Penn Center For East Asian Studies Newsletter

1. University of Pennsylvania East Asia Events
   
2. Regional East Asia Events
   
3. Employment and Internship Opportunities
   
4. Fellowship and Award Opportunities
   
5. East Asia Study Opportunities and Queries
   
6. Conferences and Workshops

Thursday, September 20, 4:30PM, Fisher-Bennett Hall 231 , Title TBA

Lillian Tseng, Yale

Humanities Colloquium

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Saturday, September 29, 11AM-4PM, Penn Museum , World Culture Family Day: Celebrate Japan !

Join Penn Museum in celebrating the rich culture of Japan . Bring all your senses with you for this experiential day. Get ready to be mesmerized by the vigorous beats of the Japanese taiko drums, learn about the diversity of Japanese anime cartoons and classical films, watch sushi-making and Bonsai tree demonstrations, try your hand at the deceptively simple-looking art of origami, or learn more about traditional children's games and crafts. If you are lucky, you'll have a chance to release some tension, as a shiatsu massage demonstration volunteer! This event is co-sponsored by the Japan America Society of Greater Philadelphia and Penn's Center for East Asian Studies. Free with Museum admission donation. Information: 215/898-4890.

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Thursday, October 4, 4:30PM, Fisher-Bennett Hall 231 , Future Prospects for Japanese ODA: An institutional perspective

Maria Toyoda, Villanova

Next October 2008, scarcely a decade after the last large-scale reorganization of Japan 's major foreign aid agencies, Japan 's most important aid organizations will once again undergo significant changes. The longer-term outcomes for Japan 's ODA architecture and infrastructure are potentially significant for Japan and its international relations. While the reorganization is neither the consequence nor itself an indication of a major shift in Japan 's official direct assistance (ODA) strategy, it will have significant implications for changes that have already been put into motion by other events. Japan 's ODA regime faces growing pressure on a number of fronts. This presentation will cover the upcoming reshuffle of the JBIC and JICA, discusses the organizational, political and policy implications of this reorganization; and the long-term policy implications for future coordination and harmonization between Japan , its ODA partner countries, and other DAC donors in light of the changing domestic and global contexts within which development aid operates.

Issues in Contemporary East Asia Lecture Series

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Thursday, October 11, 4:30PM, Fisher-Bennett Hall 231, Beyond the Silk Roads: Cultural Interaction and Exchange along Tang China 's Northern Borderlands

Jonathan Skaff, Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania

Historians studying China 's relations with Eurasia typically have focused on foreign conquest and Silk Road trade as the main avenues of cultural exchange. This talk will argue that the northern borderlands also played an important role. During the Tang dynasty (618-907) the China-Inner Asia borderlands were heterogeneous ecological and ethnic environments that supported farming, pastoralism, and hunting-gathering. The Tang court sought to integrate these borderlands into their empire through bureaucratic, military and diplomatic means. As the Tang exploited the people and resources of this region to augment state power, one result was increased political, economic, and social links between China , the borderlands and more distant parts of Eurasia .

Humanities Colloquium

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Friday, October 12, 7:00PM, Location TBA , IIIZ+

IIIZ+: Officially formed in Darmstadt, Germany in 2001, IIIZ+ ("three zee plus," in English), a quartet born out of musical interests and experiences of Jocelyn Clark, and nurtured with Il-Ryun Chung's artistic input, features a unique combination of the three bridged east Asian zithers: Korean kayagûm, Japanese koto, and Chinese zheng--"plus" Korean percussion.

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Thursday, October 25, 4:30PM, Fisher-Bennett Hall 231, Like Donkeys Killed after Grinding the Wheat: War Veterans and the Politics of Martial Citizenship and Patriotism in China , 1949-2006

Neil Diamant, Dickinson College

Issues in Contemporary East Asia Lecture Series

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Thursday, November 1, 4:30PM, Fisher-Bennett Hall 231, Hunger and History: Mencius, Malthus, and Mao in China

Lillian M. Li, Swarthmore College

The prevention of famine and hunger has been part of Chinese political thinking since ancient times, and hunger and famines helped shape China 's history especially in the twentieth century. Drawing from her recently published book, Fighting Famine in North China : State, Market, and Environmental Decline, 1690s-1990s (Stanford University Press, 2007), Professor Li will speak about how “Polarities such as food vs. population, man vs. nature, [rich vs. poor], or state vs. market drastically oversimplify history. . . . The story of famine, and fighting famine, is a story of human choice and human will, not of historical inevitability or historical determinism.”

Humanities Colloquium

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Wednesday, November 7, 7:00PM, Location TBA , The History and Music of the Japanese Chikuzen Biwa

Yoko Hiraoki

Yoko Hiraoka will present a lecture/recital of Japanese Biwa music. This 5-stringed lute with a powerful and raw timbre, has a history in Japan of at least 1300 years, and has been used both as a story-telling medium, and sometimes as an accompaniment to chanted religious texts and sutras.

Ms. Hiraoka's biwa repertoire draws mainly upon episodes from the Tale of Heike. This great masterpiece of Japanese literature has continued to retain a hold on the imagination of Japanese audiences throughout the centuries. Yoko brings not only her depth of training in biwa, but also her joy in the old stories to the genre. She explains about the context of the music and the history and importance of biwa in Japanese culture from the Heian period (794-1185) into the 20th Century. Most of all she brings to life with accomplished storytelling, the engaging characters and the supernatural and larger than life events surrounding them, as sung poems accompanied by the biwa.

http://www.japanesestrings.com/

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Thursday, November 8, 4:30PM, Fisher-Bennett Hall 231 , Title TBA

Hyunsoo Woo, Associate Curator of Korean Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art

Korean Lecture Series

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Thursday, November 15, 4:30PM, Fisher-Bennett Hall 231 , Circulated Originality: Reconsidering Literary Connections Between Tao Qian, Ying Qu and the Wei-Jin Tradition of the Recluse

Pauline Lin, Bryn Mawr

This paper re-evaluates the originality of Tao Qian's (365-427) poetry by exploring Tao's literary connection to the Cao-Wei poet Ying Qu ?? (190-252). While most commentators since the Song Dynasty have dismissed this odd pairing -- first espoused by Zhong Rong (469?-518) in his Shipin -- this paper discovers striking literary similarities between the two while uncovering Ying's less-read but once-famous epistles, which provide a far broader literary range than his extant Baiyi shi . Further evidence from the works of minor Eastern Jin period poets highlights a circulation of linguistic idioms and dictions for the retired-recluse gentleman that critics came to associate strongly and solely with Tao Qian. By considering the transmission and preservation of the Wei-Jin poets' works this paper will investigate why Tao Qian has become a forceful poetic voice, why Ying Qu's works gradually became less known, and why Tao Qian's connection to Ying Qu and the minor poets in the tradition became underplayed, if not forgotten.

Humanities Colloquium

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Wednesday, November 28, 12:00PM, The Forum in Stiteler Hall , Beyond Need and Belief: Cross-national comparisons of Islamist recruitment mechanisms in Middle-East, Africa and Asia

Kikue Hamayotsu, Postdoctoral Fellow, Columbia University

How do Islamists recruit committed activists and what are the conditions for successful recruitment for Islamist movements? In recent years, considerable scholarly attention has been drawn to the recruitment mechanisms of Islamist mobilization. Some scholars draw upon social movement theories to claim that we could better understand the growing popularity and electoral success of Islamist movements such as Hamas in Palestine and Hezbollah in Lebanon by treating them as one form of social movement.

Issues in Contemporary East Asia Lecture Series

Co-sponsored with the Political Science Department

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Japanese Cinema Series

Fisher-Bennett Hall, Room 231

Wednesdays, 7 p.m.

9/12 Kurosawa, Rashômon , 1950
9/19 Mizoguchi, The Life of Oharu (Saikaku ichidai onna) , 1952
9/26 Mizoguchi, Ugetsu (Ugetsu monogatari) , 1953
10/3 Ozu, Late Spring (Banshun) , 1949
10/10 Ozu, Tokyo Story ( Tokyo monogatari) , 1953
10/24 Kurosawa, Stray Dog (Nora inu) , 1949
10/31 Kurosawa, To Live (Ikiru) , 1952
11/7 Kurosawa, Seven Samurai (Shichinin no samurai), 1954
11/14 Itami, Tampopo , 1985
11/28 Miyazaki , Princess Mononoke (Mononokehime), 1997
12/5 Kitano, Fire-works (Hana-bi) , 1997

Offered in conjunction with Art History 210 and Film 223: Postwar Japanese Cinema and Visual Culture

Woodrow Wilson Center
DIRECTOR'S FORUM
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
10:30 to 11:30 a.m.
Woodrow Wilson Center, 6th Floor, Joseph H. and Claire Flom Auditorium

“Toyota in the US: Learning From Our Past
As We Prepare For the Future”
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Dr. Shoichiro Toyoda
Honorary Chairman of the Toyota Motor Corporation

To RSVP acceptance or to receive further information send an email to Erin Mosely at
Erin.Mosely@wilsoncenter.org . Please provide your name with a clear spelling, your affiliation and your telephone number.

Cornell University, Korean Studies

Applications are invited for an assistant professor tenure-track position in early/pre-modern Korean studies beginning July 1, 2008. Preference will be given to specialists with interests in broader East Asian contexts. Candidates will be asked to teach general undergraduate courses and also graduate seminars in the area of their expertise. The candidate will be responsible for academic advising of undergraduates, as well as directing M.A. and Ph.D. theses. Ph.D. required at time of appointment.

Review of applications will begin January 7, 2008. Electronic submission of application materials is preferred (high resolution PDF files recommended for writing samples).

Send letter of application; CV; writing sample(s): article(s) and/or dissertation chapter(s), 60-80 pages; syllabi and other materials illustrating successful teaching; and three letters of recommendation to:

Korea Search Committee
Department of Asian Studies
Cornell University
350 Rockefeller Hall
Ithaca, NY 14853-2502
e-mail: koreansearch@cornell.edu

Cornell University is an Equal Opportunity Employer; women and minorities are encouraged to apply.
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Cornell University, Japanese Literature

Applications are invited for tenure-track position at the assistant professor level in pre-modern Japanese literature beginning July 1, 2008. Preference will be given to a specialist in classical through medieval literature. Candidates will be asked to teach general undergraduate courses and also graduate seminars in the area of their expertise as well as classical Japanese and kambun. The candidate will be responsible for academic advising of undergraduates, as well as directing M.A. and Ph.D. theses. Ph.D. required at time of appointment.

Review of applications will begin October 10, 2007. Electronic submission of application materials is preferred (high resolution PDF files recommended for writing samples).

Send letter of application; CV; writing sample(s): article(s) and/or dissertation chapter(s), 60-80 pages; syllabi and other materials illustrating successful teaching; and three letters of recommendation to:

Japan Search Committee
Attn: Karen Brazell
Department of Asian Studies
Cornell University
350 Rockefeller Hall
Ithaca, NY 14853-2502
e-mail: jplitsearch@cornell.edu

Cornell University is an Equal Opportunity Employer; women and minorities are encouraged to apply.
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Center for East Asian Studies
University of Pennsylvania
642 Williams Hall
255 S. 36th Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305
Tel: 215-573-4203; Fax: 215-573-2561
E-mail: ceas@ccat.sas.upenn.edu