Month: July 2016

Trinity College position

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The International Studies and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Programs at Trinity College announce a joint tenure-track position at the assistant professor level for an innovative scholar of transnationalism whose work focuses on gender and sexuality, is informed by feminist and queer theory, and is rigorously interdisciplinary in its approach to the world. We particularly encourage applications from candidates whose work focuses on peoples, institutions, discourses, and practices outside North America and Europe.  The successful applicant will be expected to teach courses in his/her specialty as well as core courses in both programs, including an introductory course in gender and sexuality studies with a transnational focus and an upper level course in feminist and queer theory.  INTS and WMGS are interdisciplinary programs, and we welcome applicants from any discipline.

Teaching load is 2/2 for the first two years (and 3/2 thereafter) with a one-semester leave every fourth year.

The successful candidate will be housed jointly in the International Studies Program (http://www.trincoll.edu/Academics/MajorsAndMinors/International/Pages/Overview.aspx) and the Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program (http://www.trincoll.edu/Academics/MajorsAndMinors/Women/Pages/default.aspx). Continue reading Trinity College position →

Collectors, Collections and East Asian Book Worlds–cfp

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CFP–Call for Special Issue of East Asian Publishing and Society:
Collectors, Collections, and the Making of East Asian Book Worlds

Deadline for submissions: December 31, 2017 [sic]
Queries: Direct to Peter Kornicki (pk104@cam.ac.ak) or Patricia Sieber (sieber.6@osu.edu)

Style sheet: See “Authors Instructions” at http://www.brill.com/publications/journals/east-asian-publishing-and-society

Robert Darntons’s seminal idea of the “communication circuit” focused on the synchronically connected participants involved in the writing, manufacture, distribution, and reception of books (“What is the History of the Book,” Daedalus 111 (1982): 65-83). Subsequently, Thomas R. Adams and Nicolas Barker added a diachronic dimension to this scheme through the notion of survival (“A New Model for the Study of the Book,” in A Potencie of Life: Books in Society, edited by Nicolas Barker, The British Library, 1993). In addition to the physical form, print runs, and popularity that Adams and Barker identify as key variables in a book’s survival, we want to highlight collectors and collections as a critical link between the synchronic and diachronic circulation of books. Continue reading Collectors, Collections and East Asian Book Worlds–cfp →

Reading Maoist media culture–cfp

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Dear all,

Eldon Pei (Ph.D Candidate, Art History, Stanford) and I (Ph.D Candidate, History, Berkeley) are proposing a panel for AAS Toronto 2017, tentatively titled “If I Took Those Words Away: Reading Maoist Media Culture Beyond the Printed Page.”  A description of the panel is below.   If you are interested in joining us, please submit an abstract (max. 250 words) to Eldon (eldonpei@stanford.edu) and me (hartono@berkeley.edu) by July 25.  We welcome abstract submissions from all fields and from scholars at all stages.

Best,
Paulina Hartono <hartono@berkeley.edu>
Ph.D Candidate,History
UC Berkeley

Like elsewhere in the postwar world, the cultural landscape of Mao’s China encompassed a range of increasingly ubiquitous and interconnected media for carrying out the large-scale reproduction and dissemination of texts, images and sound. While early core research focused upon tracing how media institutions were forcibly assimilated to party-state propaganda goals and re-described the manifest content they transmitted within prescriptive ideological categories, recent scholarship has revealed that even the most authoritatively sanctioned domains of media production and reception were in fact less homogenized and univocal than previously imagined—or that homogenization and univocality led to unexpected consequences. Continue reading Reading Maoist media culture–cfp →

Tale of two writers (2)

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I found this piece quite moving. Maybe it was the play on iron in the last paragraph, I woke up humming an old, all too famous song (I won a bet about a lyric from this song a long time ago. Never got paid).

我感觉，你不是铁
却象铁一样强和烈

I feel like you’re not iron
but still strong and raging as iron . . .

Why raging? Well, Ol’ Cui splits up the compound here. I think of molten iron flowing out of a kiln.

