East Asian Studies

“Ultra-unreal” (chaohuan) is novelist, essayist, editor and blogger Ning Ken’s coinage to describe contemporary China, where the speed and scale of change is disorienting and the news full of stories of prosperity, progress, corruption, and inequity that defy imagination. Ning Ken is the author of five novels, including the “Heaven / Tibet,” of which Nobel Prize for Literature winner Mo Yan said, “Ning Ken combines keen political critique with penetrating analysis of human nature.” Ning Ken will talk about writing fiction about an “ultra-unreal” time and place.

The Vermont Humanities Council and the Ilsley Library present Michael Puett, professor of Chinese history at Harvard, and journalist Christine Gross-Loh, who will speak about their new book, The Path: What Chinese Philosophers Can Teach Us About the Good Life. Hosted by the East Asian Studies program, the History Department, and the Religion Department.

“The Chinese Safari: Cultural Identity and Wildlife Conservation in Kenya’s Tourism Industry,” a talk by Amanda Kaminsky (class of ‘13). Ms. Kaminsky will talk about the social and environmental consequences of Chinese tourism in Kenya, which she has been studying as a graduate student at the Univesity of Michigan. In her Master’s thesis Ms.

Namiko Kunimoto, Assistant Professor of Japanese Art History, Ohio State University

Professor Lyle J. Goldstein is an associate professor in the China Maritime Studies Institute (CMSI), and a visiting fellow of the Watson Institute of International Studies at Brown University. Professor Goldstein recently China, the US and 21st Century Sea Power: Defining a Maritime Partnership (2010) and Chinese Aerospace Power: Evolving Maritime Roles (2011). Recently, his research has focused on various quandaries in U.S.-China relations, including the imperative to enhance maritime cooperation.

Lecture by Helena Wong

How should Asians and Asian Americans be relating to social movements of our time like Black Lives Matter, Standing Rock, and Not1More? How are grassroots organizers in Asian communities around the country pushing back against gentrification, discriminatory policing, environmental racism, and what happens when communities are hit with (un)natural disasters? How do we understand what is happening in China and bring it back to what it means to organize with a racial and gender justice lens here in the US?

Dr. Gregory Trencher, Visiting Assistant Professor in Environmental Science and Policy at Clark University, will discuss Innovative Strategies towards a Low-Carbon Society in Japan.

Jeehee Hong, Associate Professor of East Asian Art History at McGill University and current Fellow at the Clark Art Institute, examines representations of grief in Chinese middle-period (9th-14th centuries) funerary contexts. Hong shows that fictional or localized mourners were “inserted” into monuments to transmit corporeal and raw emotions. Sponsored by the Department of History, Department of History of Art and Architecture, Middlebury College Museum of Art, and the Program in East Asian Studies.  Free

Zhang Mengqi graduated from the Dance Academy of China Minorities University in 2008. “Self-Portrait: Dreaming at 47 KM” (2013, 77 min, Chinese with English subtitles) was her second film for the Memory Project. 47 KM is the name of the village where Zhang’s grandfather lives. Zhang has said, “In the summer and winter of 2010 …

Wu Wenguang (b. 1956) is a leading figure in the Chinese New Documentary Film Movement. He has made ten films, including the seminal “Bumming in Beijing” (1991). In 2005 Wu co-founded the Caochangdi Workstation Art Center in Beijing, where he curated the Village Documentary Project (2005) and the on-going Memory Project (2010), which organizes amateur filmmakers to record memories of China’s Great Famine (1958-1961) and family and local histories. From 7:00 to 8:00 PM Wu will talk in English about the Memory Project and take questions.