EALCS graduate student Raymond Chung published an article titled, “Making War-Ravaged Voices Heard in the Present” (戦禍の声を現代へ) in the June 2024 issue of The Institute of Politics and Economics’ Japanese-language journal Seiji Kenkyū Jihō (Politics and Economics Newsletter／経済研究時報). In the article, Chung describes his experiences interning at the Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage for six weeks in summer of 2023, noting both the emotional resonance that connected his research on medieval Japanese religion to exhibitions at the Center and expressing his perspective that the work of Center has become ever more relevant in light of current conflicts around the globe. Scroll down to page 15 for Chung’s article: https://www.seikeiken.or.jp/data_files/view/522/mode:inline. (The Internship was funded by a generous gift from Andrew Ogawa).
We are pleased to announce that EALCS professor Mayfair Yang has published a new edited volume, titled Anthropology of Ascendant China: Histories, Attainments, and Tribulations (Routledge, 2024). Please visit the book’s website for more details.
Additionally, Prof. Yang was recently elected President of the Society for Anthropology of Religion (SAR), a Section of the American Anthropological Association. Congratulations!
We’re forwarding information about a new reading group initiative, “The Archives & Bodies Reading Group.” It critically examines and reimagines the roles archives play in humanities research and explores intersections between archival practices, embodiment, and marginalized histories – topics that may be of interest to many in our research community. It is part of an event series organized by the Collective for Archival Research of Embodiment (CARE), a UC-wide multicampus graduate student working group, which includes our colleagues Yiming, Uudam (RG ST), Diandian (MUSIC), Tinghao (FAMST), and other UC grad students. Other CARE events include archival writing workshops and an end-of-year performative exhibition. For more information, please take a look at the attached flyer and reach out to the contact people.
The inaugural session details are below:
Theme: “Mnemonic Bodies: Affective Archives, Memory, and Care” Date&Time: Saturday, November 9, 6:30 PM (PST) Platform: Zoom
Reading Materials:
Jacques Derrida, “Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression”
Ann Laura Stoler, Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power (chs. 1&4)
Diana Taylor, The Archive and the Repertoire (ch. 3)
This open-to-all reading group is organized by the Collective for Archival Research of Embodiment (CARE), a UC-wide graduate student working group. It’s sponsored by the UC Humanities Research Institute, the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, and the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies at UCSB.
Prof. Thomas Mazanec was recently appointed to serve as the East Asia section editor of JAOS (Journal of the American Oriental Society). Founded in 1842, the AOS is the oldest learned society in the United States devoted to a particular field of scholarship, and its associated Journal is known as one of the premiere publications in the study of premodern Asia and North Africa.
The first issue for which Prof. Mazanec served as editor (144.3) is now online.
Prof. Howard Chiang, the Lai Ho & Wu Cho-liu Endowed Chair in Taiwan Studies, has a new book out—Sinophone Studies across Disciplines: A Reader, edited with Shu-mei Shih, from Columbia University Press. Congratulations!
Description
Sinophone studies—the study of Sinitic-language cultures and communities around the world—has become increasingly interdisciplinary over the past decade. Today, it spans not only literary studies and cinema studies but also history, anthropology, musicology, linguistics, art history, and dance. More and more, it is in conversation with fields such as postcolonial studies, settler-colonial studies, migration studies, ethnic studies, queer studies, and area studies.
This reader presents the latest and most cutting-edge work in Sinophone studies, bringing together both senior and emerging scholars to highlight the interdisciplinary reach and significance of this vital field. It argues that Sinophone studies has developed a distinctive conceptualization of power at the convergence of different intellectual traditions, offering new approaches to questions of plurality, hierarchy, oppression, and resistance. In so doing, this book shows, Sinophone studies has provided valuable conceptual tools for the study of minoritized and racialized communities in diverse global settings. Essays also consider how the rise of China has affected Sinophone communities and the idea of Chineseness around the world, among other timely topics. Showcasing cross-fertilization and diversification that traverse and transcend conventional scholarly boundaries, Sinophone Studies Across Disciplines gives readers an unparalleled survey of the past, present, and future of this inherently interdisciplinary field.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Sinophone Studies Across Disciplines, by Howard Chiang and Shu-mei Shih
Part I: Interdisciplinary Conjunctions
1. The Question of Chinese Empire, by Shu-mei Shih
2. Stonewall Aside: When Queer Theory Meets Sinophone Studies, by Howard Chiang
3. Written Out: Dance and the Sinophone, by Emily Wilcox
4. Cantonese Opera and Sino-Soundscape in North America, by Nancy Yunhwa Rao
5. Ann Hui, Hainan, and the Sino-Vietnamese War: A Sinophone Inter-Asian Recasting of Boat People’s Transpacific Refugee Critique, by Brian Bernards
6. Sinophone Affects: Kyle Dargan’s Anagnorisis and the Poetics of Infrastructure in Chan Tze Woon’s Yellowing, by Lily Wong
Part II: Theories, Methodologies, Controversies
7. Geocritical Sinophone and Transgressive Community, by Yinde Zhang
8. Sinophone Postloyalism, by David Der-wei Wang
9. Parasite: Conceptualizing a Sinophone Approach and Ethics, by E. K. Tan
10. Queer Hong Kong as a Sinophone Method, by Alvin K. Wong
11. Enjoy Your Sinophone!, by Chien-heng Wu
12. The Lure of Diaspora and Sinophone Malaysian Literature in Taiwan, by Wai-Siam Hee
13. Conditions of Theory in Taiwan: Americanism and Settler Colonialism, by Shu-mei Shih
Part III: Places of Differentiation
14. Chinese Settler Colonialism: Empire and Life in the Tibetan Borderlands, by Carole McGranahan
15. Beyond Musical, Political, and Linguistic Boundaries: The Influence of the Hong Kong Rock Band Beyond in the PRC in the 1990s and Its Legacy, by Nathanel Amar
16. Translanguaging as a Transcultural Marker in the Italian Sinophone Play Tong Men-g, by Valentina Pedone
17. From Multilingualism to Mandarin: Chinese Singaporeans as a Sinophone Community, 1945–1990, by Jason Lim
18. Adaptation and Identity Building Among the Ethnic Chinese Communities in Vietnam: A View from Ritual Transformation in Popular Religion, by Tho Ngoc Nguyen
19. The Misconstrued Reader: Contemporary Sinophone Literature in Thailand, by Rebecca Ehrenwirth
Contributors
Index
Congratulations to Yoko Yamauchi, UC Santa Barbara’s Japanese Language Program Coordinator, who has been elected President of the Board of the Teachers of Japanese in Southern California (TJSC)! On June 1, Yamauchi (front row, 4th from left) and Sabine Frühstück attended the TJSC Workshop and Reception hosted by Kenko Sone, Consul General of Japan, his wife Mami, and Yasuko Uchida, Director of Japan Foundation, Los Angeles (front row, 5th, 6th and 7th) to discuss current challenges to a robust future of teaching Japanese in California and nationwide.
