The Association for Chinese Art History is organizing a “Meet the Authors” Zoom webinar so that members have a chance to meet the three inaugural winners of the Bei Shan Tang book prizes: Aurelia Campbell, author of What the Emperor Built: Architecture and Empire in the Early Ming (University of Washington Press), Dora C. Y. Ching, author and editor of Visualizing Dunhuang: The Lo Archive Photographs of the Mogao and Yulin Caves (Princeton University Press), and Rachel Silberstein, A Fashionable Century: Textile Artistry and Commerce in the Late Qing (University of Washington Press). Moderated by Bei Shan Tang Prize Committee chair Roberta Wue, the event will be 90 minutes, beginning with each author discussing their projects and the publication process, from the conceptualization of the project to the nuts and bolts of bringing their work to press, and ending with 45 minutes of questions from the audience.  

This event will take place on Thursday, August 3, 2023: 10:00am PDT/1:00pm EDT/6:00pm BST. Please register here and the Zoom link will be sent to you before the event: https://forms.gle/a9xFPUJroK7jCCnAA

This year, NYCAS will hold an online book event, featuring Dr. Albert Welter’s The Future of China’s Past: Reflections on the Meaning of China’s Rise, published by SUNY Press in 2023. This event is co-sponsored by SUNY Press. Dr. Welter’s presentation will be followed by a graduate student roundtable which will respond to the book.

Honourable Dr Azmiralda Zahir , Justice Supreme Court of Maldives will deliver her online talk titled “Reinforcing Democratic Values Through Online Hearings – the Maldives Experience” on Monday 5th of June 2023 10 am UK time. Anyone wishes to attend this event may use this link if they wish to attend: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/global-south-network-second-guest-lecture-tickets-625793795087

Taiwan’s opposition to PRC demands such as acceptance of the ‘92 Consensus’ and ‘One Country, Two Systems’ formula since 2016 has invited a series of retaliatory measures from Beijing, designed to coerce Taiwan into compliance. Given the stark asymmetry in economic size, military capability, and diplomatic status, Taiwan provides a case for studying coercive diplomacy that takes the form of threats to punish. Material differences suggest that Taiwan should capitulate, and ‘cheap talk’ theses expect PRC threats to have no discernible effect, while balance of threat arguments expect resolve. Chong argues that the popular support for resisting China rises as PRC coercion grows and Taiwanese citizens increasingly perceive China to be a threat. His research finds that citizens in a liberal democracy can develop the will to pushback against pressure from an authoritarian regime despite sharp asymmetries in capabilities and material limitations. Over time, the PRC has to decide how much it wishes to bear the growing costs and risks of escalation to overcome resistance.

*RSVP requested

On Thursday, May 11, 2023, at 3:30p.m. PT, the UW Taiwan Studies Program will welcome Professor Hsiao-ting Lin to discuss his newly published monograph, Taiwan, the United States, and the Hidden History of the Cold War in Asia: Divided Allies. Lin’s book explores the challenges which faced the United States and Taiwanese alliance during the Cold War, addressing a wide range of events and influences of the period between the 1950s and 1970s. Tackling seven main topics to outline the fluctuations of the U.S.–Taiwan relationship, this volume highlights the impact of the mainland counteroffensive, the offshore islands, Tibet, Taiwan’s secret operations in Asia, Taiwan’s Soviet and nuclear gambits, Chinese representation in the United Nations, and the Vietnam War. Utilizing multinational archival research, particularly the newly available materials from Taiwan and the United States, to reevaluate Taiwan’s foreign policy during the Cold War, revealing a pragmatic and opportunistic foreign policy disguised in nationalistic rhetoric.

