The Asian Studies Update

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October 08, 2019

The Update is a bi-weekly roundup of news in the Department of Asian Studies for our Students, Faculty and Staff

TOP STORIES

2018/19 Lecturers of The Year

Each year, the Department singles out two individuals who have demonstrated teaching excellence, taken new risks in their pedagogy, and/or otherwise distinguished themselves in their service to the Department. It is with great pleasure that we announce Dr. Clayton Ashton and Dr. Maorong Cheng as our 2018/19 Lecturers of The Year.

In his 20 years of teaching at UBC, Dr. Maorong Cheng has taught Chinese courses from the 100 level as well as at the most advanced 450+ level. But Maorong is far more than just an instructor in the classroom; he is actively involved in curriculum enrichment projects and extra-curricular activities in the Chinese Language Program.

Despite a challenging regime of 8 well-enrolled lecture courses per year, Dr. Clayton Ashton has garnered uniformly excellent course evaluations from his students. Colleagues also appreciate his work, noting not only his dedication but his generosity in sharing what he has learned with his colleagues.

Sunera Thobani honoured at ''Women Who Named the Unnamed: Pakistan's and Local Women Heroes''

Professor Sunera Thobani was recently honoured as one of 15 exceptional women at the ''Women Who Named the Unnamed: Pakistan's and Local Women Heroes'' event, held at Surrey City Hall on Saturday, September 28. This three-hour stage show utilised short videos and props to communicate the ''feel'' of women's contributions to build just societies and cultures.

For over two decades, Professor Thobani has written and spoken extensively on themes of feminist theory, terrorism, militaristic power, and colonialism, indigeneity and racial violence, with reference (but not limited to) twentieth and twenty-first century ''wars on terror".

To read a profile on Professor Thobani's studies and the September 28 event, written by Vancouver-based Muslim writer, editor and poet Rahat Kurd, click here.

Contribution to ''The Companion to the Study of Secularity''

Dagmar Schwerk, Khyentse Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in Tibetan Buddhist Studies, contributed to "The Companion to the Study of Secularity” of the Kolleg-Forschergruppe "Multiple Secularities: Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities" at the University of Leipzig, Germany, with an article about the relationship between Buddhism and politics in the Tibetan Cultural area.

"The Companion to the Study of Secularity” includes brief articles by researchers of this interdisciplinary and international research group that introduce interested scholars to the concept of “multiple secularities.” It covers manifold regions, religions as well as pre-modern and modern periods and aims to contribute to a fruitful interdisciplinary dialogue.

Ashok Aklujkar Received Title of 'Prācya-pratīcya-vidyā-vācaspati'

Ashok Aklujkar received the title Prācya-pratīcya-vidyā-vācaspati, or 'advanced exponent of Eastern and Western scholarship’ at the “A Dispassionate Churning of Indology” conference in Udupi, Karnataka, India.

He was felicitated with the “World Sanskrit Award 2018” by Mrs. Sushma Swaraj, the then Minister for External Affairs of the Government of India, on March 7, 2019 in New Delhi, on behalf of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations.

The traditional honour “Mahāmahopādhyāya”, or ‘acclaimed senior teacher’, was bestowed on him on 15 March 2019 by the Kavi-kula-guru-Kālidāsa-Saṁskṛta-viśva-vidyālaya, Ramtek, Maharashtra.

For his valuable contribution to and outstanding achievements in the field of Art, Culture & Literature, the 19th biennial convention of the Bruhan Maharashtra Mandal of North America, meeting at Dallas, Texas, on July 11-15 2019, presented one of its awards to him.

DEPARTMENT EVENTS

All Living Beings Have Buddha-Nature: the Genesis of the Concept of Universal Buddhahood

Monday, October 7, 2019 | 4:30 p.m. With Dr. Michael Zimmermann

Direct forerunners of the idea that all living beings have buddha-nature are the Lotus Sutra and parts of the Avataṁsaka (華嚴經). The lecture will discuss how the concept of buddha-nature came into existence, what kind of factors were crucial for this development, and how the idea was described in its earliest literature.

Experience, Intertextuality, and Chinese Texts as Resources of Description: Kaidōki and Some Other Travel Writings in Premodern Japan

Wednesday, October 9, 2019 | 12 p.m. With Dr. Keisuke Unno

This talk will be presented in Japanese by Dr. Keisuke Unno (Professor in Premodern Japanese Literature and Religion at the National Institute of Japanese Literature). Dr. Unno's teaching and research interests include poetry, religious discourse, and bibliography. This talk will be presented in Japanese as part of the Centre for Japanese Research's Lunchtime Lecture series.

