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Every semester, the weekly East Asian Studies Lecture Series brings a broad range of speakers to the Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies. The purpose is to provide students, faculty, and the community at large with a forum for the exploration of important topics in the field by bringing some of the most important scholars of East Asia to the Wesleyan campus. The talks range in type from scholarly discussions of cutting-edge academic research to more general discussions of current events and cultural trends.
Wednesday, September 12, 2007,
12:00 PM
Gallery Talk: Gods, Demons and Generals: Icons of Korean Shamanism
In conjunction with the current exhibition, "Gods, Demons and Generals: Icons of Korean Shamanism," Patrick Dowdey, Center Curator will present a gallery talk. Luncheon buffet provided.
Location: Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies
Thursday, September 20, 2007,
04:30 PM
- 06:00 PM
Open House: Welcome Back East Asian Studies Faculty and Majors
Buffet provided.(Not open to the public)
Location: Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies
Monday, September 24, 2007,
04:30 PM
- 06:00 PM
Japanese Tea Ceremony Demonstration and Tour of the Freeman Family Japanese Garden: Stephen A. Morrell, Landscape Designer
Mr. Morrell, designer of the Freeman Family Japanese garden, will explain the history and ritual of the tea ceremony. At the close of this program guests will quietly observe the tea ceremony process.
Location: Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies
Thursday, September 27, 2007,
04:30 PM
- 06:00 PM
A Printer's Error is an Artist's Heaven: Woodcuts by Keiji Shinohara
Keiji Shinohara, Visiting Artist: Art And Art History Department, Wesleyan University
This lecture will focus on the changes Japanese woodblock printing technique went through from the 19th century to the present, using various artists' works as examples.
Location: Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies
Thursday, October 04, 2007,
04:30 PM
- 06:00 PM
Shamanic Supermen and Superwomen: Creating Alternative Spaces for the Oppressed: Michael Pettid, Assistant Professor: German, Russian, and East Asian Languages, Binghamton University
This lecture is in conjunction with the current FEAS Center exhibition entitled, "Gods, Demons and Generals: Icons of Korean Shamanism." In pre-modern Choson Korea, ruling elites had a strong desire to change society by using Confucian models to manage the country. This strategy conflicted with age-old practices that were deeply in the shamanic worldview and in Buddhism. This resulted in the creation of shamanic myths featuring all-powerful deities that could overcome injustices and provide a vicarious victory for popular ways of life. This talk will examine some of these myths of shamanic supermen and superwomen.
Location: Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies
Thursday, October 11, 2007,
04:30 PM
- 06:00 PM
Goblin' s Lagoon: Negotiating New Asian Music: Jocelyn Clark (Wesleyan alum ' 92) Ph.D. (kayag?m), Ryuko Mizutani (koto), Yi-Chieh Lai (zheng), and Il-Ryun Chung (Korean percussion and composition) IIIZ+ (Three Z plus)
IIIZ+ (Three Z plus) is an ensemble of East Asian zithers, combining the sounds of the Chinese zheng (or guzheng), the Japanese koto, and the Korean kayag?m (gayageum) with those of Korean percussion, primarily changgu. Combining all three into one ensemble is far from traditional. IIIZ+ therefore relies on collaborations with contemporary composers in order to build its repertoire. IIIZ+, its individual members, and composers writing for the ensemble find themselves at the center of a world in which concepts like traditional music and new music, or national music and world music are in rapid flux. Coming out of at least four national traditions, IIIZ+ finds itself right at a crystallization point between genres such as world, new, national, traditional, chamber, crossover - an artistic vehicle for the expression of this new kaleidoscopic world.
Location: Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies
Monday, October 22, 2007,
04:30 PM
- 06:00 PM
Lecture Tour of the Freeman Family Japanese Garden: Stephen A. Morrell, Landscape Designer
Mr. Morrell will present a talk on Japanese gardens, illustrated with slides. Following the talk he will give a guided tour of the Freeman Family Japanese Garden designed and installed by him in 1995.
Location: Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies
Thursday, November 01, 2007,
04:30 PM
- 06:00 PM
The Lyrical in Epic Time: The Music and Poetry of Jiang Wenye: David Der-wei Wang, Edward C. Henderson Professor of Chinese Literature, East Asian Languages and Civilizations Department, Harvard University
This talk will introduce Jiang Wenye (1910-1983) as one of the most talented composers in modern China and Japan. Professor Wang will explore the following issues: how Jiang's modernist sensibility demonstrated his colonial and cosmopolitan bearings; how his engagement with Confucian musicology brought about unlikely dialogues and most important, how his lyrical vision was occasioned by, and confined to, historical contingencies.