Hsiao-ting Lin is a research fellow and curator of the Modern China and Taiwan collection at the Hoover Institution, for which he collects material on China and Taiwan, as well as China-related materials in other East Asian countries. He holds a BA in political science from National Taiwan University (1994) and an MA in international law and diplomacy from National Chengchi University in Taiwan (1997). He received his DPhil in oriental studies in 2003 from the University of Oxford. He has published extensively on modern Chinese and Taiwanese politics, history, and ethnic minorities, including Accidental State: Chiang Kai-shek, the United States, and the Making of Taiwan (2016); Modern China’s Ethnic Frontiers: A Journey to the West (2011); and Tibet and Nationalist China’s Frontier: Intrigues and Ethnopolitics, 1928–49 (2006).

On Thursday, April 13, 2023, at 6p.m. PT, the UW Taiwan Studies Program will welcome Professor Chien-Wen Kung to discuss his newly published monograph, Diasporic Cold Warriors: Nationalist China, Anticommunism, and the Philippine Chinese, 1930s-1970s.

From the 1950s to the 1970s, the Philippine Chinese were Southeast Asia and possibly the world’s most exemplary overseas Chinese Cold Warriors. Fears of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Southeast Asia’s Chinese as conduits for PRC influence gripped states and societies then – as indeed they do today. Yet, ironically, the example of the Philippines shows that the “China” which intervened the most extensively in any Southeast Asian country during the Cold War was not the PRC. It was, rather, the Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan. Drawing upon archival research and fieldwork in Taiwan, the Philippines, the United States, and China, Diasporic Cold Warriors tells for the first time this story of the Philippine Chinese as anticommunist partisans by tracing their evolving relationship with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Philippine state over the middle third of the 20th century.

Chien-Wen Kung is an Assistant Professor of History at the National University of Singapore and the author of Diasporic Cold Warriors: Nationalist China, Anticommunism, and the Philippine Chinese, 1930s-1970s. His scholarship has also been published in Modern Asian Studies, the International History Review, and Asian Ethnicity. Born and raised in Singapore, he received his B.A. in History and English from Dartmouth College and Ph.D. in Modern Chinese and International and Global History from Columbia University. With funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and National Heritage Board in Singapore, he is currently working on a cultural history of Singapore-China-Taiwan relations in the 1970s and 1980s.

On Thursday, January 19, 2023 from 3:30 to 5:00p.m. PT, Professor Seiji Shirane will join the UW Taiwan Studies Program to discuss his newly published monograph, Imperial Gateway: Colonial Taiwan and Japan’s Expansion in South China and Southeast Asia, 1895-1945.

Shirane’s book explores the political, social, and economic significance of colonial Taiwan in the southern expansion of Japan’s empire from 1895 to the end of World War II. Challenging understandings of empire that focus on bilateral relations between metropole and colonial periphery, the book uncovers a half century of dynamic relations between Japan, Taiwan, China, and Western regional powers. Japanese officials in Taiwan did not simply take orders from Tokyo; rather, they often pursued their own expansionist ambitions in South China and Southeast Asia. When outright conquest was not possible, they promoted alternative strategies, including naturalizing resident Chinese as overseas Taiwanese subjects, extending colonial police networks, and deploying tens of thousands of Taiwanese to war. Drawing on multilingual archives in six countries, Imperial Gateway shows how Japanese officials and Taiwanese subjects transformed Taiwan into a regional gateway for expansion in an ever-shifting international order.

The speakers will be Yunshin Hong and Robert Ricketts.

Okinawa was the only Japanese prefecture to be invaded by US forces during the battle fought there in the spring of 1945. It was also the only part of Japan proper forced to accommodate a network of 146 Japanese military “comfort stations”. After the war, how did Okinawans remember the intrusive and intimidating spaces of the sex venues and their destructive impact on village society? What was their role in the Japanese army’s battle plans? To answer these questions, the author focuses not on Korean and Okinawan comfort women per se, but on the comfort stations and the Okinawans who witnessed them in their daily lives.

The Choson History Society is inviting Gowoon Seong (Fudan Univ.) for a talk titled, “Hakata merchants and the distribution of ceramics in Northeast Asia in the 15th-16th centuries”
Presented by Gowoon Seong, PhD Candidate, Fudan University (复旦大学)
Date: July 28, 2022, 11:00pm (Seoul) / 7:00am (Los Angeles) / 4:00 pm (Paris)

Visit the event website to register. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

Hakata merchants served an essential role in the circulation in Northeast Asia of Ming ceramics and Chosŏn ceramics in the 15th to 16th centuries. In scholarship on the Chinese ceramic trade, Ryukyu islanders have received significant attention. However, Ryukyu islanders were more involved in Southeast Asia trading deeper than in Northeast Asia. Investigating the role of Hakata merchants provides a more profound understanding not only of ceramic trading in Northeast Asia but as well as of its changing value in different cultures. This presentation will use a combination of historical documents and excavated materials to examine three different roles of Hakata merchants in the ceramic trade.

This is a special literary lecture by David McCann, a Harvard professor specializing in Korean Literature. It will be an online lecture, as the in-person event is now full. It is commemorating the 10th anniversary of King Sejong Foundation Institute with the guest speaker Professor David McCann presenting “The Charm of Korean Literature: Sijo”. We are diving into the depth of Korea’s literature and poetic beauty!

In lieu of both an in-person conference and a virtual conference, our region decided to take the opportunity to do a webinar to showcase award-winning graduate student research with the winners of our two graduate student paper prizes: Li Haoyue, the Mori Prize in Asian Studies and Sean Cronan, the Barlow Prize in Chinese Studies, to offer expert advice on transforming your dissertation into a publishable book with Lorri Hagman, Executive Editor at University of Washington Press, and to inspire with a keynote address from the AAS Vice President, Kamran Ali through his current and future research on Pakistani cinema in the 1960s.

Click on this LINK to join the Zoom Webinar

All are welcome!

Please join us on April 7 at 5 pm for Professor Kirk A. Denton’s book talk on the political narratives that surround Taiwan’s museums!

The Landscape of Historical Memory: The Politics of Museums and Memorial Culture in Post–Martial Law Taiwan

Book Talk with Professor Kirk A. Denton (Professor Emeritus of Chinese literature, Ohio State University)

Available in-person (Room 337, The HUB, UW) & online

RSVP required for both in-person and online attendance: https://bit.ly/3I2hyEx

The Landscape of Historical Memory explores the place of museums and memorial culture in the contestation over historical memory in post–martial law Taiwan. The book is particularly oriented toward the role of politics—especially political parties—in the establishment, administration, architectural design, and historical narratives of museums. It is framed around the wrangling between the “blue camp” (the Nationalist Party, or KMT, and its supporters) and the “green camp” (Democratic Progressive Party, or DPP, and its supporters) over what facets of the past should be remembered and how they should be displayed in museums. Organized into chapters focused on particular types of museums and memorial spaces (e.g., archaeology museums, history museums, martyrs’ shrines, war museums, memorial halls, literature museums, ethnology museums, and ecomuseums), the book presents a broad overview of the state of museums in Taiwan in the past three decades. The case of Taiwan museums tells us much about Cold War politics and its legacy in East Asia; the role of culture, history, and memory in shaping identities in the “postcolonial” landscape of Taiwan; the politics of historical memory in an emergent democracy, especially in counterpoint to the politics of museums in the People’s Republic of China, which continues to be an authoritarian single party state; and the place of museums in a neoliberal economic climate.

Kirk Denton is Professor Emeritus of Chinese literature at Ohio State University. He studied at Colby College and the University of Toronto. For more than twenty years he has edited the journal Modern Chinese Literature and Culture and oversaw the rich collection of materials at the MCLC Resource Center. Prof. Denton wrote The Problematic of Self in Modern Chinese Literature: Hu Feng and Lu Ling and Exhibiting the Past: Historical Memory and the Politics of Museums in Postsocialist China.