Presentation Type: Panel Presentation
The Korean Ideological Divide in Occupied Japan
The loss of Japan’s overseas colonies with the cessation of hostilities in August 1945 concomitantly heralded Korean “liberation” and the onset of Japan’s “postcolonial” postwar era. However, both Japanese postcoloniality and Korean liberation were neither straightforward nor complete. This panel seeks to interrogate this moment in East Asian history through the ideological divide that emerged …
Genealogies of Politics and Thought in Modern Japan
This panel seeks to revisit the field of political history by bringing it into conversation with the newest methodologies and approaches in adjacent fields. Stretching across the full scope of Japanese modernity, from the late Tokugawa to the postwar era, and across various subfields of political history, including geography, thought, and institutional history, the panel …
Gender and Sexuality at the Crossroads: Queer Activism and Gender Politics in the Sinophone World
Queer studies focused not only on the lives and communities of sexual minorities but also on the social production and regulation of gender and sexuality. Gender and sexuality, similar to “China” or “Asia,” are at the crossroads of multiple power dynamics. Scholars noticed that neither “Chineseness” nor “queerness” can be simply understood within national boundaries. …
Crossing the 1949 Divide: Rethinking Cultural Continuities in 1950s’ China
Our panel series rethink the 1950s’ Chinese cultural production by situating the decade within the dual context of the continued exploration of cultural modernities in twentieth-century China and border-crossing movements of world literature and transnational cinema. In doing so, we join the recent reexamination of Chinese culture across the 1949 divide and recognize how the …
Transpacific Evolution from Confrontation to Cooperation: US-East Asian Relations in the Ebb and Flow of the Cold War
This panel aims to explore the dynamics in US-East Asian relations from the 1960s through the 1970s. In the former decade, East Asia was largely overshadowed by the Cold War, which centered on the US-Sino rivalry. Military historian Zhongtian Han will address the Taiwan Strait Crisis of 1962, exploring how a Chinese local context of …
Ethnographies of the Hometown: Re-invigorating the Discussion on “Native” Anthropology in Asia
This panel addresses the methodological and conceptual vicissitudes of studying ‘the homeland’ in the production of anthropological knowledge. Over the past few decades, there has been an increase in the number of Asians researching in their own communities, often channelling their cultural and linguistic proficiencies into their ethnographic repertoire (Heryanto 2002). To be sure, anthropologists …
The Politics and Portrayals of Voluntary Death in China and Korea – From Imperium to the Internet Age
This panel surveys the practice and representations of suicide in China and Korea, 19th century to the present. We discuss the definition and analysis of self-murder by legal authorities, intellectuals, trauma survivors, and those who attempted and, in some cases, successfully completed it to interrogate suicide as a collision between individual agency and larger structures …
Nation in Crisis and Empire-Building in Northeast Asia
The purpose of the panel is to survey the two most important periods of conflict and transformation that affected Chosŏn Korea before the modern-era: The Imjin-Manchu Wars of the 16th and 17th Centuries, and the informal imperialism in late 19th Century Korea. These two distinct, yet interrelated eras, are of great interest to global historians …
Creating Gendered Spaces: Women’s Choices, Strategies and Rationales in the Contemporary China
China’s fast growth and social transformation over the past four decades owe greatly to its integration with Asia. Its women’s life arrangements such as becoming rural-urban migrant workers or transnational brides, are deeply embedded in the vibrant macro picture. The women’s strategies and rationales in creating gendered spaces present a vivid episode of China’s story. …
Mobilizing After the Fall of Empire: Decolonization Across Asia
At the end of the Second World War, newly sovereign states sprang up from the rubble of fallen empires throughout Asia. Their postcolonial trajectories were diverse. Many countries descended into violent civil wars and ideological battles for legitimacy, contended with new occupiers, or witnessed the mass movements of millions. In Japan, demilitarized by Allied Forces, …