Location: Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies
Thursday, November 08, 2007,
04:30 PM
- 06:00 PM
Pictures in Place and Gods in Pictures: An Anthropologist Looks at Korean Shaman Paintings: Dr. Laurel Kendall, Curator, American Museum of Natural History, Department of Anthropology
This lecture is in conjunction with the current FEAS Center exhibition entitled, "Gods, Demons and Generals: Icons of Korean Shamanism." Pictures of gods are a distinctive feature of Korean shaman shrines. These depictions more than just decorations or representations, are signs of specific relationships between a Korean shaman (mudang, mansin, posal) and the gods she manifests doing elaborate rituals called kut. Anthropologist Laurel Kendall, who has spent 30 years working with Korean shamans, will explore the process of how a shaman acquires her gods, how she installs and maintains them in a personal shrine and what happens when they are not properly tended.
Location: Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies
Thursday, November 15, 2007,
04:30 PM
- 06:00 PM
Should Confucianism Matter to China's Future?: Stephen Angle, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Wesleyan University
There is ample evidence that Confucianism is undergoing a multi-faceted revival in contemporary China. The lecture will probe the different conceptions of Confucianism underlying the current revival and seek to answer the following question: Should we hope that one or more of these various Confucianisms plays a significant role in China's future?
Location: Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies
Thursday, November 29, 2007,
04:30 PM
- 06:00 PM
ENZHENG TONG MEMORIAL LECTURE: Problems and Approaches in Studying the Sanxingdui Civilization; Jay Xu, Pritzker Chairman, Department of Asian and Ancient Art, The Art Institute of Chicago
A Bronze Age civilization lost for more than three thousand years was found in China's southwestern Sichuan province in the mid-1980s. Remains of a large-scale walled settlement were discovered at the village of Sanxingdui, containing two underground pits that were filled with a staggering abundance of objects, such as bronze vessels and jade blades, and others unprecedented and utterly extraordinary, including a monumental bronze tree, a life-size standing figure, and masks of supernatural beings. No inscription has been found at the site to shed light on its culture. How do we go about explaining this mysterious civilization? This lecture will introduce the Sanxingdui site and discuss various approaches in the study of the Sanxingdui Civilization.
Location: Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies
Thursday, December 06, 2007,
04:30 PM
- 06:00 PM
Bridge Across Time and Language: A Bilingual Poetry Reading: Co-organized by Vera Schwarcz, Director, FEAS Center; Chair East Asian Studies Program and Shengqing Wu, Assistant Professor of Asian Languages and Literatures, Wesleyan University
Bringing together Chinese poets residing in the New England area, Wesleyan faculty and upper-level Chinese students, this bilingual poetry reading seeks to enhance an appreciation of the intricacy of various languages, and to create a vibrant intellectual space for the dialogues across linguistic, cultural and national boundaries. The reading provides an opportunity not only to learn about Chinese poetry in a transnational context, but also to engage in reflections about cross-cultural communication and the politics of translation.
Location: Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies
Wednesday, January 30, 2008,
12:00 PM
- 04:00 PM
Korean Funerary Figures: Companions for the Journey to the Other World
Kkoktu (say gok-too) are eight to twelve inch tall wood figures that Koreans mounted on funeral biers. Imaginatively carved and colorfully painted, they represent caretakers, acrobats, musicians, guides, and guards to accompany the deceased into the afterlife. The New York Times wrote, "The thing about these wooden figures, called kkoktu, is that unlike much somber and forbidding mortuary art, many are fun and friendly-even kind of cute." Most of the figures in the exhibition were carved in the 19th- or early 20th- century. The kkoktu open a window on a timeless, characteristically Korean attitude towards death, a sophisticated appreciation of the fleeting nature of all experience. Though the gaiety depicted in many of the figurines may seem incompatible with mourning, what they are intended to express is a deep desire that the deceased person will enter the next world surrounded by joy. Again, The New York Times: "Exhibition Organizer Ockrang Kim calls it 'a tribute to our ancestors' optimism and humor' that they would want the deceased 'to journey into the beyond accompanied by boys, girls, men, women, clowns and acrobats.' She's got a point. We'll all be joining that party eventually, and it might be nice to have a few clowns and acrobats, even a monk on a turtle, leading the way."
Gallery Hours: Tuesday through Sunday: Noon to 4p.m.; Closed Mondays
Location: Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies: Gallery
Wednesday, January 30, 2008,
12:00 PM
- 01:30 PM
GALLERY TALK: Funerary Figures: Companions for the Journey to the Other World
Patrick Dowdey, FEAS Center Curator.
Luncheon buffet provided.
Location: Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies
Thursday, January 31, 2008,
04:30 PM
- 05:30 PM
After Mao to Now: Witness to Change, Sharon Crain, Visiting Professor of Sino-American Relations, Shaanxi Teachers University, Xian, China
Sharon Crain first went to China in 1977 to learn from the people in a quest to understand Chinese culture and history. During subsequent journeys and active involvement she personally witnessed the dramatic changes that transformed China and U.S. China relations. This lecture will provide information concerning the changes which she experienced during 30 years of interaction with students, ambassadors, peasants, minorities, government leaders, and ordinary shopkeepers who became her friends and teachers and breathed life into the policies and events she witnessed that transformed China and her people after Mao to now.
Location: Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies: Seminar Room
Wednesday, February 06, 2008,
04:30 PM
- 05:30 PM
U.S.Korea Relations: A Reflection of Work After Wesleyan: Sean Connell, Wesleyan '98, Director U.S.Korea Business Council
The South Korean government has described the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement (KORUS FTA), signed on June 30, 2007, as the most important event in U.S.-Korea relations since the two countries established their security alliance in 1953. A recent Wesleyan alumnus will share observations and experiences from work on U.S.-Korea economic relations and the KORUS FTA, and will discuss the agreements implications for broader U.S. geo-strategic goals in East Asia.
Location: Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies: Seminar Room
Thursday, February 07, 2008,
04:30 PM
- 05:30 PM
East Asian Studies Senior Thesis Presentations
Presenters: Cedric Bien, I-Hsiao Chen, Alexander Kirst and Samuel Ruth.
Location: Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies: Seminar Room
Thursday, February 14, 2008,
04:30 PM
- 05:30 PM
Love's Disease in East Asia: How Syphilis Went Native in Japan:William Johnston, History Department, Wesleyan University
Syphilis first arrived in Japan during the 16th century and had become an accepted part of life by the 18th. This was not, however, without a major impact on peoples lives and Japanese culture in ways that since have been largely forgotten. At the time, however, the disease was one of the country's most common phenomenon.
Location: Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies: Seminar Room
Wednesday, February 20, 2008,
04:30 PM
- 05:30 PM
A Jewish Spark Rekindled in China: Shi Lei, Henan University, Chinese-Jewish descendant from Kaifeng
Shi Lei represents the younger generation of Jewish descendants whose history dates back over a thousand years in China to the Tang Dynasty. With only a few hundred Jewish descendants still living in China (out of a population of 1.3 billion ethnic Chinese), the Jewish descendants are heirs to a unique and little known place in the annals of both Chinese and Jewish history. Shi Lei will discuss the Kaifeng Jewish community and his own experiences as a Jewish descendant in both China and Israel.
Location: Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies: Seminar Room
Thursday, February 21, 2008,
04:30 PM
- 05:30 PM
Why Do Bad Things Happen To Good People? Local-Level Interpretations of Famine Causation in North China, 1876-2004: Kathryn J. Edgerton, Wesleyan '92, Department of History, San Diego State University
China has been twice transfixed by the North China Famine of 1876-1879: once when the scale and horrors of the drought-induced disaster were becoming clear to local-level, treaty-port, and foreign observers in the 1870s, and once again when officials in Shanxi province drew the unusually severe 19th-century famine back into public memory as a response to the suffering caused by the Mao-era famine of 1959-1961. In both periods, a key component of discussion was apportioning blame and defining heroes and villains of the famine, which killed as many as thirteen million people. This presentation examines changing local-level understandings of the cosmological and human origins of the most lethal famine in imperial China's long history. It traces how people in Shanxi have remembered and assigned blame for the North China Famine in the 1870s, the 1960s, and beyond.
Location: Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies: Seminar Room
Thursday, March 27, 2008,
08:00 PM
- 09:00 PM
33RD ANNUAL MANSFIELD FREEMAN LECTURE: Religious Renaissance and Asian Modernity: Richard P. Madsen, Sociology Department, University of California, San Diego
Today, less than two decades after the ending of the cold war, the eruption of profoundly destabilizing economic, political, and religious conflict shows that the modern liberal vision for creating global justice and peace - a vision that places its faith in free markets, rights-based democratic polities, scientific and technological reason, and a culture centered on the freedom of the individual-is once again in crisis. We need an effective ethical modernity to go with economic and political modernity. But such an ethically modern civilization has proven elusive. In Asia, as in other parts of the world, one response to this crisis has been a renaissance of religion. Some of this is the expression of local community identity, which exacerbates an over all social fragmentation. But, especially among emerging Asian middle classes, there are also movements toward transcendent religious-ethical visions that offer hope of constructive ecumenical solidarities and a promise of an effective ethical modernity to go with economic and political modernity.
