Perspectives on Academic Freedom
2024-04-25 10:15 - 17:30 (America/New_York) | CGIS South, Tsai Auditorium (S010), 1730 Cambridge St, Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
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Speakers:Sugata Bose, Harvard UniversityWilliam Kirby, Harvard University Jayati Ghosh, University of Massachusetts, AmherstZeynep Kadirbeyoglu, Brandeis UniversitySidney Chalhoub, Harvard UniversityJoan Scott, Institute for Advanced Study, PrincetonDurba Mitra, Harvard UniversityBeshara Doumani, Brown UniversityBrian Connolly, University of South Florida

In 2019, alarmed by attacks on academic freedom happening simultaneously in several parts of the world (Brazil, India, Turkey, and the USA, among others), a group of faculty in the History Department decided to organize a year-long seminar series to discuss the role of academics in an age of advancing authoritarianism. The pandemic derailed our plans. The crises of the past few months have given us a new sense of urgency. How can the university remain a place of unfettered critical inquiry and expression when its mission is overtly challenged by corporate and governing interests?

Registration and a complete agenda available at: https://history.fas.harvard.edu/event/perspectives-academic-freedomOpen to members of the Harvard community only. Please bring your Harvard ID for check in.

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A Cosmos of Vital Feeling: Qing (Affect) and Qi (Breath, Atmosphere) as Critical Traditions in the Chinese Humanities, An International Conference情氣天下：重估抒情傳統與氣化論 國際研討會
2024-04-26 09:00 - 2024-04-27 17:00 | Plimpton Room (133), Barker Center, 12 Quincy St., Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
Speakers:David Der-wei Wang 王德威 (Harvard University)Peter K. Bol 包弼德 (Harvard University)Wai-yee Li 李惠儀 (Harvard University)Thomas P. Kelly (Harvard University)Joo-hyeon Oh 吳周炫 (University of Minnesota, Twin Cities)Yang Rur-bin 楊儒賓 (National Tsing Hua University)Cheng Yu-yu 鄭毓瑜 (National Taiwan University, Academia Sinica)Chan Kwok -Kou 陳國球 (National Tsing Hua University)Lai Shi-San 賴錫三 (National Sun Yat-sen University)Mark McConaghy 莫加南 (National Sun Yat-sen University)Lin Ming-chao 林明照 (National Taiwan University)Lin Su-chuan 林素娟 (National Cheng Kung University)Lee Yu-lin 李育霖 (Academia Sinica)Fabian Heubel 何乏筆 (Academia Sinica)Peng Hsiao-yen 彭小妍 (Academia Sinica)Paul J. D’Ambrosio 德安博 (East China Normal University)Tsai Yueh-chang 蔡岳璋 (National Tsing Hua University)Wang Wenfei 王文菲 (Harvard University)

Organizers:The Transcultural Sino-Island: The Global Sinology Forum, NSYSUCenter for the Humanities, NSYSUDepartment of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University

Co-Sponsors:Harvard-Yenching InstituteFairbank Center for Chinese StudiesTranscultural Sinology and Global Co-Becoming Research Group, NSYSUChiang Ching-kuo Foundation

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Film Screening: Yi Yi (A One and a Two …)
2024-05-03 19:00 - 22:00 | Harvard Film Archive, Carpenter Center, 24 Quincy St, Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
Edward Yang’s cinematic swan song, released at the turn of the millennium, is a moving tapestry that weaves together the dissolution and reconstitution of the fragile subjectivities in an increasingly global, capitalist and mediated urban society. Yi Yi opens with a wedding and ends with a funeral. What unfolds between love and death is everything that saturates our modern existence: awakening, nostalgia, contingency, anxiety, alienation, the ennui of everyday banality and the oscillations between longings for interpersonal dependence and fears of intimacy. This three-hour-long audiovisual epic unfolds the confusions and struggles of the multigenerational Jian family. As the grandmother falls into a coma, the family members take turns sitting at her bedside relaying their life to her, only to hear their own doubts and uncertainties reverberate in the resounding silence. At his tenderest moment, Yang, through Yi Yi, delicately, wisely and elegantly portrays the poignant reminiscences of the stirrings of first love and unveils the beauty that all too often shies away in the face of a perceived emptiness of life.

