Kokuritsu Shônen

The Art and Politics in East Asia Workshop

Presents:

Kokuritsu Shônen: Criminality, Beauty, and

National Boyhood in Modern Japan

Brian Bergstrom

Ph.D. Student

Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations

With a response offered by

Mika Endo, Ph.D candidate, EALC

Friday, December 5
3:00-5:00 p.m.

Judd 313

Click on the link to view the paper.

If you would like to be added to our mailing list and receive workshop updates, please contact ktanaka@uchicago.edu

Persons with a disability who believe they may need assistance, please email Kathryn Tanaka at ktanaka@uchicago.edu or Tomoko Seto at tseto@uchicago.edu

Competing Nationalisms: Tibet, China, and the West

The Art and Politics of East Asia Workshop and

East Asia Trans-Regional Histories Workshop jointly present a special workshop session:

Competing Nationalisms:

Tibet, China, and the West

Guest Speakers:

Robert Barnett (Professor of Modern Tibetan Studies at Columbia University)

Tsering Wangdu Shakya (Canadian Research Chair in Religion and Contemporary Society in Asia, University of British Columbia)

Chaohua Wang (Essayist and editor of “One China, Many Paths”)

With responses offered by

Scott Relyea, University of Chicago Ph.D candidate, History

Saul Thomas, University of Chicago Ph.D candidate, Anthropology

November 21 (Friday) 3:006:00


Social Science Building
302

As the Beijing Olympics have dominated recent discussions about the current reality and future prospects of the People’s Republic of China, much needed analysis of the tumultuous protests and riots in the Tibetan regions of western China in March and April 2008 has been pushed to the sidelines.  We are now several months away from a crisis that not only exposed serious fault lines in the construction of a unified and harmonious China but also laid bare the underlying (dis)contents of contemporary nationalisms in the region.

Distance in time, we hope, will allow us to develop reasoned perspectives on the events in Tibet and its surrounding regions, and on the outpouring of competing reactions that quickly ensued.

For this reason, we have invited three speakers – Wang Chaohua, Robert Barnett, and Tsering Wangdu Shakya– to share their perspectives and lead an informed discussion that seeks to re-examine the dynamics, motivations, and timing of the protests; the voices and media that sought to represent and define the crisis; and the broader historical and political implications of the mobilization of different nationalisms and imperialisms that framed these events.

This event is generously co-sponsored by the China Committee of the Center for East Asian Studies, the Undergraduate Program in International Studies, the Norman Wait Harris Memorial Fund of the Center for International Studies, and the Committee on Southern Asian Studies.

Persons who have a disability and believe they may need assistance, please contact Kathryn Tanaka at ktanaka@uchicago.edu.

Suggested Readings:

Articles by Workshop Presenters:

Download Wang Chaohua’s Political Dissent and Tale of 2 Nationalisms

Download Tsering Shakya’s Blood in the Snows and an interview in the New Left Review.  Professor Tsering Shakya also asked us to view this clip and have a look at his translation of the text.

Download an interview with Robert Barnett published in Foreign Policy. Please also take a look at his articles on Internal Sovereignty, One China, and Two Realities.

Relevant Articles:

Download Wang Hui’s Orientalism, Autonomy of Ethnic Regions, and the Politics of Respect (Chinese) and Depoliticized Politics: From East to West

Competing Nationalisms: Links to poems, videos and essays of further interest

The New York Times this week carries an update on the situation between Tibet and China.

You can view a video-version of a poem called “To the West: What Do You Want Us to Do After All? A modest tribute to part of world history over the past 150 years”, By a Quiet, Quiet Chinese here. The poem, circulated widely in mid-April, seems to have first appeared in French and then in Chinese and then in English.

This is a video showing images of the protests in Lhasa and protests accompanying the voyage of the Olympic flame.The images are accompanied by a hip-hop song calling on Chinese people not to accept such tactics. The last part of the video switches to a melancholy song about Lhasa, and mourns the victims of the unrest. The video was created by Chenzi in Paris, and appeared as a user-generated piece on Sina.com in the mid-April, and was quickly circulated on youtube as well.

Wang Lixiong recently published a 3-part article that we recommend. The first part can be found here, and here are the second and third. (In Chinese)

Here is an article from April 2008 by Brendon O’Neill, British journalist and Editor of Spiked Online, about the stereotypes of Chinese people used by the Free Tibet movement in Britain.

Another article on the debates in China over boycotting western companies in April and May 2008. The article, by Jeffrey Wasserstrom, was published in Nation, April 28, 2008.

A item of interest is an essay on “Orientalism, Autonomy of Ethnic Regions, and the Politics of Dignity” by the historian and public intellectual Wang Hui, published in the journal Tianya (Frontier) 2008, no. 4 (July-August).

You can find here a letter to the editors of the South China Morning Post by anthropologist Barry Sautman, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

The internet writer Yang Hengjun has also posted an article entitled “Why CNN is patriotic.”

A long series of posts by various authors on the blog The China Beat can be read here.

Wang Chaohua has also recommended an article by Wang Lixiong and an independent Tibetan blog written by his wife, where in fact his writings on Tibet often appear, which can be found here.