performance through the work of Asian diasporic artists, scholars and artists who study or create work in East Asia, and UMD graduate students who research the intersections of performance and technology. Co-organized by Jyana Browne (UMD), Tarryn Chun (University of Notre Dame), and Van Tran Nguyen (UMD).

Events include a film festival showcasing works by Asian diasporic artists, graduate student research and creative works, and an international symposium, artists talks, and an artist roundtable. The symposium, “Technology in Contemporary East Asian Performance,”  focuses on critical studies of recent works of theater and performance from Japan, South Korea, the PRC, and Taiwan that employ technologies such as virtual and extended reality, online platforms, vocaloids, holograms, and drones. Keynote addresses by Rossella Ferrari (University of Vienna) and Suk-Young Kim (UCLA). The artist talks and an artist roundtable offer a view of technology and performance from the perspective of working artists. All events open to the public and symposium proceedings will be live streamed via Zoom.

Advance registration required. Please visit https://tdps.umd.edu/techno-futures for more information, schedule, and registration.

Posted by: Tarryn Chun <tchun@nd.edu>

30 years of the internet, part II

Thirty Years of the Internet in China: A Retrospective (Part II)
SAT-SUN, March 2-3, 2024
Virtual Event, Open to the Public

Jointly organized by Center on Digital Culture and Society and Center for the Study of Contemporary China, University of Pennsylvania. REGISTER HERE

Schedule

March 2, 8:00-10:15pm ET

  • Matt Debutts and Jennifer Pan (Stanford University), “China’s Internet Controls: What If Citizens Disengage?”
  • Jack Qiu (Nanyang Technological University), “The Constants of Chinese Internet Research”
  • Yunya Song (Hong Kong Baptist University), “Gender and the Internet in China: A Historical Perspective”
  • Wei Wang (Zhejiang University), “The Reinvention of ‘Locality,’: Imagining Local Society with Local Media”
  • Jian Xu (Deakin University), “From ‘Wanghong’ to ‘Wanghong Thinking’: New Research Agenda and Critical Reflections”
  • Haiqing Yu (RMIT University), “Chinese Internet as the Nexus of Socio-technological Power”
  • Weiyu Zhang (National University of Singapore), “30 Years of China’s Online Fandom”

March 3, 8:00-10:00am ET

  • Jun Liu (Copenhagen University), “Reflections on Studying the Internet and (Contentious) Politics in China”
  • Gianluigi Negro (Siena University), “Studying the Internet in China through Metaphors”
  • Gabriele de Seta (University of Bergen), “From ASCII Greetings to Synthetic Livestreams: Three Decades of Chinese Digital Folklore”
  • Florian Schneider (Leiden University), “Nationalisms on China’s Evolving Internet”
  • Ge Dino Zhang (City University of Hong Kong), “A Decade of Chinese Game Studies in Retrospect”
  • Lin Zhang (University of New Hampshire), “Platformized Family Production: Social Reproduction and E-Commerce in Rural China”

Digital Cultures and AI Governance symposium

China Through the Looking Glass: Digital Cultures and AI Governance: An in-person Asian Studies Symposium 
Date: February 29 and March 1
Location: Montclair State University, 1 Normal AVE, Montclair, NJ, 07043

Thursday, February 29, 3:00pm-4:30pm, University Hall 1030
China’s Digital Cultures: From BBS to Papi Jiang
Guobin Yang, Grace Lee Boggs Professor of Communication and Sociology, University of Pennsylvania

Friday, March 1
A) 9:45am-11:00am, Dickson Hall 177
AI and Data Governance: Going Beyond the US-China Arms Race Framing
Peter D. Hershock, Director, Asian Studies Development Program, East-West Center

B) 11:15am-12:15pm, Dickson Hall 177
Why China and Asian Studies Matter: A Panel Discussion
Moderator: Peter D. Hershock, East-West Center
Panelists: Dona Cady, Middlesex Community College; Kin Cheung, Moravian University; Dorothee Hou, Moravian University; Robin Kietlinski, LaGuardia Community College–CUNY

C) 1:45pm-3:45pm, Dickson Hall 178, Asia Across Disciplines: A Roundtable Discussion

More info, and please sign up here: https://forms.gle/mU5VQiczKVYiKvY47

Sponsored by Montclair State University, Luce Foundation, Asian Studies Development Program at East West Center

Posted by: Wing Shan Ho <how@montclair.edu>

Race and Representation–cfp

Call for Papers: Race and Representation in Chinese and Sinophone Literature and Culture
Modern Language Association 2025

Although there has been significant scholarship on how the racial construction of Asians, Japanese, or Chinese in an area studies context, it has largely focused on a specific nation-state and often a specific ethnic minority, other studies have focused on Asian settler-colonialism or the representations of race in the Japanese empire or specific racial formations or diasporas, most often North American diasporas While there are clear reasons for organizing studies in these ways, these methodologies do not allow for drawing out resonances and connections that may exist outside of the lines drawn between area studies and ethnic studies, or between studies confined to specific regions.