The mutual integration of the personal and the political are evident in many cultural areas, many media sectors around our perpetually collapsing world aren’t they? Hell, one keystroke can delete twenty years of work for a researcher. Puff! Up it goes!
All the best,
Sean Macdonald <smacdon2005@gmail.com>

Architects seize on potential in countryside

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Source: NYT (6/17/16)
Architects Seize on Potential in China’s Countryside
点击查看本文中文版 Read in Chinese
By AMY QIN

The Sun Commune project by the architect Chen Haoru focuses on farming and community development. CreditLam Yik Fei for The New York Times

LING’AN, China — Nestled in verdant hills amid bamboo forests and feathery grass meadows, the Sun Commune is a thriving eco-farm about 60 miles from the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou. Its centerpiece is a pig barn.

Yet this home for 30 or so black hogs is no ordinary outbuilding. An open-air bamboo-lined structure, it has pyramid-shaped thatched roofs and a swimming pool. On a recent afternoon, the swine snoozed to the soothing sounds of soft jazz in their custom-built residence, which has been called China’s most beautiful sty. Continue reading Architects seize on potential in countryside →

China Paw-litics, anyone?

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Source: China Policy Institute Blog, University of Nottingham (7/7/16)
Chinese Paw-litics, Anyone?
Written by Haiyan Lee

6659085257_8a48eb6ed6_oIn a satirical novel by Christopher Buckley called They Eat Puppies, Don’t They?, a lobbyist seeking to stir up anti-China sentiments in Washington declares in a column for the conservative National Review that “there are one point three billion reasons to be afraid—very afraid—of China today.” After enumerating China’s many “offenses,” she adds: “and if that’s not enough to keep you awake at night, let’s not forget—they eat puppies, don’t they?”

Apparently, over the past month at least, the last offense has been keeping a group of Hollywood celebrities awake at night. On June 21, summer solstice, the annual Yulin Lychee and Dog Meat Festival (玉林荔枝狗肉节) in Guangxi Province took place as planned. A video jointly released by Matt Damon, Rooney Mara, Joaquin Phoenix, Maggie Q, and others in protest of the festival flashes disturbing images of dogs in cages, on chopping blocks, and on meat hooks, intercut with the mournful faces of the actors pleading for the barbarous practice to stop. Continue reading China Paw-litics, anyone? →

Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis position

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Postdoctoral researcher in Asian Cultural Studies
Faculty of Humanities – Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis

http://www.uva.nl/en/about-the-uva/working-at-the-uva/vacancies/item/16-355-postdoctoral-researcher-in-asian-cultural-studies.html

Publication date: 7 July 2016
Level of education: PhD
Salary indication: €3,168 to €3,527 gross per month
Closing date: 31 August 2016
Hours: 38 hours per week
Vacancy number: 16-355

The Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA) of the Faculty of Humanities is looking for one Postdoctoral researcher in the fields of Media Studies, Cultural Studies and/or Area Studies. The postdoc will be part of the European Research Council (ERC) funded project ‘From Made in China to Created in China – A Comparative Study of Creative Practice and Production in Contemporary China (ChinaCreative)’. She/he will work on a project on creative clusters in Shenzhen. Continue reading Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis position →

New book on Wang Shiwei

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13557877_485220361677607_7196760872559903738_n《王實味：文藝整風與思想改造》 (HK: City University of HK Press, 2016)

This new book by Louisa Wei tells the story of Wang Shiwei, the first famous victim of CCP’s literary persecution. It blends close reading with historical documents as well as oral history that Wei collected through her 8 years of effort in tracing those who stayed in Yenan during the years when Wang Shiwei was singled out as a target of the Rectification campaign.