Directed by Edward Yang. With Wu Nien-Jen, Elaine Jin, Issey Ogata

Taiwan/Japan 2000, 35mm, color, 173 min. Mandarin, Min Nan, Hokkien, English, Japanese and French with English subtitles

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Film Screening: A Brighter Summer Day (Guling jie shaonian sharen shijian)
2024-05-04 18:00 - 22:00 | Harvard Film Archive, Carpenter Center, 24 Quincy St, Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
Similar to Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s A City of Sadness (1989), A Brighter Summer Day also traces the experiences of a large family during a critical historical epoch in Taiwan. Set in the early 1960s, against the backdrop of a society witnessing the consequences of major demographic shifts and political oppression, this film depicts the difficult trials awaiting the simple and harmonious life of the Zhang family. With Yang’s exacting demands on the historical accuracy of the props, such as the family house and the furniture in the classrooms, A Brighter Summer Day splendidly restores the material historical world to us while inquiring into its zeitgeist. Caught between the world of rock ‘n’ roll, gang rivalry, love triangles and the White Terror paranoia, a group of teenagers are compelled to learn to negotiate the tensions and discrepancy between ideals and reality. The adolescent struggles in grasping that which is worth holding on to, be it people or principle, turn out to be an inescapable fate for adults alike.

Widely considered as Yang’s magnum opus, this film, based on a real-life murder, launched Chang Chen’s acting career at the age of fourteen. The brilliant juxtapositions of light and darkness, movement and stasis, sound and silence, all work together to yield a tragic lonesomeness that even the warmth of a bright summer day cannot cure.

Directed by Edward Yang. With Chang Chen, Lisa Yang, Chang Kuo-Chu

Taiwan 1991, DCP, color, 237 min. Mandarin, Min Nan, Shanghainese and English with English subtitles

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Film Screening: In Our Time (Guang yin de gu shi)
2024-05-05 15:00 - 17:00 | Harvard Film Archive, Carpenter Center, 24 Quincy St, Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
The omnibus film In Our Time initiated radical innovations in terms of aesthetic styles, industry practices and commonly depicted themes, thereby revolutionizing the filmmaking industry in Taiwan and inaugurating the movement of Taiwan New Cinema. The four segments are shot by four young emerging directors and each film—set in different decades from the 1950s to the 1980s—represents roughly one of the four younger stages of life: childhood, adolescence, young adulthood (in college) and married life (as working professionals).

Titled Expectations, sometimes translated as Desires, Edward Yang’s segment features a series of sensitive and expressive vignettes that depict the growing pains of adolescents in mid-60s Taiwan. Yang sees the placement of the second short film as structurally akin to the second movement in a symphony, typically characterized by its lyrical and slow nature. The teenaged Hsiao-Fen (Shi An-Ni) serves as a kind of prototype for other young heroines in Yang’s cinematic corpus. The diversity of the cinematic techniques used in his debut short film accentuates the complexity of the protagonist’s emotional and perceptual experience.

Directed by Edward Yang, Chang Yi, Ko I-Chen and Tao Te-Chen. With Sylvia Chang, Emily Y. Chang, Lee Li-Chun

Taiwan 1982, DCP, color, 110 min. Mandarin and Min Nan with English subtitles

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Linking East and West: Yue-Sai Kan and her Cross-Cultural Influence
2024-09-16 17:30 - 19:00 | Boston University Tsai Performance Center, 685 Commonwealth Ave., Boston, Massachusetts, United States
Speaker: Yue-Sai Kan, television host, producer, author, entrepreneur and humanitarianDiscussant: Min Ye, Professor of International Relations, Boston University Pardee School of Global Studies

Yue-Sai Kan, often referred to as ‘The Oprah of China’, is a renowned media entrepreneur, bestselling author, and philanthropist. Her talk promises to offer unique insights into China’s transformation over four decades and the importance of cross-cultural understanding.

A book signing for her book, “The Most Famous Woman in China,” follows the discussion.

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EALS Open House
2024-09-19 12:20 - 13:20 | Austin Hall Room 308, 1515 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
The East Asian Legal Studies program at Harvard Law School supports research and teaching on the law and legal history of the nations and peoples of East Asia, their interaction with the United States, and their impact on global order. Please join us at our Open House to learn about upcoming EALS events and opportunities for students, and to meet faculty, staff, visiting scholars, and other students interested in law and East Asia!

Savory and sweet pastries, coffee, Wong Lo Kat, sikhye, and hojicha will be provided.

