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Welcome to our new faculty member, Dr. Sebastian Prange!
We welcome a new faculty member this July. Sebastian Prange is our new Associate Professor at the Department of Asian Studies!
His research interests revolve around the development of Islam in monsoon Asia, the role of piracy and maritime violence, and the evolution of capitalism from a non-European perspective. Prior to the Department of Asian Studies, Dr. Prange was an Associate Professor at UBC's Department of History.
We asked Dr. Prange to tell us a little more about his background, research, and what students can expect from his course.
Read more
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The first essay collection in English on The Ise Stories co-edited by Prof. Joshua Mostow and PhD student Kurtis Hanlon
Congratulations to Asian Studies Professor Joshua S. Mostow and Asian Studies PhD student, Kurtis Hanlon on the co-edited publication An “Ise monogatari” Reader: Contexts and Receptions with Professor Yamamoto Tokurō of Kansai University (emeritus). An “Ise monogatari” Reader is the first collection of essays in English on The Ise Stories.
Kurtis Hanlon, one of the editors of the book, shared his experience in the editing process as a current PhD student.
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Jeffrey Kotyk’s brief discussion on dairy in medieval China and Japan
Sheng Yen Education Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in Chinese Buddhism Jeffrey Kotyk recently published an article on The China Story Blog about dairy, an important industry that was transmitted from China to Japan as early as the seventh century.
The Chinese dairy industry and all the associated culture in relation to medicine and Buddhism were also transmitted to Japan. This industry is often overlooked in discussions of historical Sino-Japanese relations.
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2021/22 Winter Session course planning and registration
As UBC is currently planning a return to on-campus activity for 2021/22 Winter Session, courses will be primarily delivered in-person with the expectation that students will be on campus in September.
Refer to this guide by the Faculty of Arts for information regarding course registration for the upcoming Winter Session.
Learn more
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Heritage Incubator: Fostering Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion through CHIN243
A heritage Chinese class can mean much more than teaching students linguistic skills, such as how to correctly pronounce words, or how to fluently formulate sentences.
As a CHIN 243 student said, "The Chinese class is not just a Chinese class, but an opportunity for me to know myself, my people and the world." In a classroom that values and advocates for equity, diversity, and inclusion, CHIN 243 provides the students with a safe and supportive environment to explore, rethink, and even challenge their identities.
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Fundraiser: MEHumor: Support Students, Spread Humor & Erase Stereotypes
Support this fundraiser to advance a project on the humor of the Middle East and North Africa, initiated by UBC Asian Studies professor Mostafa Abedinifard.
“Middle East Humor: A Digital Docent” (MEHumor) is a digital encyclopedia and archival project focused on the humor of the Middle East and North Africa. Organized by genre, the project will collect, introduce, contextualize, and translate examples of various types and forms of historical and contemporary humor produced by authors/artists in, or associated with the MENA region.
Read the full article
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| UPCOMING VIRTUAL EVENTS |
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Featuring Asian Studies Prof. Christopher Rea: Navigating Crisis Through Film: The Early Years
Wednesday, July 14, 4:30pm PT / 7:30pm ET
Hosted by the China Institute, with an in-person screening held the day before in New York, Asian Studies Professor Christopher Rea will be featured as a lecture speaker on the beginnings of Chinese cinema as the country faced social and political turmoil and war.
Learn more and register
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A Future for Memory: A Conversation with Atsunobu Katagiri and Fumihiko Futakami
Thursday, July 15, 6pm PT / 9pm ET
Join for a virtual conversation with Atsunobu Katagiri, a featured artist in A Future for Memory: Art and Life After the Great East Japan Earthquake and Fumihiko Futakami, Curator of the Minamisōma City Museum. The conversation (pre-recorded with English subtitles), facilitated by MOA Curator and UBC Asian Studies associate member Fuyubi Nakamura, will be followed by a live Q&A with Atsunobu Katagiri in English.
Learn more and register
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Featuring Asian Studies Prof. Christopher Rea: Street Angels: Tragedy Meets Comedy in a Time of War
Wednesday, July 21, 4:30pm PT / 7:30pm ET
In the same series presented by the China Institute with an in-person screening held on July 20 in New York, Dr. Christopher Rea will discuss Street Angels, the multiple influences of Hollywood on the Chinese talkies, and the violent realities of 1930s China.
Learn more and register
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Afghans in the Persianate Age
Saturday, July 24, 4pm PT / 7pm ET
Who were the Afghans before the modern state of Afghanistan came into being? Prof. Naveena Naqvi from Asian Studies will visit this question by observing how the history of Afghan peoples unfolded across Persianate Central and South Asia in pre-modern times, focusing on Afghans traders, Sufis and service people in Hindustan.
Learn more and register
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East Asian Buddhist Worldmaking
Saturday, August 14 to Monday, August 16
Global networks and technological changes are fast reshaping or renewing our sense of the world. While emerging global orders and competing world-systems prompt some reckoning, we also sense their precedents and intimations in Buddhist traditions of worldmaking.
The international conference is sponsored by the Glorisun Global Network for Buddhist Studies, in collaboration with Harvard FAS CAMLab, and administered by the FROGBEAR project.
Learn more and register
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The 2nd International Symposium on Teaching Cantonese as a Second Language
Thursday, August 19 to Friday, August 20, 2:30pm PT / 5:30pm ET
Held by the Cantonese Language Program in the UBC Department of Asian Studies and the University Cantonese Programme Division of the Yale-China Chinese Language Centre at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), the two-day events aim at fostering academic exchange and promoting teaching and learning Cantonese internationally.