In addition, the majority of studies of race in East Asian are historical or anthropological. There is significantly less work that has been done on representations of Asian racial formations in literature and culture. Much of the scholarship that exists focuses either on racial formations in a diasporic context, or how Asians are constructed in a Western context. This panel welcomes applications about racial passing, race relations, and racial ambiguity, and other topics related to representations of race within Chinese and Sinophone literatures.

Description & Requirements:
Please submit 200 word abstracts for topics related to race and its representation within Chinese and Sinophone literature and media. Please submit abstract and brief bio by March 20, 2024 to <ciwasaki@ualberta.ca>

Posted by: Nathaniel Isaacson <nkisaacs@ncsu.edu>

Hidden Luminaries–cfp

CFP: Hidden Luminaries: Obscure Actresses and Women Filmmakers in Chinese Film History
Special issue of Journal of Chinese Cinemas 
Guest Editors: David John Boyd (University of Glasgow) and Jessica Siu-yin Yeung (Lingnan University)
Associate Editor: Yiman Wang (University of California, Santa Cruz)

This issue will contribute to the field of Chinese women’s cinema, with studies on individual actresses and women filmmakers who have either faded from cultural or institutional memory, or who are significant in their own region but are under-studied in Anglophone scholarship.

In “The Life of the Obscure” (1924–25), Virginia Woolf proposes that the biographies of obscure and common people who led fascinating lives is crucial for recovering silenced histories. These obscure lives gain their significance through their collective worth of historicity, hence shifting the paradigm in life-writing practices from dominant, single lives of Great Men to minor, group lives of ordinary civilians. One of the roles of these forgotten individuals, to Woolf, is to introduce new perspectives on “greatness” and “lives.” This issue takes its cue from this approach and invites contributors to democratise Chinese-language film history, archive the historiographies of women film workers in contemporary form, and further problematise the notion of “Chinese” actresses and filmmakers in existing discourse. Continue reading

Aesthetics in Contemporary China–cfp

Dear all,

I am delighted to share with you the theme of the 17th CCVA Annual Conference (Extra)ordinary Living: Aesthetics in Contemporary China, convened by Dr Federica Mirra and Prof Jiang Jiehong, in collaboration with Nanjing University of the Arts.

Date: 9-10 November 2024 (tbc)
Venue: Nanjing University of the Arts, Nanjing, China (in-person only)
Deadline for abstracts: 1 March 2024

(Extra)Ordinary Living: Aesthetics in Contemporary China
非比寻常:当代中国的生活美学

From pre-dynastic rites and music to literati art and volumes on the pleasures of life, the notion of living has long inspired Chinese works of art and objects of design, which, in turn, document and inform diverse modes of society and culture, broadly conceived. More recently, an interest in everydayness re-gained momentum between the 19th and early 20th century. Later, during the Maoist era, life in the countryside and the labour of the masses was brought to the fore with the collective production of paintings, woodblock prints and propaganda posters. Throughout the 1980s, Chinese artists still drew inspiration from living, as suggested by the pioneering work by artist collectives such as the Pond Society (Chishe) and the Polit-Sheer-Form Office (Zheng chun ban), or the early works by contemporary artists in the 1990s, e.g., Geng Jianyi, Song Dong, Yin Xiuzhen, and Zhuang Hui. Continue reading

Bridging Worlds–cfp

CFP: Bridging Worlds: Unpacking Asian-German Interconnections in Comparative Asian Literature and Film 
Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association 77th Annual Convention Conference
Dates: October 10-12, 2024
Location: Las Vegas, Nevada

The “Bridging Worlds: Unpacking Asian-German Interconnections in Comparative Asian Literature and Film” panel invites scholars to explore the multidirectional and multifaceted connections between Asian and German cultures, histories, and philosophies as represented in literature and cinema.

This panel aims to dissect and discuss the complex interactions and influences between Asia and Germany, emphasizing their representations in literature and film. It challenges the boundaries, providing an opportunity to examine how Asian and German intersections contribute to our understanding of global cultural and historical dynamics on the one hand, and reconstructs our traditional understanding of German Studies and Asian Studies on the other hand.

Aiming to foster deeper intellectual intersectionality, we are particularly interested in submissions that challenge the existing narratives and binaries. We welcome critical perspectives on renowned literature and cinema that question dominant discourses and research on lesser-known works that spotlight marginalized voices and narratives. Topics of interest span a wide array, including but not limited to the enlightenment and modernity, colonial and post-colonial legacies, gender and queer identities, ecocriticism and ecofeminism, as well as indigenous and transnational discourse.

