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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20211004T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20211004T173000
DTSTAMP:20260501T154552
CREATED:20210907T190704Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20210907T190704Z
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SUMMARY:China Humanities Seminar Featuring Stephanie Balkwill - Another Cakravartin Ruler?: Feminist History and the History of Buddhism in Early Medieval China
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Stephanie Balkwill\, Assistant Professor\, Buddhist Studies\, UCLA \nNorthern Wei 北魏 (386–534 CE) Empress Dowager Ling 靈 (d. 529) is commonly regarded as the last independent ruler of her dynasty\, which descended into terminal internecine war during her regency. As a ruler\, she inherited a deeply divided state. The move of the capital from Pingcheng to Luoyang in 494 created severe economic alienation for the northern peoples who had traditionally supported the rise of the dynasty\, just as it made them cultural outsiders to elite politics in the new capital. Although the Empress Dowager exacerbated such geographic and ethnic tensions in her time\, what is less known about her is that she also shaped Buddhist modalities of statecraft to legitimate her reign and\, seemingly\, attempt to manage her difficult empire. In this talk\, I will analyze the Empress Dowager’s program of state Buddhism and argue that like her famous contemporary in the South\, Emperor Wu 武 (r. 502–549) of the Liang 梁 (502–557)\, she\, too\, positioned herself as a universal Buddhist monarch in medieval China. In so doing\, I engage the question of how our understanding of Buddhist history changes when we put women into it and I propose a series of new questions\, which\, based in the study of women\, serve to elevate our understanding of the ways in which Buddhism became a dominant social force in early medieval China. \nPresented via Zoom\nRegistration Required\nRegister at: https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJYuc-6vqjkjE9yzodSy0HtBA_edh2R_Xdx3
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/china-humanities-seminar-featuring-stephanie-balkwill-another-cakravartin-ruler-feminist-history-and-the-history-of-buddhism-in-early-medieval-china/
LOCATION:Massachusetts
CATEGORIES:China Humanities Seminar
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=:
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20211005T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20211005T173000
DTSTAMP:20260501T154552
CREATED:20210614T205548Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250130T155053Z
UID:10802-1633449600-1633455000@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Modern China Lecture Series Featuring Isabella Weber - How China Escaped Shock Therapy: The Market Reform Debate
DESCRIPTION:  \n \n \nSpeaker: Isabella Weber\, Assistant Professor of Economics\, University of Massachusetts Amherst \nChina has become deeply integrated into the world economy. Yet\, gradual marketization has facilitated the country’s rise without leading to its wholesale assimilation to global neoliberalism. This book uncovers the fierce contest about economic reforms that shaped China’s path. In the first post-Mao decade\, China’s reformers were sharply divided. They agreed that China had to reform its economic system and move toward more marketization – but struggled over how to go about it. \nShould China destroy the core of the socialist system through shock therapy\, or should it use the institutions of the planned economy as market creators? With hindsight\, the historical record proves the high stakes behind the question: China embarked on an economic expansion commonly described as unprecedented in scope and pace\, whereas Russia’s economy collapsed under shock therapy. Based on extensive research\, including interviews with key Chinese and international participants and World Bank officials as well as insights gleaned from unpublished documents\, the book charts the debate that ultimately enabled China to follow a path to gradual reindustrialization. Beyond shedding light on the crossroads of the 1980s\, it reveals the intellectual foundations of state-market relations in reform-era China through a longue durée lens. Overall\, the book delivers an original perspective on China’s economic model and its continuing contestations from within and from without. \nIsabella M. Weber is a political economist working on China\, global trade and the history of economic thought. She is an Assistant Professor of Economics and the Research Leader for China of the Asian Political Economy Program at the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. \nPresented via Zoom Webinar \n\n\nTranscript: Download Transcript
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/modern-china-lecture-series-featuring-isabella-weber/
LOCATION:Massachusetts
CATEGORIES:Modern China Lecture
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20211006T090000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20211006T101500
DTSTAMP:20260501T154552
CREATED:20210830T140258Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20220801T182433Z
UID:10978-1633510800-1633515300@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Critical Issues Confronting China featuring Jeffrey S. Lehman - What Does U.S. Business Really Want From China?
DESCRIPTION:  \n \n \nSpeaker: Jeffrey Lehman\, Vice Chancellor and Professor of Law\, NYU Shanghai \nJeffrey Lehman is the Vice Chancellor of NYU Shanghai\, where he oversees all academic and administrative operations. Lehman is an internationally acclaimed leader in higher education\, having served as dean of the University of Michigan Law School\, the 11th president of Cornell University\, and the founding dean of the Peking University School of Transnational Law. \nPrior to joining the University of Michigan Law School\, Lehman served as a law clerk to Frank M. Coffin\, Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and Associate Justice John Paul Stevens of the United States Supreme Court. He then spent four years at Caplin & Drysdale\, a Washington\, DC law firm. Throughout his professional and academic career\, Lehman has volunteered his time and energy to nonprofit organizations that share his commitments in the fields of higher education\, law\, and technology. \nLehman received an undergraduate degree in mathematics from Cornell University\, an MPP from the University of Michigan\, and a JD from the University of Michigan Law School. He is a multi-award winner for his work both in the United States and abroad\, including the Friendship Award\, which is China’s highest honor for “foreign experts who have made outstanding contributions to the country’s economic and social progress.” Lehman is also a recipient of an honorary doctorate from Peking University. \nCheck back soon for more information! \nPresented via Zoom Webinar \n\n\nTranscript: Download Transcript
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/critical-issues-confronting-china-featuring-jeffrey-s-lehman/
LOCATION:Massachusetts
CATEGORIES:Critical Issues Confronting China Series
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20211007T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20211007T173000
DTSTAMP:20260501T154552
CREATED:20210811T131734Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20220801T181347Z
UID:10930-1633622400-1633627800@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:China Economy Lecture Series featuring Yeling Tan - Disaggregating China\, Inc: State Strategies in the Liberal Economic Order
DESCRIPTION:  \n \n \nSpeaker: Yeiling Tan\, Assistant Professor\, Department of Political Science\, University of Oregon \nProfessor Yeling Tan discusses her book\, Disaggregating China\, Inc: State Strategies in the Liberal Economic Order. China’s entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001 represented an historic opportunity to peacefully integrate a rising economic power into the international order based on market-liberal rules. Yet current economic tensions between the US and China indicate that this integration process has run into trouble. To what extent has the liberal internationalist promise of the WTO been fulfilled? To answer this question\, this study breaks open the black box of the massive Chinese state and unpacks the economic strategies that central economic agencies as well as subnational authorities adopted in response to WTO rules demanding far-reaching modifications to China’s domestic institutions. The study explains why\, rather than imposing constraints\, WTO entry provoked divergent policy responses from different actors within the Chinese state\, in ways neither expected nor desired by the architects of the WTO. \nYeiling Tan is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Oregon\, and a non-resident scholar at the UC San Diego 21st Century China Center. From 2017-2020\, she was a fellow of the World Economic Forum’s Council on the Future of International Trade and Investment. From 2017-2019\, she was a member of the Georgetown University Initiative for U.S.-China Dialogue on Global Issues. In 2017-18\, she was a post-doctoral fellow at the Princeton-Harvard China and the World Program in Princeton University.  \n​Her research interests lie at the intersection of international and comparative political economy\, with an emphasis on China and the developing world. Two broad questions define her research agenda. First: how do the rules of globalization affect politics within authoritarian regimes such as China\, given that these rules require increasingly far-reaching modifications to domestic institutions? Second\, how do authoritarian regimes affect rule-making at the international level?  \nShe holds a PhD in Public Policy from Harvard University (2017)\, an MPA in International Development from the John F. Kennedy School of Government\, Harvard University (2011) and a BA (Honors\, Distinction) in International Relations and Economics from Stanford University (2002). Apart from research on globalization and China\, she has also worked in the public and non-governmental sectors on a range of issues including economic development\, international security policy\, global governance and governance innovations. \nCheck back soon for more information! \nPresented via Zoom Webinar \n\n\nTranscript: Download Transcript
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/china-economy-lecture-series-featuring-yeling-tan/
LOCATION:Massachusetts
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20211007T200000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20211007T213000
DTSTAMP:20260501T154552
CREATED:20210809T131320Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20220801T182038Z
UID:10922-1633636800-1633642200@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Modern Chinese Humanities Seminar Featuring Pang Laikwan - Economic Sovereignty in Contemporary China: The Biopolitical Subject as Garlic Chive
DESCRIPTION:  \n \n \nSpeaker: Pang Laikwan\, Professor of Cultural Studies\, Chinese University of Hong Kong \nThis paper focuses on the wide popularity of the meme and buzzword jiucai\, garlic chives\, on China’s internet to investigate the cultural and political subjectivity of the ordinary Chinese citizens in a time of fierce competition simply to survive\, largely known as neijuan\, involution. Through this investigation of the garlic chives meme\, the paper also updates Foucault’s theory of the biopolitics by investigating the deeply intertwined relation between the biological\, the economic\, and the political in contemporary Chinese governmentality. While the post-socialist PRC has developed a sophisticated economic rationality to legitimize its state sovereignty\, this economic sovereignty also strains the ordinary subjects so much that it begins to pose serious challenge to this legitimacy. \nPANG Laikwan is Professor of Cultural Studies at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. She is the author of a few books\, including\, more recently\, The Appearing Demos: Hong Kong During and After the Umbrella Movement (U of Michigan\, 2021)\, The Art of Cloning: Creative Production During China’s Cultural Revolution (Verso\, 2017)\, andCreativity and Its Discontents: China’s Creative Industries and Intellectual Property Rights Offenses (Duke UP\, 2012). She will be a CASBS fellow at Stanford University in the academic year of 2021-2022. \nPresented via Zoom Webinar \n\n\nTranscript: Download Transcript
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/pang-laikwan-economic-sovereignty-in-contemporary-china-the-biopolitical-subject-as-garlic-chive/
LOCATION:Massachusetts
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20211007T203000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20211007T220000
DTSTAMP:20260501T154552
CREATED:20210915T131508Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20210915T131508Z
UID:11025-1633638600-1633644000@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Weixia Gu - Dispute Resolution in China: Litigation\, Arbitration\, Mediation and their Interactions
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Weixia Gu\, Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law\, University of Hong Kong \nFor more details\, including a Zoom link\, please visit http://www.law.harvard.edu/programs/eals/events.html.
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/weixia-gu-dispute-resolution-in-china-litigation-arbitration-mediation-and-their-interactions/
LOCATION:Massachusetts
CATEGORIES:Events of Interest
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20211013T100000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20211013T113000
DTSTAMP:20260501T154552
CREATED:20211004T160821Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20211004T160821Z
UID:11086-1634119200-1634124600@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:David Cheng Chang - Escaping From the Communists and Then From the Anti-Communists: A Prisoner’s Odyssey From Southwest China to Korea\, India\, and Argentina
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: David Cheng Chang\, Division of Humanities\, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology; HYI-Radcliffe Institute Fellow\, 2021-22\nChair/discussant: Arunabh Ghosh\,  Associate Professor of History\, Harvard University \nBy the end of the Korean War\, only 88 out of more than 150\,000 Chinese and North Korean prisoners of war (POWs) refused to return to either side of their divided countries; instead\, they sought asylum in neutral nations. Using oral history interviews and archival documents from the United States\, Taiwan\, and India\, this talk charts the life history of Cheng Liren: from his education as a police academy cadet during the civil war and his first job as a police officer in his home province Guizhou in the final days of the Nationalist regime\, to his desperate enlistment in the Communist army\, desertion in Korea\, rise and fall as an anti-Communist POW leader on Koje and Cheju Islands\, his daring escape from fellow anti-Communist POWs at Panmunjom\, to his two-year sojourn in India\, and his final settlement and business success in Argentina. \nPresented via Zoom\nRegistration Required\nRegister at: https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJItd-qurD8rGNJBFrr8tS6X1695eSvlSswX \nMore info: https://www.harvard-yenching.org/events/escaping-from-the-communists-and-then-from-the-anti-communists-a-prisoners-odyssey-from-southwest-china-to-korea-india-and-argentina/
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/david-chen-chang-escaping-from-the-communists-and-then-from-the-anti-communists-a-prisoners-odyssey-from-southwest-china-to-korea-india-and-argentina/
LOCATION:Massachusetts
CATEGORIES:Co-Sponsored Lectures,Events of Interest
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20211013T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20211013T173000
DTSTAMP:20260501T154552
CREATED:20210818T141412Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20220801T181821Z
UID:10938-1634140800-1634146200@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Environment in Asia Lecture Series featuring Ruth Mostern - The Yellow River: A Natural and Unnatural History
DESCRIPTION:  \n \n \n  \nSpeaker: Ruth Mostern\, University of Pittsburgh \nThis talk showcases Ruth Mostern’s new book: The Yellow River: A Natural and Unnatural History (Yale University Press\, 2021).  The Yellow River explains how environmentally transformative human activity has shaped the whole watershed and constituted the relationship between people and the river since Neolithic times.  The book demonstrates that the history of the relationship between people and the river is a history of soil as much as it is a history of water\, and that some of the most important episodes in Yellow River history transpired on the semi-arid lands of the Loess Plateau\, far from the riverbed itself. Using GIS and data analysis as well as close readings of historical sources\, the book reveals that although  the Yellow River floodplain was sometimes a site of frequent and devastating disasters\, this was only the case at times of certain decisions about public policy and infrastructure design. \nRuth Mostern is Associate Professor of History and Director of the World History Center at the University of Pittsburgh. She is the author of Dividing the Realm in Order to Govern: The Spatial Organization of the Song State (960-1276 CE) (Harvard Asia Center\, 2011) and the co-editor of Placing Names: Enriching and Integrating Gazetteers (Indiana University Press\, 2016). Her current book\, Following the Tracks of Yu: The Imperial and Ecological Worlds of the Yellow River is in contract at Yale University Press. She is currently PI on two NEH grants: one to develop content and infrastructure for an ecosystem of digital historical gazetteers\, and one to design and launch an interdisciplinary curriculum about water in Central Asia. \nCheck back soon for more information! \nPresented via Zoom Webinar \n\n\nTranscript: Download Transcript
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/environment-in-asia-lecture-series-featuring-ruth-mostern/
LOCATION:Massachusetts
CATEGORIES:Environment,Environment
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20211015T111500
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20211015T123000
DTSTAMP:20260501T154552
CREATED:20211004T160417Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20211004T160417Z
UID:11085-1634296500-1634301000@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Panel Discussion - The Future of Africa-China Engagement/Relations
DESCRIPTION:Speakers:\nMaria Adele Carrai\, Assistant Professor of Global China Studies\, NYU Shanghai; Associate\, Harvard University Asia Center\nFolashadé Soulé\, Senior Research Associate\, Global Economic Governance Programme\, Blavatnik School of Government\, University of Oxford\nLina Benabdallah\, Assistant Professor\, Politics and International Affairs Department\, Wake Forest University \nModerator: Emmanuel K. Akyeampong\, Ellen Gurney Professor of History and Professor of African and African American Studies; Oppenheimer Faculty Director of the Harvard University Center for African Studies \nSponsored by the Harvard University Asia Center; Co-sponsored by the Harvard University Center for African Studies and Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies\, Harvard University  \nPresented via Zoom Webinar.\nRegister here: https://tinyurl.com/4hs83am4
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/panel-discussion-the-future-of-africa-china-engagement-relations/
LOCATION:Massachusetts
CATEGORIES:Events of Interest
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=:
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20211019T200000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20211019T213000
DTSTAMP:20260501T154552
CREATED:20210614T210901Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250130T155053Z
UID:10805-1634673600-1634679000@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Modern China Lecture Series Featuring Fang Xiaoping - Pandemics and Politics in Mao’s China: The Rise of the Emergency Disciplinary State
DESCRIPTION:  \nSpeaker: Fang Xiaoping\, Assistant Professor of History\, School of Humanities\, Nanyang Technological University\, Singapore. \nDuring the 1961-1965 period\, a cholera pandemic ravaged the southeastern coastal areas of Mao’s China which was already suffering from lingering starvation\, class struggles\, political campaigns and geopolitical challenges of the Cold War. This lecture focuses on the first global pandemic that had plagued China after 1949 and the resulting large-scale but clandestine emergency response. Based on rare archival documents and in-depth interviews with the ever-dwindling witnesses of the pandemic\, this lecture examines the dynamics between disease and politics when the Communist Party was committed to restructuring society between the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. The speaker argues that disease and its control were not only affected by the social restructuring that began in the 1950s and strengthened since 1961\, but also integral components of this. Quarantine\, mass inoculation\, epidemic surveillance and information control functionalised social control and political discipline\, and therefore significantly contributed to the rise of an emergency disciplinary state\, which exerted far-reaching impacts on its sociopolitical system and emergency response since Mao’s China\, including the COVID-19 pandemic. \nXiaoping Fang is an assistant professor of history at the School of Humanities of the Nanyang Technological University\, Singapore. He received his PhD in History from the National University of Singapore (NUS)\, where he majored in modern China and the history of science\, technology and medicine in East Asia from 2002 to 2008. He studied and worked at the Needham Research Institute\, Cambridge\, UK (2005-2006)\, the Asia Research Institute of the NUS (2008)\, the China Research Centre of the University of Technology\, Sydney\, Australia (2009-2013)\, and the National Humanities Center\, USA (2019-2020). His research interests focus on the history of medicine\, health\, and disease in twentieth-century China and the socio-political history of Mao’s China after 1949. He is the author of Barefoot Doctors and Western Medicine in China (Rochester\, NY: University of Rochester Press\, 2012) and China and the Cholera Pandemic: Restructuring Society under Mao (Pittsburgh\, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press\, 2021).   \nPresented via Zoom \n\n\nTranscript: Download Transcript
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/modern-china-lecture-series-featuring-fang-xiaoping/
LOCATION:Massachusetts
CATEGORIES:Modern China Lecture
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=:
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20211020T093000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20211020T104500
DTSTAMP:20260501T154552
CREATED:20210908T150534Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20220801T224220Z
UID:11005-1634722200-1634726700@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Critical Issues Confronting China featuring Kellee Tsai - Evolutionary Governance under Authoritarianism in Contemporary China
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Kellee Tsai\, Dean of Humanities and Social Science and Chair Professor of Social Science\, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology \nThe structural transformation of China over the past several decades has given rise to a fundamental tension between the pursuit of social stability and authoritarian resilience.  On the one hand\, repressive strategies enable the party-state to maintain its monopoly of political power (authoritarianism). On the other hand\, the quality of governance is enhanced when the state adopts softer modes of engagement with society (resilience).  This dilemma lies at the core of evolutionary governance under authoritarianism.  This talk engages the vast “authoritarianism with adjectives” literature in the study of contemporary China and presents case studies of state-society interactions to offer insight into the circumstances under which the party-state exerts its coercive power versus engaging in more flexible responses or policy adaptations. \nPresented via Zoom Webinar \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nTranscript: Download Transcript
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/critical-issues-confronting-china-featuring-kellee-tsai/
LOCATION:Massachusetts
CATEGORIES:Critical Issues Confronting China
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20211025T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20211025T173000
DTSTAMP:20260501T154552
CREATED:20210907T190859Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20210907T190859Z
UID:11003-1635177600-1635183000@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:China Humanities Seminar Featuring Scott Pearce - Looking Behind the Text: The Case of Northern Wei’s ‘Yuan Pi’
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Scott Pearce\, Western Washington University \nAll textual traditions are based on their own particular sets of assumptions and preoccupations. This was the case of the Chinese classical tradition as well\, which having taken full shape under the Han empire\, continued to be used as the only available language of written record by the very different regimes that controlled the Yellow River plains after Han collapse. One of these was Northern Wei (386-534)\, a new kind of empire in East Asia\, of Inner Asian origin\, whose leadership for generations continued to speak an Inner Asian language and conceptualized the world in terms apparently quite different from those embedded in the Literary Chinese that gives the only descriptions we have of these people and their actions. Here we use the case of a royal kinsman called in the text “Yuan Pi 元丕” (422-503) to examine various ways in which we might attempt to look behind (or through\, or under) received text to get a glimpse at least of the actual man. \nPresented via Zoom\nRegister at: https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJIoduGupzMuG9zxpckd860pztJ_rzIMCxse
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/china-humanities-seminar-featuring-scott-pearce-looking-behind-the-text-the-case-of-northern-weis-yuan-pi/
LOCATION:Massachusetts
CATEGORIES:China Humanities Seminar
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=:
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20211025T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20211025T173000
DTSTAMP:20260501T154552
CREATED:20211005T132553Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20211005T132553Z
UID:11091-1635177600-1635183000@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Harvard Buddhist Studies Forum Featuring Aaron Proffitt - Buddha's Name as Mantra in Medieval Japan
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Aaron Proffitt\, Assistant Professor of Japanese Studies\, University at Albany-SUNY\n\nThe recitation of the name of a buddha (nenbutsu) is often associated with deathbed practices and traditions commonly grouped under the rubric Pure Land Buddhism. In this talk\, Professor Aaron Proffitt will consider this widely popular practice as understood by practitioners of mantra\, focusing in particular upon the work of Dohan (1179-1252)\, an early-medieval Japanese scholar-monk and Esoteric Pure Land theorist. While Pure Land practices such as aspiring for rebirth in a purified buddha land are often seen to be at odds with the recitation of mantra for this-worldly benefits\, in fact\, in medieval Japan these approaches to the practice of Buddhism were often carried out in tandem. In some cases\, the nenbutsu was understood as a mantra\, and because many mantras are in fact the very name of a particular buddha\, bodhisattva\, or god\, many mantras would technically qualify as “nenbutsu.” As we will see\, Dohan’s “esoteric nenbutsu” theory reveals that for some medieval Japanese Buddhist practitioners\, the so-called mystery of speech as a willed act\, an act of “self power\,” rests in its expression of the mystery of breath\, as an unwilled act\, an expression of “other power.” In this way\, the nenbutsu as mantra is said to transcend and collapse perceived binaries between buddhas and beings\, this world and the Pure Land. \nProfessor Aaron Proffitt is an Assistant Professor of Japanese Studies at the University at Albany-SUNY. Proffitt received his PhD in Buddhist Studies from the University of Michigan\, and his monograph\, Esoteric Pure Land Buddhism\, is currently in-press with University of Hawaii Press\, Pure Land Buddhist Studies series. \nPresented via Zoom\nRegister at: https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJcuf-CsrDMvH9a02UR3MCAR_3t_83P_OpHa
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/harvard-buddhist-studies-forum-featuring-aaron-proffitt-buddhas-name-as-mantra-in-medieval-japan/
LOCATION:Massachusetts
CATEGORIES:Buddhist Studies Forum
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20211026T150000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20211026T170000
DTSTAMP:20260501T154552
CREATED:20211014T135812Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20211014T135812Z
UID:11123-1635260400-1635267600@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Jie Li — Socialist Hot Noise: Loudspeakers and Open-Air Cinema in Mao’s China
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Li Jie\, John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Humanities\, Harvard University \nAs a scholar of literary\, film\, and cultural studies\, Jie Li’s research interests center on the mediation of memories in modern China. Her first book\, Shanghai Homes: Palimpsests of Private Life (Columbia\, 2014)\, excavates a century of memories embedded in two alleyway neighborhoods destined for demolition. Her second monograph\, Utopian Ruins: A Memorial Museum of the Mao Era (Duke University Press\, 2020)\, explores contemporary cultural memories of the 1950s to the 1970s through textual\, audiovisual\, and material artifacts\, including police files\, photographs\, documentary films\, and museums. Li has co-edited a volume entitled Red Legacies: Cultural Afterlives of the Communist Revolution (Harvard Asia Center\, 2016). Her current book project\, Cinematic Guerrillas: Maoist Propaganda as a Spirit Medium explores film exhibition and reception in socialist China\, including movie theatres and open-air screenings\, projectionists and audiences\, as well as memories of revolutionary and foreign films. Her other research projects include a transnational film history of Manchuria and a cultural history of noise in modern China. \nPresented via Zoom\nRegister at: https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMtf-ypqDIqH9XHuHa5_h4qWkMI_Rlu1N1W
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/jie-li-socialist-hot-noise-loudspeakers-and-open-air-cinema-in-maos-china/
LOCATION:Massachusetts
CATEGORIES:Co-Sponsored Lectures
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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20211027T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20211027T133000
DTSTAMP:20260501T154552
CREATED:20211018T171007Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20211018T171007Z
UID:11136-1635336000-1635341400@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:David Cheng Chang - Between Worlds: China’s WWII Interpreters and Their Divergent Fates in China\, Taiwan\, and the United States
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: David Cheng Chang\, Associate Professor of Humanities; Associate Director\, Global China Center\, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. \nIn this lecture\, Professor Chang will talk about the use of interdisciplinary source materials to write a book that will weave together the personal histories of more than 3\,000 Chinese interpreters for the American and British allied forces during World War II with the larger military\, political\, diplomatic\, and social history of World War II\, the Chinese Civil War\, the Korean War\, and the Cold War. \nPresented via Zoom\nRegister at: https://harvard.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_F4c12b7KRzq2Pzs40VUjqA
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/david-cheng-chang-between-worlds-chinas-wwii-interpreters-and-their-divergent-fates-in-china-taiwan-and-the-united-states/
LOCATION:Massachusetts
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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20211027T123000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20211027T134500
DTSTAMP:20260501T154552
CREATED:20210825T134027Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20220809T172758Z
UID:10952-1635337800-1635342300@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Critical Issues Confronting China Lecture Series featuring Bill Bikales - From Poverty Eradication to Common Prosperity: Reflections on Recent Poverty Achievements and Implications for the Next Phase of Development
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Bill Bikales\, Principal and Lead Economist\, Kunlun Associates \nBill is a Harvard-trained economist and Asia specialist and has worked at the most senior level of government in Mongolia on comprehensive fiscal reform and restructuring insolvent bank and power sectors\, and at grass roots level in rural China on increasing poor women’s uptake of maternal health services. \nPresented via Zoom Webinar \nAlso streaming on YouTube \n\n\nTranscript: Download Transcript
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/critical-issues-confronting-china-lecture-series-featuring-bill-bikales/
LOCATION:Massachusetts
CATEGORIES:Critical Issues Confronting China Series
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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20211028T200000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20211028T213000
DTSTAMP:20260501T154552
CREATED:20210809T131703Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20220809T173002Z
UID:10923-1635451200-1635456600@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Modern Chinese Humanities Seminar Featuring Ma Shaoling — The Stone and the Wireless: Lyrical Media and Bad Models of the Feeling Women
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Ma Shaoling\, Assistant Professor of Humanities\, Yale-NUS College \nAuthors often talk about their books via the introduction or the conclusion\, and sidestep what lies in the middle. The title of my book\, The Stone and the Wireless\, refers to two figures that bookend particular communicative imaginations of the late Qing in my study\, but it is the properly intermediary chapter\, one that both connects and divides the first and second halves of the book\, which fully bears the weight of mediation that is my central argument. Media\, simply put\, mediate between representations of communicative devices and processes\, and the machines “themselves.” Women and what was deemed as the proper transmission of their feelings were not only appropriated as figurative means to the grander end of political and social transformations; they also cohered as literal\, technical mediums\, as exemplary female conduits. At the turn of the twentieth century\, photography\, and the new hybrid form of photographed biographies and autobiographies of exemplary women dramatize the transformations brought about by new media technologies through various constructions of female sentimentality specific to their formal structures: poetry\, through lyricism; photography\, through the tension between the photographic index and the deixis; and the text-image relation in photographed biographies and autobiographies. The question is not whether women can represent their gendered consciousness “in” these new mediums but to radically posit gendered consciousness as a lyrical medium\, whose sheer instrumentality paradoxically short-circuits the project of nation-building. By comparing Huang Zunxian’s technological exploits of feminine\, lyrical sentimentality with Qiu Jin’s “Self-Inscription on a Photograph\,” written on the back of her own photographic portrait\, this intermediary chapter attempts to retrieve women’s relationships to technology in ways that have not been co-opted by masculine-nationalist ideologies. \nShaoling Ma is Assistant Professor of Humanities at Yale-NUS College\, Singapore where she works at the intersections of global Chinese culture\, media\, and history\, and literary and critical theory.  \nPresented via Zoom WebinarRegistration Required \nAlso streaming on YouTube \n\n\nTranscript: Download Transcript
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/ma-shaoling-the-stone-and-the-wireless-mediating-china-1861-1906/
LOCATION:Massachusetts
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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20211028T200000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20211028T213000
DTSTAMP:20260501T154552
CREATED:20211012T141107Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20211012T141107Z
UID:11119-1635451200-1635456600@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Workers and Change in China: Resistance\, Repression\, Responsiveness
DESCRIPTION:Speakers:\nManfred Elfstrom\, Assistant Professor of Political Science\, University of British Columbia.\nYao Li\, Assistant Professor\, Department of Sociology and Criminology and Law\, University of Florida \nModerator: Anthony Saich\, Director\, Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation; Daewoo Professor of International Affairs\, Harvard Kennedy School of Government \nStrikes\, protests\, and riots by Chinese workers have been rising over the past decade. The state has addressed a number of grievances\, yet has also come down increasingly hard on civil society groups pushing for reform. Why are these two seemingly clashing developments occurring simultaneously? Manfred Elfstrom uses extensive fieldwork and statistical analysis to examine both the causes and consequences of protest. The book adopts a holistic approach\, encompassing national trends in worker–state relations\, local policymaking processes and the dilemmas of individual officials and activists. Instead of taking sides in the old debate over whether non-democracies like China’s are on the verge of collapse or have instead found ways of maintaining their power indefinitely\, it explores the daily evolution of autocratic rule. While providing a uniquely comprehensive picture of change in China\, this important study proposes a new model of bottom-up change within authoritarian systems more generally. \nPresented via Zoom\nRegister at: https://harvard.zoom.us/webinar/register/9016334418370/WN_kJ-DOLoORpel9R4nqRf0sg
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/manfred-elfstrom-workers-and-change-in-china-resistance-repression-responsiveness/
LOCATION:Massachusetts
CATEGORIES:Co-Sponsored Lectures
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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20211029T100000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20211029T111500
DTSTAMP:20260501T154552
CREATED:20211018T170156Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20220802T002147Z
UID:11135-1635501600-1635506100@fairbank.fas.harvard.edu
SUMMARY:Connecting the World-Island: What will China’s PEACE cable bring to Pakistan and East Africa?
DESCRIPTION:Speakers:\nMotolani Agbebi\, University teacher\, Faculty of Management and Business\, University of Tampere (Finland)\nTayyab Safdar\, Post-Doctoral Researcher\, East Asia Centre & Department of Politics\, University of Virginia\nRoxana Vatanparast\, Affiliate\, Center on Global Legal Transformation\, Columbia Law School \nModerators:\nNargis Kassenova\, Senior Fellow\, Program on Central Asia\, Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies\nJames Gethyn Evans\, Communications Officer\, Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies; Ph.D. Candidate\, Department of History\, Harvard University \nChina’s Hengtong Group—leading a consortium of telecom companies from Hong Kong\, Pakistan\, and East Africa—will soon complete installation of the Pakistan East Africa Connecting Europe (PEACE) cable. Spanning the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea\, this cable will connect the three most populous continents of Asia\, Europe and Africa\, or what Halford Mackinder described as the “World Island.” The cable aims to provide these previously under-serviced regions with the shortest latency between routes and high-quality Internet\, but what are China’s aims with the project and what benefits will it bring to partners in South Asia and Africa? This roundtable will discuss the technical\, economic\, and geopolitical implications of this flagship project of China’s Belt and Road Initiative. \nPresented via Zoom\nRegister at: https://harvard.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_OCG6SSfGQFKmBk-_edjqzw \nCo-sponsored by the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies and the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies
URL:https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/connecting-the-world-island-what-will-chinas-peace-cable-bring-to-pakistan-and-east-africa/
LOCATION:Massachusetts
CATEGORIES:Co-Sponsored Lectures
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