Position in Modern Chinese Literature, Film, and Cultural Studies

The Department of East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, seeks to hire an Assistant Professor who specializes in the interconnected fields of modern Chinese literature, film, and cultural studies. PhD preferred. The minimum requirement to be considered an applicant is the completion of all requirements for a PhD in modern Chinese literature, film, cultural studies, or related field (or equivalent degree) except the dissertation (or equivalent) at the time of application. Candidate must have a PhD by time of appointment as Assistant Professor. Specialization in modern Chinese literature, film, cultural studies, or related field. Appointment is expected to begin July 1, 2019.

As an interdisciplinary department made up of scholars of literature, anthropology, history, religious studies, and linguistics, we value innovative theoretical and methodological approaches. The ideal candidate would be a scholar who can both analyze the content of modern Chinese literature and film, and also examine how they are shaped by the evolving forms of media through which they are produced and disseminated. We also welcome applicants who set the production and reception of popular culture in the shifting social and historical contexts of modern China. We encourage applicants whose works address Sinophone cultural and artistic flows crisscrossing the Chinese Mainland, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Southeast Asia, Japan, Korea, North America, and beyond. The successful candidate will be able to teach graduate seminars in modern Chinese literature and film, while also offering broader undergraduate courses.

To ensure full consideration, please submit a cover letter, curriculum vitae, a writing sample, and arrange to have at least three letters of recommendation sent to the Search Committee through UC Recruit, at https://recruit.ap.ucsb.edu/apply/JPF01280. Primary consideration will be given to complete applications received by September 24, 2018. Inquiries about the position may be directed to the Search Committee Chair, Professor Mayfair Yang: yangm@religion.ucsb.edu.

The Department of East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies is especially interested in candidates who can contribute to the diversity and excellence of the academic community through research, teaching and service. For information on our department, please visit our website at https://www.eastasian.ucsb.edu/. The University of California is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.

Sōseki, Modern Japan's Greatest Novelist by John Nathan book cover

“Sōseki” Modern Japan’s Greatest Novelist by Professor John Nathan

Prof. John Nathan published his new book, Sōseki” Modern Japan’s Greatest Novelist from Columbia University Press.

In this biography, John Nathan provides a lucid and vivid account of a great writer laboring to create a remarkably original oeuvre in spite of the physical and mental illness that plagued him all his life. He traces Sōseki’s complex and contradictory character, offering rigorous close readings of Sōseki’s groundbreaking experiments with narrative strategies, irony, and multiple points of view as well as recounting excruciating hospital stays and recurrent attacks of paranoid delusion. Drawing on previously untranslated letters and diaries, published reminiscences, and passages from Sōseki’s fiction, Nathan renders intimate scenes of the writer’s life and distills a portrait of a tormented yet unflaggingly original author. The first full-length study of Sōseki in fifty years, Nathan’s biography elevates Sōseki to his rightful place as a great synthesizer of literary traditions and a brilliant chronicler of universal experience who, no less than his Western contemporaries, anticipated the modernism of the twentieth century.

Full article available here:

Columbia University Press

https://cup.columbia.edu/book/sseki/9780231171427

Stanford University Press Publishes “The Politics of Rights and the 1911 Revolution in China” by Professor Xiaowei Zheng

Professor Xiaowei Zheng has just published her monograph The Politics of Rights and the 1911 Revolution in China with Stanford University Press. China’s 1911 Revolution was a momentous political transformation. Its leaders, however, were not rebellious troublemakers on the periphery of imperial order. On the contrary, they were a powerful political and economic elite deeply entrenched in local society and well-respected both for their imperially sanctioned cultural credentials and for their mastery of new ideas. The revolution they spearheaded produced a new, democratic political culture that enshrined national sovereignty, constitutionalism, and the rights of the people as indisputable principles. Based upon previously untapped Qing and Republican sources, The Politics of Rights is a nuanced and colorful chronicle of the revolution as it occurred in local and regional areas. Zheng explores the ideas that motivated the revolution, the popularization of those ideas, and their animating impact on the Chinese people at large. The focus of the book is on the transformative effect that revolution has on people and what they learn from it. For more information, please see her blog post China’s Political Paradox.

EALCS PhD students win Kathryn Davis Fellowships for Peace and scholarships for summer language study

Every summer since 2007, Fellows for Peace has brought 100 aspiring and experienced peacemakers to the Middlebury Language Schools and the Monterey Institute, where they build skills in foreign language or policy studies.

This summer, EALCS announces that THREE of our own – Keita Moore, Kai Wasson, and Winni Ni –will be Kathryn Davis Fellows. Keita and Kai will study Korean at Middlebury at Mills, and Winni will study Japanese at Middlebury in Vermont. She will be joined by Kaitlyn Ugoretz who won a Middlebury scholarship to study Japanese.

 

Kathryn Davis Fellowship for Peace

The Language Schools at Middlebury College in Vermont and in California, at Middlebury at Mills, are recognized around the world as premier sites of language study. An environment of complete immersion produces cultural fluency in addition to linguistic competence, and participants are encouraged to live the language they are learning. Davis Fellowships for Peace are available in all of the Language Schools: Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Hebrew, Korean, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish.