Presentation Type: Panel Presentation
The COVID-19 Pandemic in East and Southeast Asia: Comparative Perspectives
This session examines how historical backgrounds, contemporary discourses and practices, as well as government strategies have shaped the COVID-19 pandemic in China, Vietnam, and Japan. The discussant for the session will add an important regional perspective on the pandemic.
Women as Symbols: The Female Representation in East Asian Literature and Film of the 1930s and 1940s
This panel intends to explore the highly politicized nature of women’s representation in East Asia during the 1930s and 1940s. Scholars have already paid attention to “the question of women” in modern East Asia since the 1990s, however, this panel endeavours to reconceptualize this narrative by focusing on topics which have, so far, remained marginal. …
From Kata to Contemplative Practices: Transformations within Martial and Theatrical Arts in Contemporary China and Japan
This panel aims at understanding the relationships between traditional martial and theatrical arts training and the recent development of contemplative practices in contemporary China and Japan. Martial arts and classical theatrical practices are traditionally based on prearranged sequences of movements called kata. For the practitioners, the repetition of these movements constitutes a way to improve …
Transnational Migration to and from Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia is one of the fastest growing regions in the 21th century. With the increasing number of young population, many countries from the Philippines to Vietnam witness a large number of migrant workers working in East Asian countries, Middle East, and beyond. This panel discusses two-way transnational movements of people; from Southeast Asia to …
People at the Margins: Belonging and (Im)mobility in Superdiverse Asia
Everyday realities in contemporary Asia are characterized by the multiple layers of diversification that have transformed its societies. This panel utilizes the concept of superdiversity which offers a fresh and promising angle for understanding the complexities of migration, mobilities and immobilities in contemporary Asia, a region at the crossroads of weighing the challenges and opportunities …
Keeping in Touch: Tools and Strategies for Chinese Local Cadres to Avoid Disconnection From Citizens
With the Open and Reform policy, the CCP has gradually shifted from a revolutionary party claiming to represent workers and peasants to a ruling party claiming to represent the whole Chinese nation, with a noticeable elitist twist. The Chinese society has simultaneously grown more unequal, to a point which could become threatening for the legitimacy …
In and Out: China as a Country of Origin and a Country of Destination
China’s reform and opening up over the last forty years have brought out different waves of generations emigrating overseas, echoing the inclusion of the foreign population and cultures into the local context. Five papers of this panel have presented these developments and trends from different perspectives, e.g. economic, cultural and educational. Among them, three papers …
National Aspirations and Anxieties: Images of Ideal and Problematic Children and Youth in 20th-century Nation-building Projects in Asia
The emergent historiography of childhood and youth has provided many insights on how many 20th-century state governments centered children and youth in their national construction and reconstruction projects, and on how Cold War rival superpowers made children and youth pawns and symbols in their global competitions for hearts and minds. Compared to the historiography of …
Beyond Colonial Intermediary: A New History of the Princely State of Hyderabad’s Relations with Japan
The history of the interaction between India and Japan in the modern era has almost always been looked at through the lens of British colonialism. Historians have looked at Indian freedom fighters who considered Japan an ally in the struggle against British colonialism, and have studied Indian intellectuals who looked up to Japan as a …
Rurality Check: Tracing the Nascent Global Countryside in Asia
The built infrastructure of mega cities such as Tokyo, Seoul, Hong Kong or Shanghai epitomize Asia’s rise to the world’s largest and fastest growing economy. With most scholarly attention focussing on urban growth and agglomerations as hotbed of societal transformation and cultural innovation, the countryside so far has come to be regarded as riddled with …