Lectures

The Afterlife of Taiwan’s Xiangtu Literature

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The Afterlife of Taiwan’s Xiangtu Literature
SOAS Talk
Speaker: Chen Li-Ping
Date: 1 December 2021   Time: 5:00-7:00 PM
Venue: Virtual Event
This session will be held using Microsoft Teams. Click the LINK to join.

This talk revisits the development of nativist literature in Taiwan from the 1930s to the postcolonial era. I begin with an overview of the term xiangtu, particularly in relation to colonial resistance, local consciousness, and self-empowerment. The emphasis on locality, however, reinforces the settler colonial structure and territorial attachments that marginalize Taiwan’s indigenous communities and archipelagic network. With a close examination of the overlooked allusion to African cultural nationalism and the understudied contribution of overseas intellectuals in the xiangtu discourse, I point out the ultimate task of decolonization is to move beyond nativism in order to foster inter-community solidarity where all forms of hegemonic forces and coercive measures can be dismantled.

Posted by: Li-Ping Chen <lipingch@usc.edu>

The Wa People Between China and Southeast Asia

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Book Talk: “The Wa People Between China and Southeast Asia.”
Center for East Asian Studies / Southeast Asia Colloquium, University of Pennsylvania, Tuesday, November 23, 2021, 12:30 noon.

= about my new book on the Wa people of Burma/China: Stories from an Ancient Land: Perspectives on Wa History and Culture (Berghahn, 2021).

Zoom registration, and more info.

Also here

–Sincerely,

Magnus Fiskesjö, magnus.fiskesjo@cornell.edu

A Conversation with Cui Weiping and Wen Pulin

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Dear all,

A reminder that our online event to celebrate the second issue of the Chinese Independent Cinema Observer,  “Chinese Avant-Garde Art of the 1980s: A Conversation with Cui Weiping and Wen Pulin”, is taking place this Saturday, 6 November, 13:30 UK time. 

If you wish to attend, remember to register in advance in order to receive the Zoom link via email:

Luke Robinson luke.robinson@sussex.ac.uk

Conversations with Laha Mebow

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EVENT: Conversations with Taiwan Film Director Laha Mebow (with film screening)
Join us for the two conversations with Taiwan indigenous film director Laha Mebow.

https://asia.ubc.ca/events/event/indigenous-taiwan-speaker-series-conversations-with-director-laha-mebow/

Laha Mebow is the first female indigenous film director in Taiwan. After years of living and studying in cities, she returned to her Atayal tribe and directed several films about indigenous people’s life and culture. Her film Hang in There, Kids! (Atayal: Lokah Laqi) was selected as the Taiwanese entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 89th Academy Awards. Her documentary Ça Fait Si Longtemps focuses on two Taiwan indigenous musicians who were invited to Caledonia for a month of musical exchange with local Kanak musicians. What motivated Laha Mebow to return to the tribe? What challenges do female indigenous filmmakers face in the contemporary Taiwan film industry? How does Laha Mebow tell stories about indigenous children and musicians in her films? And how are we to understand the international connection between indigenous cultures in her films? Join us for the two conversations with Laha Mebow hosted by UBC professor/filmmaker Aynur Kadir and PhD student Yuqing Liu. In the two events, Laha Mebow will share with us her experience of telling Taiwan indigenous stories to the world.

Growing Up Atayal: A Conversation with Director Laha Mebow about Indigenous Feature Filmmaking in Taiwan

Date & Time: Wednesday, November 3, 2021 | 4:00pm-6:00pm (PDT)
Location: online via Zoom
*Conducted in English and Mandarin
Free & open to the public. Registration is required via the link below. Registering once will grant access to both events.
Register here: https://ubc.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_EaJ8tKo7S0u3RCCWzznGVQ Continue reading Conversations with Laha Mebow →

Impossible Futures: A Chinese Star Wars talk

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The READCHINA project is happy to invite you to an upcoming talk by Nick Stember (University of Cambridge) on Tuesday November 9, 2021, at 10:00 (Freiburg time). The talk will be held online via Zoom; to receive a link, please register by sending an email to readchina.erc@gmail.com.