Event details

Caste Matters: The Fourth Annual Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Lecture

Thursday, October 10, 2019 | 5:30 p.m. With Dr. Suraj Yengde

Suraj Yengde is an award-winning scholar and activist from India, and the author of Caste Matters. He is an inaugural postdoctoral fellow at the Initiative for Institutional Anti-racism and Accountability, Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. Dr. Yengde is India’s first Dalit Ph.D. holder from an African university (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg). He has published in the field of caste, race, ethnicity studies, and inter-regional labor migration in the global south.

Event details

Imagining Time in India: Persian Chronicles and their Interpreters

Friday, October 11, 2019 | 5:00 p.m. With Dr. Shahzad Bashir

India was the scene for the production of a vast, internally diverse chronicle literature in Persian during the period 1500-1900 CE. During the nineteenth century, European scholars (such as the famous Elliot and Dowson) made selective use of this material to create the modern understanding of South Asian history that remains dominant to the present.

Event details

Golden Letters Arrayed Like Stars and Planets: The Tibetan Culture of Language and Letters

Tuesday, October 15, 2019 | 6:00 p.m.
With Patrick Dowd

The Liu Institute and UBC's Himalaya Program are hosting a reception to mark the opening of this exhibition of sacred Tibetan scriptures, calligraphy, and other textual objects gathered from three continents. Curator and Anthropology doctoral student Patrick Dowd will be joined by Tsengdok Rinpoche and Sonam Chusang to reflect upon the language’s historical and contemporary importance to global culture.

The exhibition runs through January 4, 2020.

Event details

Singing Nanak: Anahata Sabd (The Unstruck Melody)

Monday, October 16, 2019 | 5:00 p.m. With Chaar Yaar and Nikky-Guninder Kaur Singh

This special concert by the group Chaar Yaar weaves a musical journey through the sacred texts of the first Sikh Master, Guru Nanak Dev, celebrating the cosmic and the worldly, the transient and the timeless, the self and its other.

Event details

Disputed Pasts, Violent Present: Examining Anti-Muslim Discourses in Contemporary India

Thursday, October 17, 2019 | 5:00 p.m. With Heba Ahmed

Since the 2014 formation of the central government by the Bharatiya Janata Party in India, violence against minorities has increased significantly, particularly against against Indian Muslim.This talk will examine the discourse of anti-Muslim violence in contemporary India, and attempt to answer why hate crimes against Muslims are rising with little to negligible public indignation.

Event details

Dhrupad as a Progression in Multiple Dimensions

Thursday, October 24, 2019 | 5:00 p.m. With Arijit Mahalanabis and Kishan Patel

Most scholars of Indian music consider dhrupad, and its cognate form dhamār, to be the oldest extant subgenres of Hindustānī music. This talk will touch on objectives, structure, function, and performance of the art, delving into a model of dhrupad that defines it as a musical entity in multiple dimensions.

Event details

Right to the City: Hong Kong as an Example

Thursday, October 24, 2019 | 5:30 p.m. With Dr. Laikwan Pang

In this talk, Dr. Laikwan Pang (Chinese University of Hong Kong) will discuss the global meanings of Hong Kong’s democratic project. Inspired by David Harvey’s call for the right to the city, she will explore how Hong Kong has been both a polis and a refugee city as well as how we can learn from this history to respond to the recent political events both in the city and across the world.

Event details

2019 Yip So Man Wat Memorial Lecture
Where Silence Reigns, Startling Claps of Thunder 於無聲處聽驚雷

Tuesday, November 5, 2019 | 7 p.m.
With Dr. Geremie Barmé (Professor Emeritus, Australian National University)

From late 2018, China has marked a series of major anniversaries and commemorations. A century of political, cultural and social upheavals have been brought into sharp focus by tumultuous contemporary events. Today, the past is living in to the present in ways that are significant not only for the ‘Chinese commonwealth’, but also for China in the World.

This lecture — the title of which comes from a poem by the writer Lu Xun (d.1936) — will address the 2018-2019 ‘year of anniversaries’ in the context of ‘Voiceless China’, an expression Lu Xun used when addressing an audience in Hong Kong in 1927. Although today China is anything but voiceless, the 2018-2019 year of anniversaries has passed as much in silence as it has in commemoration.

In the 2019 Wat Lecture, we will introduce some of the voices, or ‘claps of thunder’, that have broken the silence at the two poles of China’s People’s Republic — to the north in Beijing and in Hong Kong far to the south. Like the men and women who demanded to be heard during the clamorous era of the May Fourth Movement, today China’s voices of conscience and resistance are also determined to ‘speak out of turn’.

