East Asia as Method: Culture, Knowledge, Space

Featured Speakers: Jim Glassman, University of British Columbia; Jini Kim Watson, New York University

Sponsors: Institute of East Asian Studies (IEAS), Center for Korean Studies (CKS), Townsend Center for the Humanities, Center for Japanese Studies (CJS)

 

What is East Asia? From ideological construct to physical and material reality, East Asia is still a contested territory, marked by the discourse of “Asian ascendancy” in the midst of new forms of conflict and contradiction, ranging from territorial disputes to economic tensions and historical revisionism. By questioning what constitutes East Asia today in a world of shifting boundaries, this conference for junior scholars seeks new approaches to understand the region and new methods to conduct area studies. Attending to flows, connections, travels and interactions that dismantle the understanding of East Asian studies as a bounded entity, the conference invites papers that critically discuss East Asia from multiple disciplinary perspectives. The questions our conference seeks to engage include, but are not limited to, three major thematic areas:

 

Cultural productions have always played a major role in the East Asian imaginary, variously constructed through the lens of memory, identity, and belonging. What are the roles of texts, images and practices in imagining East Asia? How do cultural productions reinforce or challenge nationalist discourses? What are alternative forms of cultural productions that reimagine national and regional boundaries?

 

Research interests abound in knowledge production, exchanges, and flows within East Asia and beyond. How has knowledge about East Asia been constructed in specific historical contexts? What are the roles of various actors, ranging from states and academics to international agencies? How has such knowledge contributed to the shape and content of East Asian society?

 

East Asia can also be examined as a space produced through transnational flows of ideas, materials, and practices. What are cross-boundary inquiries that destabilize categories and narratives about East Asia as a fixed spatial entity? Some examples of topics to be explored are interconnections between imperialism, nationalism, and globalization that have shaped and reshaped East Asia.

 

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9:45 - 10:45 Keynote: Jim Glassman (University of British Columbia) | Discussant: You-tien Hsing (UC Berkeley)

 

 

Haruki Eda (Rutgers University): East Asia as Archipelagic: Rethinking Place, Decolonizing Maps

Ti Ngo (UC Berkeley): (Re)Defining Development: Japan and the United States in Micronesia, 1917-1979

Hannah Roh (University of Chicago): The Haunted City: “East Asia,” Urbanization, and Specters of Colonial Modernity

Bridget Martin (UC Berkeley): From crisis to opportunity: Re-casting militarization as development in Pyeongtaek

Discussant: Gustavo de L. T. Oliveira (UC Berkeley)

 

 

Jung Hui Kim (University of Pittsburgh): Visualizing the fetus: Obstetrical knowledge and population policy in Edo Japan

Luwei Yang (Washington University in St. Louis): Communist way of healing: "Soviet Medicine" in 1950s China

Dongmin Park (UC Santa Cruz): Intellectual Baptism: Educational Exchange Programs and the Rise of Pro-U.S. Architectural Elites in South Korea

James Lin (UC Berkeley): Teaching the World: Taiwanese Agricultural Development Missions to Vietnam and Africa, 1959-1971

Discussant: Kyoko Sato (Stanford University)

 

 

Jeff Weng (UC Berkeley): Liberation or Domination? The Early Twentieth-Century Chinese State and the Creation of Modern Standard Chinese

Fu-ming Lee (Yale University): A People of Noise: The Vocal Expressions in C. Y. Lee's The Flower Drum Song

Carolyn Choi (University of Southern California): Globalizing English in the East: The case of S.Korean English language schools in the Philippines

Grace Kim (UC Berkeley): Global Korean: Online multilingual interactions in a K-dramas forum

Discussant: Laura Nelson (UC Berkeley)

 

6:00 - Dinner (for conference participants)

 

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9:30 - 10:30 Keynote: Jini Kim Watson (NYU) | Discussant: Dan O'Neill (UC Berkeley)

 

 

Sixiang Wang (Stanford University): Empire, Ecumene, and Cosmopolis: Korea in Late Imperial Chinese Fiction

Yung Hian Ng (Harvard University): Saving Korea, Reviving Asia: The development of early Pan-Asianism through the Koakai and Korean Reformists (Kaehwadang)

Eunyeong Kim (Stanford University): The last afterlife of Lu Xun: A hundred-year quest for counter-modernity in East Asia

Christopher Fan (UC Riverside): Toxic Discourse and the End of History in Chang-rae Lee's On Such a Full Sea

Discussant: Colleen Lye (UC Berkeley)

 

 

Huasha Zhang (Yale University): We are what we eat: Food culture and ethnic identity on Sino-Tibetan borders, 1930-1950s

Yang Yang (CU Boulder): Connecting the Chinese Muslims to the global Umma through practices of charity in Xi'an

Xinyi Zhao (Columbia University): Crystalized spatio-temporalities: Mapping cinematic landscapes in Man'ei Films

Sujin Eom (UC Berkeley): After Ports Were Linked: The Sea and the City in Maritime Asia

Discussant: Margaret Crawford (UC Berkeley)

 

 

Sangmee Oh (UCLA): From Colonial to International: A study of knowledge construction on Korean history 1937-1950s

Susan Eberhard (UC Berkeley): Granite Re-alignments: The Transnational Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial

Kira Donnell (UC Berkeley): The Orphan Nation: Orphans and Nationalism in Cold War Korean Film

Kristen Sun (UC Berkeley): Transnational Memory Circuits of the Korean War and the Limits of Reconciliation in South Korean Memorial Museums and Peace Parks

Discussant: Steven Lee (UC Berkeley)

 

 

Event Contact: sujin@berkeley.edu