The abstract of the talk follows below:

Impossible Futures: A Chinese Star Wars

Although Star Wars: A New Hope (George Lucas, 1977) was released to much fanfare in both Taiwan and Hong Kong in 1980 to this day it has never been given a general release in the People’s Republic of China. As an editorial in People’s Daily at the time explained, the film’s popularity was evidence that “the entirety of capitalist culture”整个资本主义文化 was “tottering and rotten to the core” 腐朽没落. Surprisingly, however, the film did reach a wide audience within China in the 1980s, albeit through what we might call the “paper cinema” 纸上观影—unlicensed illustrated adaptations in film journals, pictorials (huabao), and comic books (lianhuanhua), beginning in early 1979. Even more striking is the fact that many of these were published under the banner of “science popularization” 科学普及 in explicit support of Deng Xiaoping’s so-called “Four Modernizations” 四个现代化. In this talk, I will focus on one widely circulated comic book adaptation of the first two Star Wars films, A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back. Published in two-parts in December 1980 and August 1982 by the Guangzhou branch of Science Popularization Press 科学普及出版社, this adaptation found a second life online in 2014, when it was scanned and posted online by the cultural historian Maggie Greene, with an English translation appearing shortly thereafter. As I will argue, comics like these suggest new avenues for research into the reproduction and reception of the culture of American science fiction at the birth of the Reform-era, with the United States providing an example of futures both possible and impossible.

Nick Stember is a translator and historian of Chinese popular culture, currently writing his PhD dissertation on science fiction in post-Cultural Revolution lianhuanhua in the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Cambridge.

Thanks and see you soon,
The READCHINA Team

Many thanks and best greetings,
Damian Mandzunowski

Writing Pirates book talk

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Zoom Book Talk: Writing Pirates
USC EASC New Book Series: Sinophone Studies
Wednesday, November 10, 2021 | 4:00PM – 5:30PM (PT)
REGISTER HERE:

In this event, the series will highlight Writing Pirates: Vernacular Fiction and Oceans in Late Ming China (University of Michigan Press, 2021) with author Yuanfei Wang (Visiting Fellow at the University of Southern California) and discussant Xing Hang (Associate Professor of History, Brandeis University). We hope to see you on Zoom!

Posted by: Li-Ping Chen <lipingch@usc.edu>

Building Other Bodies

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Event: Building Other Bodies: A Conversation About Speculative Fiction In Translation

Members of this listserv may be interested in this Hong Kong International Literary Festival event, held virtually at 10:00 AM HKT on Saturday, November 6, which I am co-moderating. URL and information about tickets can be found here.

Building Other Bodies: A Conversation About Speculative Fiction In Translation

This event brings together writers and translators of speculative fiction from Taiwan, South Korea, and Kuwait: Mona Kareem, NEA-award-winning poet who translated Octavia Butler’s Kindred into Arabic in 2020; Bora Chung, author of the short story collection Cursed Bunny (Honford Star, 2021) and the collection’s PEN-Award-winning translator Anton Hur; Chi Ta-wei 紀大偉, author of the 1995 queer Taiwanese classic The Membranes (Columbia University Press, 2021), and the novel’s translator Ari Larissa Heinrich (translator of Qiu Miaojin’s Last Words from Montmartre (NYRB, 2014)). The conversation will explore the craft of writing speculative fiction, the challenges—both technical and institutional—of bringing these works into/out of English, and the problems of race, genre, and geography. The 90-minute discussion will be moderated by Dr. Claire Gullander-Drolet and Dr. Dylan Suher (Society of Fellows in the Humanities, University of Hong Kong), followed by a Q and A. Continue reading Building Other Bodies →

Mulan lecture

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What Disney (and the Rest of Us) Can Learn from the Earliest Surviving Mulan Film
SUNY BUFFALO, OCTOBER 21 @ 4:00 PM-5:30 PM EASTERN
Christopher Rea, Professor of Modern Chinese Literature, University of British Columbia

Film to preview: Hua Mu Lan (Mulan Joins the Army, Mulan Congjun, 木蘭從軍, 1939), directed by Richard Poh (Bu Wancang)
Recommended film: Niki Caro, Mulan (2020)

FALL 2021 GLOBAL FILM SERIES
Chinese-language Cinemas: Mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan
(Virtual Zoom talks and film screenings)

This weekly series of six virtual lectures and accompanying films is curated by Tanya Shilina-Conte, assistant professor of Global Film Studies in the UB Department of English and curator of the annual riverrun Global Film Series. This virtual series is cosponsored by the UB Confucius Institute and UB Center for Global Film.

To register and obtain links for the lectures and films, please email ubci@buffalo.edu. Continue reading Mulan lecture →

Wei Desheng events

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Wei Te-Sheng, director of “Cape No. 7” and “Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale,” will be speaking at two free online events this week. The talks are hosted by the Department of Asian Studies of the University of British Columbia, and sponsored by the Taiwan Ministry of Culture, as part of the speaker series “Indigenous Taiwan, Transpacific Connections.”