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Calligraphy Art Lecture and Workshop
2024-09-25 18:30 - 20:00 | Gund Hall Room 111, 48 Quincy St., Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
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Speaker: Wang Dongling, Professor of Calligraphy and Director of the Modern Calligraphy Research Center, China Academy of Art, Hangzhou

Paper and ink provided. Register at: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScyPdekMiEDa5XhgdmLmHn26csGN_s0FnHG38zBttjS3J422g/viewform

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Flying Flowers and Scattered Snow (飞花散雪): A Performance of Calligraphy by Wang Dongling
2024-09-27 15:00 - 16:00 | Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy St., Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
Wang Dongling 王冬龄, one of China’s most highly regarded contemporary ink painters, will demonstrate his luan shu (“chaotic script”) calligraphy in a special event in the Calderwood Courtyard. In this energetic performance, he will draw upon ancient texts and brush-painting traditions to create a large gestural work focused on the exalted West Lake poems of Su Dongpo (1037–1101). Located in Hangzhou, West Lake has served as a source of inspiration for generations of poets, scholars, and artists, including Wang.

Wang Dongling is professor of calligraphy and director of the Modern Calligraphy Research Center at the China Academy of Art, Hangzhou. He has held three solo exhibitions at the National Art Museum of China, and his work has been exhibited and acquired internationally. Like many artists of his generation, Wang’s education was interrupted by the Cultural Revolution (1966–76), but working outside the constraints of conventional art schools granted him the freedom to explore novel techniques. He returned to his studies in the late 1970s, incorporating foreign approaches into his work throughout the 1980s and 1990s.

The Harvard Art Museums offer free admission every day, Tuesday through Sunday. Please see the museum visit page to learn about our general policies for visiting the museums.

This program is made possible in part through the support of Shining (Christina) Sun.

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Susan Greenhalgh - Soda Science: Making the World Safe for Coca-Cola
2024-09-30 12:15 - 14:00 | CGIS South, Room S050, 1730 Cambridge St, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, United States
Register for hybrid zoom attendance

Speaker: Susan Greenhalgh, John King and Wilma Cannon Fairbank Research Professor of Chinese Society Emerita, Department of Anthropology, Harvard UniversityModerator: Nicole West Bassoff, PhD Candidate in Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School

The 1990s were tough times for the soda industry. In the United States, obesity rates were exploding. Public health critics pointed to sugary soda as a main culprit and advocated for soda taxes that might decrease the consumption of sweetened beverages—and threaten the revenues of the giant soda companies. In her new book, Soda Science, Greenhalgh tells the story of how, during 1995-2015, industry leader Coca-Cola mobilized allies in academia to create a soda-defense science that would protect profits by advocating exercise, not dietary restraint, as the priority solution to obesity, a view few experts accept. Anthropologist and science studies specialist Susan Greenhalgh discovers a hidden world of science-making—with distinctive organizations, social networks, knowledge-making practices, and ethical claims—dedicated to creating industry-friendly science and keeping it under wraps. Coke’s research isn’t fake science, she argues; it was real science, conducted by real and eminent scientists, but distorted by its aim. By tracing the birth, maturation, death, and effects of this global science project as it spread in two sites – the U.S. and China – Soda Science reveals the cunning ways giant corporations come to shape our diets, lifestyles, and health to their own needs.

Note: This is a science studies talk about Prof. Greenhalgh’s new book; a talk for China Studies scholars will be scheduled at a later date.Also via Zoom. Register at: https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJwsf-2hrjIjHtc03BEGIDG1RTmuG2cUDQUx#/registration

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CID Speaker Series: China and the Global Economy
2024-10-11 12:00 - 13:00 | Ellwood Democracy Lab – Rubenstein 414AB, 79 JFK St., Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, United States
Speakers:David Yang, Director, Center for History and Economics and Professor of EconomicsJie Bai, HKS Associate Professor of Public PolicyMark Wu, Director, Fairbank Center for China Studies; Henry L. Stimson Professor of LawShengqiao Lin, CID and Fairbank Center Post-Doctoral Fellow

The need for policy and public engagement with China—through rigorous analysis, informed perspectives and constructive dialogue— has never been more urgent. Learn more about the Harvard Center for International Development’s new initiative, China and the Global Economy, and how you can get involved. This will be an interactive discussion featuring CID researchers.

