East Asian Studies Events 2014-15 (as of 9/4/2014)

SEPTEMBER

 9/12 (Friday)

Gallery Talk: Picturing Enlightenment

4:30 PM, Middlebury College Museum of Art

Cynthia Packert, Christian A. Johnson Professor of History of Art and Architecture, introduces the museum’s newest exhibition of Tibetan scroll paintings on loan from the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College, Picturing Enlightenment: Tibetan Tangkas from the Mead Art Museum. Free

9/23 (Tuesday)

What was the Socialist City? The View from Beijing

4:30, Robert A. Jones Conference Room

Fabio Lanza, Professor of History, University of Arizona. The author of “Behind the Gate: Inventing Students in Beijing” Columbia UP 2010 will speak about his new urban history project, on the transformation of the Haidian district of Beijing from 1949-present.

OCTOBER

10/1 (Wednesday)

Opening Doors: Conservation of Tibetan Tangkas from the Mead Art Museum 4:30 PM, Middlebury College Museum of Art

Camille Myers Breeze, director and head conservator of Museum Textile Services in Andover, Massachusetts, gives an illustrated lecture that discusses her work cleaning, stabilizing, and repairing the fragile Tibetan scroll paintings on view in the museum’s current exhibit Picturing Enlightenment. Free

10/2 (Thursday)

Muslims in China’s Northwest

4:30, Robert A. Jones ’59 Conference Room

Morris Rossabi, Distinguished Professor at City University of New York (Queens College) and Visiting Professor of Mongol History at Columbia University. Sponsored by East Asian Studies Program and Department of History.

10/16 (Thursday)

5:30 – 8:30pm Robert A. Jones ’59 Conference Room

China Town Hall with Jimmy CarterIn a national webcast, President Jimmy Carter will discuss the establishment of diplomatic relations between the US and China 35 years ago, when he was president, as well as current issues in Sino-American relations. President Carter’s address will be preceded by a campus lecture and discussion.

Local speaker and details TBA.  See http://www.ncuscr.org/cth.

10/23 (Thursday)

Ways of Learning: An Apprentice Boat Builder in Japan

4:30, RAJ

Douglas Brooks

http://www.douglasbrooksboatbuilding.com

10/28 (Tuesday)

4:30 – 6pm, Robert A. Jones ’59 Conference Room

Variations on Utopia in Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction“Variations on Utopia in Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction,” a talk by Mingwei Song, associate professor of Chinese, Wellesley College. Dr. Song has published books and articles in both English and Chinese. His Chinese books include Criticism and Imagination (Shanghai, 2013) and The Sorrows of a Floating World: a Biography of Eileen Chang (Taipei, 1996; Shanghai, 1998; Hong Kong, 2001). His first monograph in English, titled Young China: National Rejuvenation and the Bildungsroman, 1900-1959, is forthcoming from Harvard University Asia Center. He guest edited a special issue of Renditions (2012) that featured the English translations of 13 Chinese works of science fiction. He is currently writing a new monograph on the utopian and post-human imageries in twenty-first century Chinese science fiction. Dr. Song’s talk will focus on the works of three influential authors who created the “new wave” of Chinese science fiction: Liu Cixin (b. 1963), Wang Jinkang (b. 1948), and Han Song (b. 1965).

October 23-26 (Thursday-Sunday) (tentative–check back for more details)

Tibetan Sand Mandala Davis Family Library Lobby

NOVEMBER

11/7 (Friday)12:15 – 1:30pm, Robert A. Jones ’59 Conference Room

The Politics of Policy Experimentation in China International and Global Studies Colloquium presentation “The Politics of Policy Experimentation in China: The Diffusion of Elder Care Policies” by Jessica Teets, assistant professor of political science.Lunch will be provided for those who RSVP by Monday, 11/3, to rcga@middlebury.edu.Sponsored by Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs.

FEBRUARY 

2/26 (Thursday)

Nick Kaldis of Binghamton University (SUNY) will give a talk on Lu Xun’s “Yecao” (Wild Grass, 1927) on February 26th, 2015.

MAY

5/2 (Saturday)3 – 5:30 and 8- 10:30, Dana Auditorium

Hirschfield Series – Stray Dogs(Tsai Ming-liang, Taiwan, 2013, 136 minutes)A single father makes his meager living holding up an advertising placard on the busy streets of Taipei. His children wait out their days in supermarkets before joining him in an abandoned building to sleep. As the father starts to come apart, a woman in the supermarket takes the children under her wing. With principal characters living the cruelest of existences on the ragged edges of the modern world, “Tsai may be the best chronicler we have of the temps mort between social reality and darkly comic dreams of despair.” – Tony Rayns, Film Comment.