Presentation Type: Panel Presentation
Women in Protest: Gender and Social Movements in East Asia
The past two decades have witnessed many major social movements in Asia. Women participated actively in these movements. In spite of this, their roles have not been fully acknowledged. The gender dimension of social movements is often overlooked by the existing scholarship of social activism in contemporary Asia. This panel explores the intersection of gender …
Sinophone Writers’ Spiritual Choice at the Crossroads
Today’s Asia is obviously at crossroads from various perspectives, but to be precise, Asia has been at various types of crossroads for decades since the so-called beginning of modernity. Every crossroad entails a historical past that one has come from and a future that one has to make choices for. Looking back at history is …
Place, Power, and Publics in Metropolitan China: Toward Burgeoning Social-Economic Orders
Metropolitan areas in China are growing rapidly in terms of territory, population, and complexity. How do these new conditions reshape the economic and social order? How do people experience and react to burgeoning metropolitan orders? Five papers in the panel, from a variety of disciplines, display the multiplicity of metropolitan China—from urban expansion and semi-public …
Decorative Arts, Architecture, and Manhua: Problematizing Exhibitions in Republican China (1912-49)
Scholars often grapple with how to study art exhibitions. Source materials are usually fragmentary, linkages between individuals are difficult to trace and verify, and the impact of the exhibitions are difficult to assess in isolated cases. In the case of modern China, exhibitions became a public space where different agents contested their visions of modernity …
Revisiting the Imagined Communities: Identities, Nationalism, and Social Activism
Academic works have long focused on how people formulated various types of “imagined community” in different geopolitical contexts. Benefiting from the blossoming scholarship on global history and inter-Asian connections, this panel enriches the discussion of “imagined community” by exploring the following questions: How did the power dynamics in the (post-)colonial contexts and respective government’s (in)action …
Bollywood’s Regional Turn: Investigating Hindi Cinema’s Shift to Non-urbanity
Since India’s economic liberalization in 1991, Bollywood films have predominantly been set in metropolitan centers around the country or in foreign locations in Europe or North America. However, a study of Hindi cinema in the last decade would reveal filmmakers have been looking to move away from these settings. Of particular interest in the current …
Tensions Embodied: Reading and Staging Sensation in Premodern East Asia
This panel focuses on sensation as a distinctive topos in pre-modern East Asian literature and theater. Expanding the scope beyond senses in different artistic forms, we observe the ways sensory experience is represented and constructed via various literary and theatrical devices. Drawing together the studies of literature, performance, gender, and disability, this panel sheds new …
Media, Communication Technologies, and the Promises of “Democratization” Across Asian Mediascapes
Shifting applications of media communication technologies have often put communities across Asia “at the crossroads” of evolving news cultures, social values systems, definitions of citizenship, and conceptions of “democracy.” But despite twentieth century theorizations which prophesized that communication technologies would open borders, improve educational opportunities, and serve as a democratizing force across the globe, local …
Framing Disaster Resilience: The Role of Women in Disaster Response
This panel examines women’s active participation in community-based post-disaster recovering efforts and activities. Drawing upon qualitative, quantitative and participatory research techniques, each panelist will present case studies to demonstrate how women’s situatedness within the community contributes to building resilience while promoting gender-sensitive responsive activities. With her research on women affiliates’ post-disaster response and recovery activities, …
Art and Diplomatic Gifts in Early Modern East Asia
This panel explores the practice of gift exchange in East Asia as a device of cross-cultural diplomacy as well as a mirror of aesthetic tastes, economic values, and ritual protocols. Focusing on the role of art, material goods, and images depicting foreign envoys in Sino-Korean and Korean-Japanese diplomatic encounters, as well as exchanges with Western …