Wei will be speaking about the making of, as well as representations of Indigenous peoples in, his films.

On Thursday, October 21 at 4pm Pacific Time, Wei will be in conversation with UBC Assistant Professor of Chinese Popular Culture Dr. Renren Yang.

On Friday, October 22 at 4pm Pacific Time, Wei will be in conversation with UBC Assistant Professor of Indigenous Lifeways in Asia (and Indigenous filmmaker) Dr. Aynur Kadir.

Details and free registration for both events at: https://asia.ubc.ca/events/event/indigenous-taiwan-speaker-series-conversations-with-director-wei-te-sheng/

About the “Indigenous Taiwan, Transpacific Connections” speaker series:

Indigenous Taiwan: Transpacific Connections speaker series

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Indigenous Taiwan: Transpacific Connections
A virtual speaker series, October-November 2021
Hosted by the Department of Asian Studies, University of British Columbia
Sponsored by the Ministry of Culture, Republic of China

Indigenous cultures make Taiwan and Canada unique. Taiwan has sixteen officially recognized tribes, and, like Canada, is engaged in ongoing public and community discussions about languages, land rights, self-determination, history, and reconciliation. How is indigenous life being represented and experienced by artists in Taiwan today? What commonalities of history, experience, or imagination might be found between Indigenous people of Taiwan and First Nations of Canada? This fall, join us for the first event of its kind in Canada: a series of conversations with writers and filmmakers who have been at the forefront of sharing Indigenous Taiwan with the world.

Guest speakers:

Writer: Badai
Lecture: Thursday October 14 (4:00p.m PDT.; Online)
Conversation: Friday, October 15 (4:00p.m PDT.; Online), featuring Prof Chiu-Duke Josephine

Filmmaker: Wei Te-sheng
Conversation: Thursday October 21, (4:00p.m PDT.; Online), TBA
Conversation: Friday, October 22, (4:00p.m PDT.; Online), featuring Asst. Prof Aynur Kadir

Writer: Ahronglong Sakinu
TBA: Thursday October 28 (4:00p.m PDT.; Online)
Conversation: Friday October 29, (4:00p.m PDT.; Online), TBA

Filmmaker: Laha Mebow
Lecture: Wednesday November 3,
Conversation: Thursday, November 4, (4:00p.m PDT.; Online), featuring Asst. Prof Aynur Kadir

Register online to reserve your seat and for information on how to access readings and film screenings connected with each live event.

More info: https://asia.ubc.ca/news/a-virtual-speaker-series-indigenous-taiwan-transpacific-connections/ Continue reading Indigenous Taiwan: Transpacific Connections speaker series →

Jia Zhangke and Liang Hong event

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Event: Jia Zhangke + Liang Hong: A Conversation about Nonfiction and Documentary Film
Wellesley College and Harvard University co-present:

一直走到現實的終點
與梁鴻、賈樟柯談非虛構/紀錄電影
Walking toward the End of Reality
A Conversation with Liang Hong and Jia Zhangke on Nonfiction and Documentary Film

October 21, 9:00-11:00 p.m. EST
2021年10月22日上午9:00-11:00 (北京时间)
(October 22, 9:00-11:00 a.m. GMT+8)

Free Registration Link免费注册：

https://wellesley.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_kFguOyUiTgSuQhhQqabeuA

Organizers:

David Der-wei Wang 王德威 (Harvard)
Mingwei Song 宋明炜 (Wellesley)

Special Guests 特约嘉宾:

Michael Berry  白睿文 (UCLA)
Jie Li 李洁 (Harvard) Continue reading Jia Zhangke and Liang Hong event →

The Chinese Atlantic book talk

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Virtual Book Talk: The Chinese Atlantic
EASC New Book Series: Sinophone Studies
Sean Metzger and Lok Siu
Wednesday, October 20, 2021 | 5:00PM – 6:30PM (PT) | REGISTER

We hope that you will join us for the next EASC New Book Series: Sinophone Studies event on October 20! This monthly series on Zoom will introduce recent publications about Sinophone studies to the USC community and the wider public. In this event, the series will highlight The Chinese Atlantic: Seascapes and the Theatricality of Globalization (Indiana University Press, 2020) with author Sean Metzger (Professor in the School of Theater, Film and Television, University of California, Los Angeles) and discussant Lok Siu (Associate Professor in Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies, University of California, Berkeley). We hope to see you on Zoom!

https://dornsife.usc.edu/events/site/124/37530668843554/easc-new-book-series-sinophone-studies/

Posted by: Li-Ping Chen lipingch@usc.edu

U of Sydney China Studies lectures

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The University of Sydney China Studies Centre
Lecture Series for October and November, 2021

Chinese Asianism: Discussions on China-Centred International Regionalism in the 1920s

Date: Friday 15 October 2021
Time: 12:00PM–1:00PM AEDT
Location: Online

This seminar is free and open to the public!