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Exhibit: Dunhuang and Beyond
2024-10-18 14:00 - 18:00, 2024-10-19 14:00 - 18:00, 2024-10-20 14:00 - 18:00, 2024-10-25 14:00 - 18:00, 2024-10-26 14:00 - 18:00, 2024-10-27 14:00 - 18:00, 2024-11-01 14:00 - 18:00, 2024-11-02 14:00 - 18:00 and 8 more dates | Sackler Building, Lower Level, 485 Broadway, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, United States
reserve a ticket

A major milestone and world-renowned heritage site within Silk Road networks, Dunhuang preserves more than 400 embellished Buddhist cave shrines in present-day northwest China.

Dunhuang’s cave shrines date from the fifth to fourteenth centuries. Each encloses visitors within murals and carved figures that depict Buddhist legends and paradises. Chronicling innumerable exemplary works of Buddhist artmaking over centuries, Dunhuang forms the largest encyclopedia art collection in situ. More significant than these artistic achievements, the caves offer a glimpse into a universe that rests beyond our known physical reality. Much like the shadowy illusions of Plato’s allegorical cave, the pictorial programs across Dunhuang’s caves reveal higher truths about life, death, and spiritual transcendence.

This fall, CAMLab contextualizes Dunhuang within Buddhism’s broader currents of space- and art-making that surged across China during the medieval period.• Immersing visitors in confluences of light and sound, the Cave Dance and Shadow Cave projects are case studies of two Dunhuang caves that reimagine the rich theatricality conjured by depictions of the dramas of the Buddha’s life and dances of transcendent beings.

• Rebuilding the world’s tallest pagoda in VR, the Embodied Architecture project invokes an 11the century transmission of these dynamics within the towering Shayka pagoda of the Fogang Monastery in present-day Yingxian, China. There, Buddhist pictorial motifs demarcate a journey of ascension toward enlightenment.

• The Digital Temple project uses an interactive interface to unpack the multiplicity of compositions and multivalent topographies rendered across the murals of Kaihua monastery.

By examining Buddhism’s three primary contexts in medieval China—the cave, the pagoda, and the temple—these CAMLab projects reveal the dramatic perceptual experiences and invisible force fields embedded by visual programs within Buddhist sites.Reserve Your Ticket

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Sheng Liu — Why Climatic Uncertainty Matters to Building Energy Performance: Case Studies in a Subtropical High-Density City
2024-10-23 15:00 - 16:00 | Pierce Hall 100F, 29 Oxford St., Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
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Speaker: Sheng Liu, Assistant Professor, School of Architecture, Southwest Jiaotong University; Visiting Scholar, Harvard-China Project (SEAS) and Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD)

Dr. Sheng Liu is currently an Assistant Professor in the School of Architecture, Southwest Jiaotong University who works on climate-responding architecture design and low-carbon city design. His research interests include sustainable architecture design, building performance simulation and optimization, climate change and building adaptation, urban microclimate and indoor thermal comfort. He received his Ph.D. in Architecture from the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2021. He was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Architecture, the University of Hong Kong. He had worked as an architect in mainland China before starting academic research. Dr. Liu has published more than 20 leading peer-reviewed scientific journal publications for the past five years such as in Building and Environment, Sustainable Cities and Society, Energy and Buildings, including two ESI highly citied papers. He is also the recipient of Postgraduate Research Output Award of the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2021 and 2023 Green Building Award of HKGBC. For more information, visit his website.

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Conference: Reincarnation in Tibetan Buddhism and the Institution of the Dalai Lama
2024-11-14 16:00 - 2024-11-15 17:30 | CGIS South S020, Belfer Case Study Room, 1730 Cambridge St., Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
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Reincarnation recognition began in the 13th century as a distinctive practice in Tibetan Buddhism to ensure continuity in spiritual authority across successive lives of religious masters. Over time such recognized reincarnations took on significant temporal power as well, particularly the line of the Dalai Lamas who were instrumental in the formation of the Tibetan Ganden Phodrang government in the 17th century. This conference will look at the history across the region, the esoteric practices of rebirth and divination, and the modern-day geopolitical implications of the continuation of this practice in Tibetan, Himalayan, Mongolian, and Central Asian communities — and indeed across the Buddhist world in Asia and beyond.