Dr Barmé will also present a Research Seminar on Monday, November 4 at Allard Hall from 4 - 6pm, on the topic of "Intersecting with Eternity''.

Entry to both events is free but RSVP is essential: please register separately for each event here.

EVENT RECAPS

2019 Global Seminar: CHIN234 Learning Chinese in a living classroom in Taiwan

In this year’s summer Global Seminar, UBC's Chinese Language Program allowed students to learn Chinese in a living classroom in Taiwan, in order to immerse themselves in not only the language but also the culture, both spoken and unspoken, of the people who speak that language daily and the ways they live and think. Students acquired practical knowledge and topics to apply to their stay in Taiwan, as well as benefiting them in future travels and living experiences in Chinese-speaking societies and communities.

At the end of the program, students worked on an ethnography-based vlog project: 14 Ways on Understanding Taiwan, to observe and document a particular societal or cultural topic that interested them the most, from one of 4 major themes:

Life in Taiwan 生活台湾

Arts in Taiwan 艺术台湾

Food in Taiwan 饮食台湾

Health in Taiwan 健康台湾

Each student was filled with unforgettable experiences! Click here to watch some video testimonies, and here to read more about the project and view the completed student vlogs.

The course was brought together by Professor Hsiang-Ning Sunnie Wang, along with An-yi Lee and Li-Jung Lee, with support from the Department of Asian Studies and National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU).

Warrior Atsumori: A Noh Play Starring Hisa and Hikaru Uzawa

On September 18th, over 300 students, faculty, and community members filled UBC’s Frederic Wood Theatre for this rare and special night of noh theatre performed by Japanese Intangible Cultural Asset Hisa Uzawa and her fellow noh actor and daughter Hikaru Uzawa.

The performance showcased the tremendous skill that the Uzawas embody in their carefully trained, but emotional, stage work. The actors also shared their honest thoughts and experiences with audience members, fostering a space of creativity and connection in what was ultimately an inspiring night of noh for all those present.

Thank you to the Centre for Japanese Research, Theatre and Film at UBC, Hisa and Hikaru Uzawa, Dr. Christina Laffin and Colleen Lanki, and to all those in attendance for making the event a success.

OPPORTUNITIES

Tadoku Reading Club / Tagaki Writing Club: Registration for Winter 2019/20

Do you want to polish your Japanese skills? The Japanese Language Program’s Tadoku Reading Club and Tagaki Writing Club is the perfect opportunity for you to practice and improve your Japanese reading and writing skills, while getting feedback from your peers and TAs! The club meets Mondays and Tuesdays, 3:00-5:00 p.m., Asian Library 1F seminar room. Please complete the form here if you are interested in participating.

Critical Asian Studies Journal's Online Blog

Critical Asian Studies, a Taylor and Francis multidisciplinary academic journal, is soliciting 500-1,500-word online blog posts to for a linguistically and culturally diverse readership. With a focus on practice more than theory, the blog is now publishing posts emphasizing empirical evidence from early career scholars about emerging scholarship and research on new and critical topics nfolding across Asia on the themes of research and opinion on politics, economic realities, or another critical topic in an Asian region, or reflections on fieldwork highlighting methods employed across various disciplines for research, analysis, and data collection. If you would like to submit or propose a post, respond to webeditor.criticalasianstudies@gmail.com with your interest and potential topic.

Call for Submissions: 2020 Nexus Interdisciplinary Conference

This year, the Interdisciplinary Studies Graduate Program is teaming up with the Graduate Student Society and the Public Scholars Initiative to celebrate dynamic graduate students who engage in public scholarship, solutions-oriented research, and/or knowledge translation. In an effort to increase the accessibility and applicability student work across disciplines, we are elevating creative presentation formats. The deadline for abstracts submissions is October 15, 2019.

Call for Submissions: Multidisciplinary Undergraduate Research Conference

The Multidisciplinary Undergraduate Research Conference (MURC) is a conference for UBC undergraduate students to showcase their research to the UBC community through oral or poster presentations. MURC not only provides an opportunity for students to present their research, but it also allows them to expand their network and develop their presentation skills. This academic year, MURC will take place on Saturday, March 21, 2020. Applications will be accepted from November 26, 2019 to January 20, 2020.