REGISTRATION IS ESSENTIAL 

This event is co-presented with the Department of Chinese Studies, The Australian Society for Asian Humanities and the Faculty of Art, Design & Architecture at UNSW.

With the rise of China and the development of ambitious international projects, such as the Belt and Road Initiative and the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank, discussions of China-centred international regionalism have found new prominence, but many of these ideas have a long history in twentieth century China.

This talk will examine the rise of a discourse promoting China as the future leader of Asia in 1920s publications. After President Sun Yat-sen made a speech titled ‘Great Asianism’ in 1924, intellectual and political leaders created a number of organisations to forward the ideals of Asian unity in major Chinese cities. Journals with titles such as New Asia and the Asiatic Review provided avenues for publication, while international conferences brought Chinese intellectuals in touch with Asianists from other Asian countries. Although the Chinese intellectuals who established these organizations initially focused upon uniting with Indians and Koreans to further the fight against imperialism, Japanese members of their organizations soon brought them into contact with Japan-based Pan-Asianist organisations. Due to their cooperation with Japanese Asianists, the organizations and their members were highly criticized by the Chinese media. However, these events and the subsequent critical responses set the stage for wartime Chinese Asianism and the belief that China had a duty to lead the oppressed nations of the world in the struggle with imperialism.

About the speaker

Craig A. Smith is Senior Lecturer of Translation Studies at the University of Melbourne’s Asia Institute. He is the author of Chinese Asianism: 1894—1945 (Harvard University Asia Center, 2021) and co-editor of Translating the Occupation: The Japanese Invasion of China, 1931—45 (UBC Press, 2021). Continue reading U of Sydney China Studies lectures →

Chinese Independent Cinema Observer event

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Launch Event for Issue 2 of the Chinese Independent Cinema Observer: Chinese Avant-Garde Art of the 1980s: A Conversation with Cui Weiping and Wen Pulin

About this event

The second issue of the Chinese Independent Cinema Observer, ‘Pre-History of Chinese Independent Cinema’, aims to explore the conditions that allowed Chinese independent films (including documentaries and fiction films, but with more emphasis on documentaries) to emerge. Chinese independent cinema is rooted in the 1980s and was an important consequence of the emancipation of social thought and avant-garde literary and art movements after the Cultural Revolution. The contributors to this issue explore the origins of Chinese independent cinema. Based on historical analysis and their own experience, they push back the start of independent documentary filmmaking from the previously accepted 1990s to the mid-1980s.

This issue also includes an exhibition of photographs and paintings made by the Stars Art Group, a Chinese avant-garde group of artists that emerged in 1979, and reviews of four films in the 1980s that were bold exploratory and controversial at the time. We look at intellectual connections and aesthetic legacies between the 1980s and the 1990s in order to trace the origins or pre-history of independent cinema, hoping to suggest some new directions and offer first-hand research data for future studies in this field. Continue reading Chinese Independent Cinema Observer event →

The Future Is Now lecture

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MODERN CHINESE HUMANITIES SEMINAR
THE FUTURE IS NOW: ON NEWBORN SOCIALIST THINGS
SEPTEMBER 17 @ 12:00 PM-1:30 PM
Speaker: Laurence Coderre, Assistant Professor of East Asian Studies, New York University
Presented via Zoom Webinar
Register at: https://harvard.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_L1VAEFKBSlO_LONSK9B_1g
Also streaming on YouTube

Whereas the contemporary era in China is often depicted in terms of rampant, ideologically vacuous commodification, the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) is typically cast as a time of ubiquitous politics and scarce goods. Indeed, with the exception of the likeness and words of Mao Zedong, the media and material culture of the Cultural Revolution are often characterized as a void out of which the postsocialist world of commodity consumption miraculously sprang fully formed. I instead argue that the Cultural Revolution media environment and the ways in which its constituent elements engaged contemporaneous discourses of materiality and political economy anticipated the widespread commodification now so closely associated with the Reform Period (1978-present). Continue reading The Future Is Now lecture →