Learn more and register
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| FEATURED COURSES |
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HINU 102: Introductory Hindi-Urdu
Offered in 2021 Winter Term 1-2
Spoken and written Hindi and Urdu. Why learn Hindi-Urdu? More than half a billion speakers, the colorful South Asian culture, the biggest film industry “Bollywood”, the beautiful decorative writing system and more.
Credit will be granted for only one of HINU 100/101 or HINU 102.
View on SSC
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ASIA 336: Sufi and Bhakti Devotional Literatures
Offered in 2021 Winter Term 1
Sufi and Bhakti thought and tradition in South Asia has produced outstanding devotional literatures that calls references from both Hindu and Islamic history and mythology. The Qawwali, Naat, Bhajan and Kirtan style of singing has brought the devotional literatures to the masses. The course will analyze the lives and literatures of Kabir, Bulleshah, Nanak, Mirabai and other giants of South Asian Sufi and Bhakti traditions.
View on SSC
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ASIA 311: Tibetan Buddhism
Offered in 2021 Winter Term 1 and 2
Religious terrain of the Tibetan cultural realm, looking at the history and development of Tibetan Buddhism and key ideas of the four main Tibetan Buddhist traditions.
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JAPN 465: Japanese Media and Translation
Offered in 2021 Winter Term 1
New course offered by Asian Studies; Emphasizing the development of translingual and transcultural literacies in Japanese popular media with a primary focus on film.
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PERS 100: Basic Persian I
Offered in 2021 Winter Term 1
Basic vocabulary and the fundamentals of modern Persian grammar, structure, and pronunciation, as well as reading, writing, listening, and speaking.
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PERS 104: Persian Reading and Writing for Persian-Speaking Students
Offered in 2021 Winter Term 1
Reading and writing of standard Persian; lexical and syntactic differences between written and spoken Persian. Restricted to Persian heritage speakers with aural/oral knowledge but no reading/writing skills.
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PERS 401: Contemporary Iranian Cinema for Advanced Speakers of Persian
Offered in 2021 Winter Term 1
Iranian cultural norms, and sociopolitical information about Iranian society and history, as conveyed through Iranian cinema. Emphasis on speaking, writing, and vocabulary development of Persian language.
View on SSC
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ASIA 150: Asian Internets
Offered in 2021 Winter Term 2
New course offered by Asian Studies; The cultures of contemporary Asia through an exploration of the uses, form, and content of online media from and about Asia.
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| SUSTAINABILITY NEWS |
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Calling for climate action
June 2021 saw unprecedently hot temperatures in British Columbia. Read about climate change, rising temperatures, and forest fires, and follow UBC expert advice by contacting your elected Member of Parliament to demand climate action, e.g., The Honourable Joyce Murray for our Vancouver campus.
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Keeping cool in a heat dome
How did you stay cool during the June heat wave? To help you stay chilled during the next hot spell, here are some strategies Sustainability Initiative members undertook: applying frozen towels as cooling compresses, misting with handheld spritzers, drinking plenty of liquids, and finding long-term sustainable approaches like heat pumps, which can be retrofitted as part of the City of Vancouver zero emissions plan.
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Cooling forests and equality
Urban forests offer infrastructure for shading the city. Vancouver has more work to do to ensure equal access to trees across neighbourhoods and balance climate injustices on our own doorsteps.
Forests remove one quarter of all human carbon emissions. Learn more about tropical, boreal, and temperate forests and the need to act to ensure they cool rather than heat our planet.
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| OPPORTUNITIES |
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Laura Bassi Scholarship Open for Applications
The Laura Bassi Scholarship 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, within their disciplines. The scholarships are open to every discipline and are awarded thrice per annum: December, April, and August. All currently enrolled master’s and doctoral candidates are eligible to apply, as are academics in the first five years of full-time employment. There are no institutional, departmental, or national restrictions. Applicants are required to submit a completed application form along with their CV through the application portal by July 31. Further details, previous winners, and the application portal can be found here.
The Princeton Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts 2022-25 Fellowship Competition
The Princeton Society of Fellows, an interdisciplinary group of scholars in the humanities and social sciences, calls for fellowship applications annually. For the 2022-2025 competition, five fellowships will be awarded: Open Discipline (2), Humanistic Studies (1), Race and Ethnicity Studies (1), and LGBT Studies (1). Applicants must have received their PhD degree after January 1, 2020 or have completed a substantial portion of the dissertation – at least half - at the time of application. Successful candidates must fulfill all requirements for the Ph.D., including filing of the dissertation, by June 15, 2022. Applications are due by August 3. For more information, click here.
Call for Papers: CUHK Sixteenth Graduate Seminar on Modern and Contemporary China
Hosted by the Centre for China Studies of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), the theme of this year's seminar is “Land in China, 1900-2022.” Paper proposals on subjects from across the spectrum of environmental, economic, political, legal, social, ideological and cultural approaches to examining changes of the land in China over the last century until today are welcome. All Ph.D. candidates (ABDs) and new Ph.D. degree holders (within 5 years of graduation) who are doing research on issues relating to land in modern and contemporary China are eligible to apply. The deadline for submissions is August 16. For more information, visit the Centre for China Studies website.
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