public talk
Author Icy Smith and illustrator Gayle Garner Roski discuss their book Mei Ling in China City, based on a true story set in Los Angeles during World War II.
As we mark the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the 25th anniversary of the Bangkok Declaration (a foundational document of the “Asian values” version of human rights), and nearly three decades since the People’s Republic of China officially accepted universal human rights, this symposium brings together leading experts to examine the state of human rights in China.
Jenny Chio is a cultural anthropologist and ethnographic filmmaker in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Southern California. Her publications include the books A Landscape of Travel: The Work of Tourism in Rural Ethnic China (2014) and Mapping Media in China: Region, Province, Locality (co-edited with Wanning Sun, 2012). She has also published numerous journal articles and book chapters on vernacular media, cultural heritage, and social transformations in rural, “minority” China, including a new article in Asian Anthropology on bullfights and bullfight videos in Southwest China.
Eulogy for Burying a Crane is a sixth century inscription once carved on a cliff of Jiaoshan Island in the Yangzi River. Its ruins were discovered in the early eleventh century and the inscription would eventually be enshrined as one of the major masterpieces of Chinese calligraphy. My talk traces the origin and reception of the monumental work and, through the case study, reexamines calligraphy as a contested field of various cultural and political forces in traditional China.
The Institute for Chinese Studies (ICS) presents this ICS-OCAPA lecture as part of the ICS "The Centenary of the May Fourth Movement" Lecture Series:
David Der-wei Wang
Edward C. Henderson Professor of Chinese Literature and of Comparative Literature
Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations &
Department of Comparative Literature
Harvard University
Lecture Title: Why Fiction Matters in Contemporary China?
Vegetarianism lies at the center of a contested ethical field in Tibetan Buddhism. On the one hand, the vinaya (the rules of monks) explicitly allows monks to eat meat. On the other hand, Tibetan Buddhism idealizes the practice of compassion, and expects practitioners to focus their efforts on relieving the suffering of all sentient beings—a category that explicitly includes animals. Finally, many sets of tantric vows actually require practitioners to eat some meat. In this paper I will discuss this tripartite ethical tension surrounding meat eating, exploring each of these three perspectives as well as the ethical and rhetorical strategies Tibetan thinkers have used to understand and reconcile these disparate views.
Herbal medicine practice in China’s southern mountains is known to be ethnic, folkloric, rural and esoteric. It is also of interest to the knowledge-producing state. This talk explores practices of assembling, using, and protecting knowledge of “wild and natural” medicines among herbalists whose expertise stems from their lifelong experience of gathering medicines in the mountains.
Duke University's Asian and Middle Eastern Studies department presents a book talk on Islam in China.
The USC U.S.-China Institute presents a discussion with Akira Chiba, the Consul General of the Japanese consulate in Los Angeles, on Japan's relations with China.
Melissa L. Curtin
Adjunct Assistant Professor
Specialization
Intercultural communication; ethnography and communication; theories of cultural adjustment; social semiotic processes of identification; language ideologies and linguistic landscapes; language and globalization