王實味是五四運動中成長起來的第一代人，因為一篇雜文〈野百合花〉，使他成為延安整風的重點批判對象，有人稱他為共產黨文字獄首位有姓名的犧牲者。本書作者自2008年開始，訪談了十多位與王實味同時在延安、親歷整風的老人；這些受訪者大多是近代歷史的見證者，並且對經歷過的一連串的政治運動都有反思。

本書透過口述筆錄、檔案資料、文本解讀，以及作者新發掘的材料，比較不同的聲音和視點，了解和記錄未能被成功改造思想的王實味的意義。作為珍貴的歷史材料，本書還首次全文附錄王實味1930年發表在「托派雜誌」《展開》上的中篇小說〈三代〉，以及他轉譯並加了按語的〈列寧遺囑〉，以伺讀者。

Made in China no. 2

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Dear Colleagues,

I am pleased to announce that the second issue of Made in China: A Quarterly on Chinese Labour, Civil Society, and Rights is now online. You can download the pdf and subscribe at this link: http://www.chinoiresie.info/madeinchina. Here follows the editorial from the new issue:

Hammer to Fall: Harder Times Ahead for Chinese Civil Society

MADE-IN-CHINA-ISSUE-2_COVER_234x331We are pleased to announce the second issue of Made in China. In this issue, we open with a series of Briefs that provide an overview of notable stories that have taken place over the past three months. In the last quarter, one of the most important developments for Chinese civil society is the passing of the Foreign NGOs Management Law on 28 April. Although a draft released early last year had received extensive domestic and international criticism, the Law was passed with only minor revisions. What we previously described as a sword of Damocles looming over Chinese civil society has now become reality.

To contextualise the language of the Law and shed light on its possible implications, we have compiled The Foreign NGOs Management Law: A Compendium. While the new legislation indeed helps to clarify what is a substantial grey area in the Chinese legal system, the specific terms of the Law have grave implications not only for international NGOs operating in China, but also for the whole of Chinese civil society. This is especially true for those organisations that operate in politically sensitive fields such as labour and human rights. Continue reading Made in China no. 2 →

Tale of two writers (1)

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Thanks for posting this suggestive piece by David Bandurski.

What might Arthur Miller have done with this story?  The question occurred to me spontaneously, but it is a curious fact that Miller went to Beijing to assist with a Chinese production of Death of a Salesman during Zhu Tiezhi’s first year of working for Red Flag. I can’t help wondering whether Zhu saw the play and, in later years, found new reason to reflect on it.

Andrew Clark <aec@raggedbanner.com>

Tale of two writers

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Source: China Media Project (6/28/16)
A Tale of Two Writers
By David Bandursky

Li-Xingwen

[ABOVE: Zhu Tiezhi’s wife, Li Xinwen, appears during a press briefing at the State Council Information Office.]

THE DEATH over the weekend of Zhu Tiezhi (朱铁志), 56, deputy chief editor at China’s official Seeking Truth (求是) journal, has prompted soul-searching in Chinese chat groups — touching on issues at once personal, cultural, psychological and political. Discussion of Zhu’s death, which has led some to speculate a connection to the corruption case against former Hu Jintao advisor Ling Jihua (令计划), has quickly been scrubbed from most Chinese websites.

Regarded as an accomplished essay writer, Zhu first joined the Party’s Red Flag journal after graduating from Peking University in 1982 with a degree in philosophy. He joined Seeking Truth after rising to a senior position at Red Flag. Despite his involvement with these strongly ideological Party journals, however, Zhu contributed from time to time to other publications, including Guangzhou’s more freewheeling Southern Weekly newspaper. He was also a recipient of the Lu Xun Literary Prize, considered one of China’s most prestigious awards for writers. Continue reading Tale of two writers →

Vernacular Practices across East Asia–cfp

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Call for Papers:
Vernacular Practices across East Asia
The University of Chicago Graduate Student Conference 2016
Friday, October 7th through Sunday, October 9th

DEADLINE: July 15, 2016

Keynote Speaker: Bao Weihong, Assistant Professor in the Chinese Program and Film Studies, University of California, Berkeley

Special Event: “Kagawa Ryo Live in Chicago,” a performance of Japanese folk music

Conference Description:

The study of East Asia is perennially haunted by the specters of standardization, and the centralization of political and cultural capital in the nation-state. What is often lost in the margins is the particular, the non-standard, the suppressed, the minor, and the indigenous experience in which vernacular practice and its potential for various modes of reproduction, resistance, transcendence, and imminence takes place. Recently, postcolonial studies, area studies, media studies, and other fields have taken a common interest in how and to what extent the vernacular as language, aesthetic, and sensibility and more importantly as literary, cultural, and political practice can offer new perspectives and possibilities to our understanding of East Asia. Rather than defining the object of this project through the arbitrary political demarcations of nation, or the structural mechanisms of the state, or an oversimplified, homogenized discourse of particular -isms, we want to focus on place, community, and people created by and through a variety of practices. Practice is embodied: it is always localized and informed both by geographically-defined environments and by ever-changing networks of power. The vernacular holds the prospect of specificity, and practice, that of immediacy: in combination, they can be used to address dynamic issues of democracy, agency, and power. Continue reading Vernacular Practices across East Asia–cfp →

China cracks down on news spread by social media

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Source: Sinosphere, NYT (7/5/16)
China Cracks Down on News Reports Spread via Social Media
By EDWARD WONG and VANESSA PIAO

A villager in Sichuan Province reading his mobile phone. The government said it would punish websites that publish “directly as news reports unverified content found on online platforms such as social media.” CreditKevin Frayer/Getty Images

BEIJING — What do the subjects of these Chinese news reports have in common?

• The decay of moral standards in villages in northeastern China.

• Arson on a bus in Changsha, the capital of Hunan Province.

• A girl from Shanghai flees from a Lunar New Year dinner at her boyfriend’s family home in the south because of appalling living conditions.

The powerful Cyberspace Administration of China, whose mission is to censor online information and block some websites (including that of The New York Times), has judged all those reports to be based on false information spread through social media platforms. Continue reading China cracks down on news spread by social media →

Chinese identity hits new low in HK poll

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Source: Voice of America (7/1/16)
Poll: For Hong Kong Citizens, Sense of Chinese Identity Hits New Low
By Da Hai Nan

Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) soldiers take part in a flag-raising ceremony during the opening day of Stonecutter Island Navy Base in Hong Kong to mark the 19th anniversary of the Hong Kong handover to China, July 1, 2016.

Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) soldiers take part in a flag-raising ceremony during the opening day of Stonecutter Island Navy Base in Hong Kong to mark the 19th anniversary of the Hong Kong handover to China, July 1, 2016.

HONG KONG—As Hong Kong marks 19 years since its handover from Britain, a new poll indicates an all-time low in the collective sense of pride as Chinese citizens, and feelings about Beijing’s policies toward the city

The University of Hong Kong’s Popular Opinion Program (UHKPOP) found the percentage of respondents identifying as “Chinese” at the lowest level in 14 years. Sixty-seven percent of the 1,006 people polled identified themselves as “Hongkongers,” with only 31 percent saying they were “Chinese.” Continue reading Chinese identity hits new low in HK poll →

Noisiest park in the world

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Source: NYT (7/3/16)
In China, the ‘Noisiest Park in the World’ Tries to Tone Down Rowdy Retirees
By CHRIS BUCKLEY and ADAM WU

People’s Park in Chengdu, China, has become famous for its often-raucous spectacle. For years, choirs, bands and dance groups, mostly run by older residents, have jostled for space, audiences and glory.CreditLam Yik Fei for The New York Times

CHENGDU, China — As the Happy Runxin and Glad Tidings performing troupes squared off in the Chengdu People’s Park on a recent morning, the newly installed noise monitors flashed to life, their red digits registering each potential transgression by the park’s famously boisterous amateur dancers and musicians.

As Happy Runxin’s band struck up saxophones, trumpets, oboes and drums, a monitor next to the troupe flickered to life: 75 decibels. Then, while older dancers sashayed in red dresses before the hundreds of onlookers, a choir of dozens warbled, “Oh, motherland. Oh, motherland.” The volume jumped to 85 decibels. Continue reading Noisiest park in the world →