The Roy A. Rappaport Lectures
“Making the Dead Modern”
by Erik Mueggler
Winter 2015
This series of four public lectures describes a book project in progress, titled Songs for Dead Parents. The lectures examine the history of death ritual in a small minority community in mountainous Southwest China, where people are heir to an extraordinary range of resources for working on the dead: techniques to create material bodies for dead beings, exchanges to give substance to relations among the living and with the dead, and abundant poetic language to communicate with the dead. Work on the dead takes the form of making them material and immaterial. Corpses replace bodies; effigies replace corpses; tombstones replace texts; texts replace tombstones. Social personhood, involving relations among living and dead, is mutual entanglement through shared substance; dead persons are subjected to a long labor of disentanglement with the final goal of severing them from the shared world of matter and memory. It is through work on the dead that people envision the cosmological underpinnings of the social world and assess the social relations at the foundations of community. In this context, the long history of official interventions meant to reform death ritual has been deeply consequential, transforming both social relations and the positions of living and dead in relation to the state, as the central historical actor.
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25th Asia Business Conference
January 30-31, 2015 (Fri-Sat) | Ross School of Business
Keynote Speaker: Ashok Kumar Mirpuri | Singapore’s Ambassador to the USA
4 Country Panels: China | India | Japan | ASEAN
6 Industry Panels: Finance | Technology & Consulting | Entrepreneurship | Energy & Sustainability | Marketing | Transportation
25th Anniversary Special: Career Panel*
China Panel
Ali Zamiri; Regional Director of Business Development, Qualcomm
Ken DeWoskin; Head, Deloitte China Insight Research
Tom Liu; ChinaScope Limited
Moderator: Brian Wu, Ross School of Business
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McGill East Asian Studies Graduate Symposium 2015
17-18 April, 2015
Deadline for Submissions: February 13, 2015
Keynote Speaker: Dr. Peter Perdue (Department of History, Yale University)
For further information, please consult the conference website at: http://blogs.mcgill.ca/easpgsa/symposium-2015/
Or visit the conference Facebook page at:
https://www.facebook.com/events/1539794866296637/?ref_dashboard_filter=upcoming
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Theatre, Nightlife and Literary Adventure in Nineteenth-Century Beijing
Lectures by Professors Wu Cuncun, University of Hong Kong, and Mark Stevenson, Victoria University
Friday, January 23, 2015 | 2-6 pm
Venue: Anderson Room D, Michigan Union
*Light refreshments will be provided.
The lively world of Beijing opera continues to be a productive source of inspiration for Chinese and foreign literary and cinematic imagination. That this inspiration remains so powerful, despite the dwindling number of aficionados, is testament to the energy that at one time animated scenes both on- and off-stage and in-between-energy that was both social and aesthetic. Responding to recent theory concerned with the performativity of social life, particularly within history and gender studies, Dr. Wu and Dr. Stevenson will discuss important lessons from the Chinese experience that will enrich the study of history and theatre more generally.
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The Revival of Ideologies in Contemporary China --- An Interdisciplinary Call of ‘Bringing Ideology Back In’
The Fourth Oxford Graduate Conference on Contemporary China
The Dickson Poon University of Oxford China Centre and St. Antony’s College, 22-23 May 2015
University of Oxford
Call for Papers – Deadline for Submission: 23 March 2015
The ideological landscape in China has flourished as the regime no longer rests its legitimacy on traditional socialist ideology but rather draws on a variety of ideologies as justificatory strategies. Furthermore, the problems caused by the economic reforms have reignited fierce, ideologically-avowed debates in the Party circles. Intellectuals, interest groups, internet users and citizens also have entered the debate. A vibrant and competitive ideological landscape has gradually developed in the public sphere, consisting of neo-leftism, liberalism, constitutionalism, Confucianism, Republicanism, etc. Despite the revival of ideologies, the study of ideology seems to be on the sidelines of mainstream research of contemporary China. It is also replete with methodological and conceptual challenges that are not yet satisfactorily resolved.
This conference intends to create a platform for graduate students of humanities, social sciences and area studies to share their views on the study of ideology in contemporary China through their own research. Potential papers may discuss topics such as the origin, development and influence of a particular ideology, the role of ideology in shaping political conflicts and policy debates, and the regime's ability to influence ideological debates. In addition to the presentations on their specific research questions, participants are encouraged to present how their research tackles the methodological and conceptual challenges in the study of ideology.
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Duke Graduate Student Conference
In conjunction with the first annual Critical Asian Humanities workshop at Duke University
April 3rd, 2015
Duke University will be host a select graduate student conference on April 3rd, 2015, in conjunction with its first annual Critical Asian Humanities workshop, which will run from April 3rd to April 4th. Integrating approaches and methodologies from cultural studies, critical theory, and area studies, Critical Asian Humanities is an interdisciplinary field that emphasizes humanistic inquiry while critically interrogating many of the assumptions on which the humanities have traditionally relied. The workshop’s keynote speakers will be:
Wai-yee Li (Harvard): “The Uses of Barbarians in Early China”
Lisa Yoneyama (Toronto): ”A Transpacific Critique of Cold War Knowledge Formations”
Lisa Lowe (Tufts): “John Stuart Mill in Hong Kong”
Closing remarks:
Rey Chow (Duke)
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Forming and Redefining Belles-Lettres: Harvard Graduate Student Conference on Pre-modern Chinese Literature
Date: March 13 & 14, 2015
Location: Harvard University
Application materials: A single-spaced 250-word paper proposal and a short bio.
Travel & lodging: Travel expenses are not covered, but lodging may be accommodated upon request.
Registration fee: $20
The Graduate Student Committee of the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University invites graduate students from any university to submit abstracts for our conference, to be held on March 13 & 14, 2015. The conference is sponsored by The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and the Fairbank Center, and supported by the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations.
Between early textual practices and the arrival of our modern sense of what constitutes literature, the concept of “wenxue” 文學 went through myriad transformations that both enrich and challenge our understanding of the literary past. At this conference, faculty discussants and graduate student presenters will explore topics including (but not limited to): the relationship between textuality and genre, the performativity of ritual and religion, reciprocity between the authorial self and community, and the impact of trauma upon agency and literary
history.
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