Day 1: Thursday, November 14, 20244:00 p.m. – Opening and Introductions Michael Puett, Harvard UniversityJanet Gyatso, Harvard University

5:00 p.m. Reception

Day 2: Friday, November 15, 2024

8:15 – 9:00 a.m. Breakfast

9:00 – 9:15 a.m. Welcome

9:15-11:15 a.m. Panel 1: Reincarnation in Tibetan Buddhism and Beyond Moderator: Michael Szonyi, Harvard UniversityPanelists:Weirong Shen, Tsinghua UniversityBodhisattvas in Saṃsāra: The Avalokiteśvara Cult and the Reincarnation of Tibetan LamasTengyur Rinpoche, Thubten Shedrubling Foundation The History of Reincarnated Lamas in TibetTawni Tidwell, University of Wisconsin–MadisonLife in Suspension with Death: Biocultural Ontologies, Perceptual Cues, and Biomarkers for the Tibetan Tukdam Postmortem Meditative State

Sangseraima Ujeed, University of MichiganThe Ocean Lama: The Dalai Lamas of the Mongols

Nicole Willock, Old Dominion University Authenticity and Authority: Methodological Pathways for Understanding the Tulku Institution

11:15-11:30 a.m. Break

11:30 a.m.-1:00 p.m. Panel 2: Ganden Phodrang, Regents, and Succession

Moderator: Janet Gyatso, Harvard University

Panelists:Martin Mills, University of AberdeenThe Ganden Podrang: Sovereignty and Succession Under the Dalai Lamas

Cameron Warner, Aarhus UniversityTibet’s Regents: A Historical Overview of the Men Tasked with Finding the Dalai Lama

Hon-Shiang Lau, City University of Hong KongChinese Primary-Source Official Records on Using a Golden Urn to Identify a New Dalai Lama

1:00-2:00 p.m. Lunch

2:00-3:30 p.m. Panel 3: The Present Dalai Lama and GeopoliticsModerator: William Kirby, Harvard University

Panelists: Jigme Yeshi, University of CalcuttaCompassion in Praxis – The Life and Legacy of the 14th Dalai Lama

Allen Carlson, Cornell UniversityWho’s Next (And Why It Matters So): Reincarnates (Especially the Dalai Lama Lineage, Particularly the 14th, Tenzin Gyatso) and the Coming Crisis in Tibet-China Relations

Tenzin Dorjee, Columbia UniversityBeijing’s Reincarnation Games: Why the Chinese Communist Party Wants the Dalai Lama to be Reborn

3:30-3:45 p.m. Break

3:45-5:15 p.m. Panel 4: Buddhist World in Asia and BeyondModerator: Michael Puett, Harvard University

Panelists:Lobsang Sangay, Harvard UniversityCo-opting the Sacred: The Intersection of Atheist Governance and Tibetan Buddhist Spiritual Authority

Josh Rogin, The Washington PostProspects of US Tibet Policy in the Next Administration

Dibyesh Anand, University of WestminsterCompeting Notions of Sovereignty: Tibet, China, and the Politicizing of Reincarnation

5:15-5:30 p.m. Conclusion

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Fan Dai — Certainties out of the Uncertain: Subnational Climate Diplomacy Between the U.S. and China
2024-11-20 15:00 - 16:00 | Pierce Hall 100F, 29 Oxford St., Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
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Speaker: Fan Dai, Director, California-China Climate Institute, University of California, Berkeley; Senior Fellow, Environment and Natural Resources Program and Science, Technology and Public Policy Program, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School

Dr. Fan Dai is the director of California-China Climate Institute, and adjunct faculty at Energy and Resource Group, University of California, Berkeley. She is also a Senior Fellow in the Environment and Natural Resources Program and Science, Technology and Public Policy Program at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School. Her research expertise includes market mechanisms for climate change mitigation, climate diplomacy and governance.

Dr. Dai was appointed by former California Governor Jerry Brown as Special Advisor to chair the state’s China Interagency Working Group and served as the liaison on critical economic and environmental initiatives with China. Previously, she served as a senior advisor at the California Environmental Protection Agency and the California Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development, where she provided counsel on the state’s international policy and global climate partnerships. At the California-China Climate Institute, she led several critical research projects on subnational climate policy and long-term planning for carbon neutrality. Dr. Dai received her BS in law from Beijing Forestry University, her master of law from Berkeley Law, University of California, and her doctoral degree on environmental policy and economics from State University of New York at Syracuse.

Sponsored by Harvard-China Project, Harvard Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

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