Submissions should comprise a 250-word abstract and a brief biography (2-3 sentences), formatted in a DOC file, to be sent to Yingwei Mu at ywmu@ucdavis.edu by March 15, 2024. The presentations will be conducted in English.

Posted by: Jasmine Li <yul282@ucsd.edu>

Intersecting Ecologies–cfp

CFP: Intersecting Ecologies: Navigating Crises, Traumas, and Movements in Asian Comparative Literature and Film
Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association 77th Annual Convention
Conference Date: October 10-12, 2024
Location: Las Vegas, Nevada

The “Intersecting Ecologies and Narratives: Navigating Crises, Traumas, and Movements in Asian Comparative Literature and Film” panel welcomes scholars to an interdisciplinary exploration at the intersection of ecological themes, migration and refugee experiences, medical humanities, and the post-COVID era within the context of Asian literature and film.

Our panel aims to engage in comparative analyses across various regions and genres within Asian literature and film, focusing on their navigation of crises and traumas, particularly those related to ecological themes. We invite contributions that dissect not only ecological crises and traumas from diverse perspectives but also complex relationships between humans and nature, cultural identities and environmental narratives, ecofeminism, and ecology’s implications in the age of globalization.

We seek to foster a dialogue that connects Asian comparative literature and film with the broader fields of environmental humanities, migration and refugee studies, medical humanities, and reflections on the post-COVID world. We encourage submissions that explore the intersections of ecological crises with human health, displacement, environmental activism, and migration narratives, offering new insights into the challenges and opportunities these intersections present.

Highlighted topics for exploration include but are not limited to: Continue reading

RMMLA Work and Poetry–cfp

CFP: Chinese Poetry: Work and Poetry
Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association 77th Annual Convention
Conference Date: October 10–12, 2024
Location: Las Vegas, Nevada

In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, China’s status as the world’s factory has given prominence to work and/or labor in Chinese language cultural production broadly, and to Chinese poetry and poetics specifically. This has given the Chinese working class a means both of distancing themselves from labor and of making social intervention. Written and read in moments of leisure, poetry distances from labor, but when intervening in society poetry can underline, for instance, possible directions for transformation in healthcare or developments in legal actions for workers’ rights. This panel invites papers that will discuss modern and contemporary Chinese language poetry along the line of this double-paradigm of work and poetry. Paper topics can include, but are not limited to, the following:

  • Poetry and work/labor
  • Poetry and interaction with society
  • Poetry and the words of labor
  • Poetry and “lying flat” (tangping) or “letting it rot” (bailan)
  • Poetry and humor/wordplay
  • Conceptualization around poetry and work
  • International resonances

Prospective participants should submit an abstract of approximately 250 words along with a short (2-3 sentence) biography through this google form by March 30, 2024. The language of the session is English.

Please direct any inquiries to:

Giusi Tamburello (giuseppa.tamburello@unipa.it) (co-chair)
Wei Zeng (wzeng4@ualberta.ca) (co-chair)
Lucas Klein (Lucas.Klein@asu.edu)
Sofiia Zaichenko (szaichen@ualberta.ca)
Fay Zhen (fzhen2@asu.edu)

Posted by: Giusi Tamburello giuseppa.tamburello@unipa.it

RMMLA Chinese Poetry: Center and Peripheries–cfp

CFP: Chinese Poetry: Center and Peripheries
Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association 77th Annual Convention
Conference Date: October 10-12, 2024
Location: Las Vegas, Nevada

For millennia poetry occupied a prized position at the center of literary and cultural production in Chinese. More recently, however, poetry risks being marginalized within the field of Sinitic/Chinese-language literary studies. At the same time, Sinophone studies and modern and contemporary Chinese poetry scholarship have marginalized each other. This panel seeks to draw renewed attention to the range and breadth of poetic styles, themes, social groupings, and discourses at work in Chinese-language poetry over the past long century, and to the issue of centrality and how poetry has responded to this issue. This includes but is not limited to papers addressing the following:

  • Canonization and modern/contemporary poetry
  • Classical-style poetry
  • Poetry and decolonial aesthetics
  • Poetry and dialects/topolects
  • Poetry and femininity/masculinity
  • Poetry and fiction or film
  • Poetry and translingualism
  • Sinitic poetry from outside China
  • Sociologies of poetry

Prospective participants should submit an abstract of approximately 250 words along with a short (2-3 sentence) biography through this google form by March 30, 2024. The language of the session is English.

Please direct any inquiries to:

Lucas Klein (Lucas.Klein@asu.edu) (co-chair
Sofiia Zaichenko (szaichen@ualberta.ca) (co-chair)
Fay Zhen (fzhen2@asu.edu)
Giusi Tamburello (terenziat@hotmail.com)
Wei Zeng (wzeng4@ualberta.ca)

Posted by: Lucas Klein lucas.klein@asu.edu