February 24, 2021 The Update is a regular roundup of news in the Department of Asian Studies for our Students, Faculty and Staff |
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One Wish, One Dish Showcase: A Lunar New Year Celebration Lunar New Year is one of the most significant holidays in many Asian societies, as it marks the end of winter and beginning of spring. This year, the holiday was celebrated on February 12th; when families usually gather to spend time together, wear red, and watch the fireworks, the Chinese Language Program, Cantonese Language Program, and Korean Language Program collaborated to hold a Lunar New Year celebration, wherein students from all backgrounds and cultures were able to see different Lunar New Year traditions coming together to celebrate their wishes for the new year. The Chinese and Cantonese Language Programs held a photo challenge titled “One Wish, One Dish”. Students who chose “One Wish” were encouraged to write a Chinese character on diamond-shaped red paper, whereas students who chose “One Dish” were encouraged to share a food dish significant to their own culture. The Korean Language Program held their “One Wish” event, where students were encouraged to write a Korean word that represented their wishes for the new year, posted over a Sam-Taegeuk, a tricolor symbol that represents heaven, earth, and humanity. Over 200 submissions poured in! The sentimentality, creativity, and diversity shown was very impressive! Students showed thought and care when describing the stories behind their chosen characters or dishes. | |||||||||||||||||
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| UPCOMING VIRTUAL EVENTS | ||||||||||||||||||
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| SPOTLIGHT: Anusha Sudindra Rao |
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Meet our newest faculty members in Asian Studies and learn more about their background and passions! Anusha Sudindra Rao is our newest Sessional Lecturer in Sanskrit. Tell us a little about yourself, your background and how you became interested in Asian languages and cultures? I always loved stories—who doesn’t? But with me, it was a bit of an obsession. And I have never read a story as fascinating as the Mahabharata, one of the two great Indian epics. I was born and brought up in India, and it’s a cliché, as AK Ramanujan said, that no Indian ever hears the Mahabharata for the first time. I devoured every comic book, adaptation, and translation I could lay my hands on. I did not realize at that time that it was something I could work on. Luckily, I studied Sanskrit right from high school, so I had the basic language skills I needed to explore the epic and other Sanskrit literature. As I began reading more, my questions evolved further too—I got more interested in theological interpretations of the Mahabharata. Currently, I am pursuing my PhD from the University of Toronto, and looking at doctrinal development in Dvaita Vedānta. What are you teaching in UBC’s Asian Studies Department/ Why learn Sanskrit? I am teaching Intro to Sanskrit. Knowing Sanskrit gives you access to a whole treasure of things to read: from enriching philosophical debates on the exact meaning of a word in the Bhagavad Gita or the Yoga Sutras, all the way to the most unabashedly romantic poetry. Learning a language is really difficult, but the joys of Sanskrit make it more than worth it. It’s called the language of the Gods for a reason (or many)! |
| ASIAN LIBRARY NEWS |
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Ink Dance talk - Saturday, February 27, 7pm PT/10pm ET The Canadian Society for Asian Arts and the UBC Asian Library present an online overview and demonstration of Chinese calligraphy on Saturday, February 27 at 7pm PT. Renowned scholar Dr. Jan Walls will discuss this revered and popular art form, with focus on the works of late Master Yim Tse, a dedicated librarian, celebrated calligrapher, devoted mentor and philanthropist. Introductions to "the four treasures of the scholar's studio" (ink stick, ink stone, writing brush and paper), coupled with demonstrations by Yim's senior disciples Greta Ho and Andrew Yang, will animate the talk. |
| OPPORTUNITIES |
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Call for Submissions: Chinese Folk Songs and Folk Tales for UBC Research Website A team of researchers at the University of British Columbia is creating a website to help Chinese-Canadian children learn about their heritage and are seeking volunteers aged 18+ to contribute folksongs and folktales from across greater China, to be added to their website. This website helps young Chinese-Canadian children learn about and maintain an interest in their heritage language. The team is aiming to collect submissions from as many dialects as possible. You can view existing submissions on the website here. If you are interested in participating, please contact shannon.ward@ubc.ca. entrepreneurship@UBC CORE and Lab2Launch Venture Building Program Accepting Applications Calling all entrepreneurs – applications for two of entrepreneurship@UBC's programs are open! The CORE stream supports UBC entrepreneurs who are driving innovation through disruptive technologies, ideas and trends. The Lab2Launch program is for UBC researchers across disciplines who are focused on the development of a scientific or technological innovation which is unique, proprietary and difficult to reproduce. The programs work with early stage ventures and entrepreneurs across disciplines/industries and require only 1 member of the team to have a UBC affiliation (student/staff/faculty or alumni up to 5 years). Applications are due by February 25. To apply or learn more, visit the CORE website or the Lab2Launch website. Final Call For Papers: The 2nd Southeast Asian Conference on Education (SEACE2021) The Southeast Asian Conference on Education seeks to identify the challenges and highlight the strength in the way ASEAN countries address and tackle the region’s educational needs, at both the national level and at the region-wide level, such as internationalisation, multiculturalism, connectivity, mobility and accessibility. SEACE2021 encourages academics and scholars to meet and exchange ideas and views in a forum stimulating respectful dialogue and the Organising Committee welcomes papers from a wide variety of interdisciplinary and theoretical perspectives, and submissions are organised into the streams and substreams listed on their website.The final abstract submission deadline is February 28. For more information, please visit the SEACE2021 Call for Papers page. Call for Papers: “Ritual and Representation in East Asian Literature” for 2022 MLA Annual Convention This collaborative session between the TC Anthropology and Literature and TC Religion and Literature Forums of the MLA is inviting proposals for papers featuring ritual as a theme or structuring device in East Asian (including diasporic) literature in relation to belief, kinship, and/or community. Ideally papers should engage anthropological theory in some way. Ritual can be thought of as sacred or non-sacred language and practice. Papers should focus on one or more of the three major East Asian languages: Chinese, Japanese, or Korean. Please send titles and abstracts of a minimum 300 words to Christopher Lupke at lupke@ualberta.ca by March 7 along with a biography of a similar length. The biography should describe how your work, current and previous, as well as your academic experience and plans suit this topic. The Modern Language Association's Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Pre-14th-Century Chinese forum is looking for material bases of medieval textuality: any aspect of medium (including language), manuscript culture, calligraphy, and epigraphy. Ideally the paper would focus on early and medieval China, but scholars working on Japan, Korea, and comparative/global medieval studies are welcome. Please send your title, 250 word (max) abstract, and brief bio or CV to Jack W. Chen at jwchen@virginia.edu by March 15. The forum executive committee will review all abstracts and notify applicants. If accepted, participants will have to become members of MLA. Laura Bassi Scholarship Open for Applications The Laura Bassi Scholarship, which awards a total of $8,000 thrice per annum, was established by Editing Press in 2018 with the aim of providing editorial assistance to postgraduates and junior academics whose research focuses on neglected topics of study, broadly construed. The scholarships are open to every discipline and all currently enrolled master’s and doctoral candidates are eligible to apply, as are academics in the first five years of full-time employment. Applicants are required to submit a completed application form along with their CV through the application portal by March 31. Further details, previous winners, and the application portal can be found here. |
| ON & OFF-CAMPUS EVENTS |
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MOA Visual + Material Culture Seminar Series – Spring 2021 January 14 - April 1 January 30 - April 17 February 1 - 28 February 1 - April 4 MOA Exhibition - A Future For Memory: Art and Life after the Great East Japan Earthquake February 11 - September 5 |
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