Recruitment for the 2020 Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Programe - University Visits

Recruitment for the 2020 Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Programme is currently underway. The JET Programme offers a minimum, one-year opportunity to experience Japan as an Assistant Language Teacher (ALT) or Coordinator for International Relations (CIR) through an official Government of Japan program. The 2020 JET Programme will be unique in that participants will depart in September 2020, rather than the usual end of July departure, and this year applications have moved to a completely online submission format. The deadline to apply for the 2020 JET Programme is November 15, 2019.

The JET Programme will have a booth at Career Days at UBC on both October 8 and October 9. Students and faculty are invited to stop by for more information. Application forms and further details can also be found here

Call for Submissions: 29th Annual Columbia Graduate Student Conference on East Asia

Graduate students are cordially invited to submit abstracts for the 29th Annual Columbia Graduate Student Conference on East Asia, to be held at Columbia University on February 21st and 22nd, 2020. Applications from students engaged in research on all fields in East Asian Studies are welcome. The deadline for abstracts submissions is November 8th, 2019.

Call for Submissions: 26th Annual North American Taiwan Studies Association Conference

The 26th NATSA annual conference – Keywording Taiwan – aims to identify core issues, historical turning points, critical populations, and fundamental theoretical arguments on Taiwan amongst transregional and interdisciplinary scholarship. This year, the conference will take place from May 22-24, 2020 at University of California-Irvine. The deadline for abstracts submissions is November 8th, 2019.

Call for Submissions: 2020 Berkeley-Stanford Graduate Student Conference In Modern Chinese Humanities

Initiated in 2010, the annual Berkeley-Stanford Graduate Student Conference in Modern Chinese Humanities brings together current graduate students from across the U.S. and around the world to present innovative research on any aspect of modern Chinese cultural production in the humanistic disciplines.The conference will be held from April 24-25, 2020 at UC Berkeley and the deadline to apply is November 22, 2019.

Calling all Artists: 26th Annual North American Taiwan Studies Association Conference

The conference, in addition to the conference paper call, is also seeking proposals for art pieces that showcase one’s experiences as a Taiwanese American, as a Taiwanese in North America, or experiences with Taiwan. Selected artist(s) will be offered honoraria of $600 and invited to do a 15-minute performance/showcase of the art piece during the conference. The project aims at exploring “Taiwan” and “Taiwanese experiences in North America” through the lens of arts. By bringing this project into the conference, NATSA looks forward to providing a platform for non-scholarly approaches to studying Taiwan creatively. For more information, please see the call here or contact the NATSA 2019-20 Program Directors.

Explore China for Free with Gotoco

Interested in traveling abroad this year? Join Gotoco in China to gain a TEFL certificate and useful work experience in teaching, education and activity leadership. No prior experience in China, Chinese or teaching is required — just a passion for education and travel.

Introducing the Alumni UBC Online Book Club

Arts is partnering with Sauder and alumni UBC for the new alumni UBC Online Book Club! There will be a new book every two months, with a mix of books selected by the program managers, recommended by faculty, and voted on by alumni. Join the virtual community of fellow alumni and enjoy books focused on career development and lifelong learning. Participation is free! The first book will begin in October: ‘The Power of Habit’ by Charles Duhigg.

New Asia Policy Practice course

The UBC School of Public Policy and Global Affairs would like to invite you to join a new special topics course offering! This course is built on the strength of current faculty and course offerings, and is responsive to current policy debates and topics of emerging interests. It incorporates the expertise of visiting scholars in a non-traditional course format that encourages active engagement in the course content. Each version of the course is focused on Asia but will have different speakers and topics in each term for new insights.Undergraduate students wishing to take the course, need to fill out the following form.

Asian Library Wednesday drop-in tours of the Chung collection

The Wallace B. Chung and Madeline H. Chung Collection, one of the Asian Library's most well-known and beloved special collections, contains material related to three broad and interrelated themes: early British Columbia history, immigration and settlement and the Canadian Pacific Railway Company. The Chung Collection contains more than 25,000 rare and unique items (documents, books, maps, posters, paintings, photographs, silver, glass, ceramic ware and other artifacts), and selections from the collection are on display in RBSC, organized to show some of the most compelling stories of Canada’s past.

Job Posting: Tenure Track Assistant Professor in Korea Studies at Cornell University

The Department of Asian Studies seeks to hire a candidate with a strong track record of research and teaching competence in the literature and culture of Korea, in any period. We encourage applications from candidates who complement existing departmental strengths in religious studies, classical and contemporary literatures of Asia, and media studies/digital humanities. For more information, please click here. The deadline for applications is November 1st, 2019.

ON & OFF-CAMPUS EVENTS