Location: Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies: Seminar Room
Friday, March 28, 2008,
10:00 AM
- 12:00 PM
33RD ANNUAL MANSFIELD FREEMAN LECTURE: Religious Renaissance and Asian Modernity
Professor Madsen will discuss his previous evening's lecture. Breakfast buffet provided.
Location: Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies: Seminar Room
Wednesday, April 02, 2008,
12:00 PM
- 04:00 PM
Little Frog Jumps the Connecticut! Paintings by Charles Chu
Charles Chu catches the sweep of the Connecticut River from Old Saybrook to the Vermont mountains in the monumental landscape scroll that is the highlight of this exhibition. Both Chu's mastery of Chinese landscape painting and his familiarity with New England are evident in the great luminous washes of his mountains and the delicate quick strokes of his forests and towns, all caught in the richly poetic vocabulary of Chinese painting. A master painter informed by a lifetime of observation and reflection, Charles Chu's humanity and eye for nature comes out in all of the works: his line is delicate yet sinewy, his colors subdued and yet sensuous. One of the most distinguished Chinese painters in the United States, Charles Chu's rugged New England landscapes, his charming and simple animals,and his stunning flowers are known throughout the world. This exhibition draws on Charles Chus work from the last 20 years.
Gallery Hours: Tuesday through Sunday, Noon to 4 p.m.; Closed Mondays.
Location: Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies: Gallery
Wednesday, April 02, 2008,
12:00 PM
- 01:30 PM
Little Frog Jumps the Connecticut! Paintings by Charles Chu
Opening and gallery talk with artist Charles Chu and curator Patrick Dowdey
Location: Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies
Thursday, April 03, 2008,
04:30 PM
- 05:30 PM
Turning Points in the value of the Yen during the 1920s: Masami Imai, East Asian Studies Program and Economics Department, Wesleyan University
Instability of interwar gold standard is well-documented in the context of the European and U.S. economic studies. This lecture explores instability and turning points of exchange rates in interwar Japan, a country that attempted to restore the gold standard while at the same time going through dramatic political and institutional changes in the midst of military expansionism into Manchuria. Several different events will be explored, culminating with 1929 and the politcal take off by the Kensiekai Party. The democracy movement, and the associated expansion of suffrage, will be shown to have been considerably less important as turning points in the Japanese economy. This suggests that institutional change itself did not affect market expectation. Rather, increased political instability eventually led to destabilized market expectations.
Location: Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies
Thursday, April 03, 2008,
04:30 PM
- 05:30 PM
Turning Points in the value of the Yen during the 1920s: Masami Imai, East Asian Studies Program and Economics Department, Wesleyan University
Instability of interwar gold standard is well-documented in the context of the European and U.S. economic studies. This lecture explores instability and turning points of exchange rates in interwar Japan, a country that attempted to restore the gold standard while at the same time going through dramatic political and institutional changes in the midst of military expansionism into Manchuria. Several different events will be explored, culminating with 1929 and the politcal take off by the Kensiekai Party. The democracy movement, and the associated expansion of suffrage, will be shown to have been considerably less important as turning points in the Japanese economy. This suggests that institutional change itself did not affect market expectation. Rather, increased political instability eventually led to destabilized market expectations.
Location: Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies: Seminar Room
Thursday, April 10, 2008,
04:30 PM
- 05:30 PM
Works Before Words: Putting Paintings First in Writing the History of Chinese Art: Maggie Bickford, History of Art and Architecture and East Asian Studies, Brown University
Art historians use words to talk about paintings, but if our words take over our ways of understanding art, then the paintings may actually fade from our view. Professor Bickford will argue for the primacy of objects and of visual thinking in making good histories of Chinese painting.
This lecture is in conjunction with the current exhibition, Little Frog Jumps the Connecticut! Paintings by Charles Chu.
Location: Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies: Seminar Room
Monday, April 14, 2008,
04:30 PM
- 05:30 PM
Lecture/Tour of the Freeman Family Japanese Garden: Stephen A. Morrell, Landscape Designer
Mr. Morrell, designer of the Freeman Family Japanese Garden, will provide a tour of the garden and be available to answer questions.
Location: Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies: Seminar Room
Thursday, April 24, 2008,
04:30 PM
- 05:30 PM
Perspectives on Neo-Confucianism: An Introduction: Peng Guoxiang, Chinese Philosophy, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
Neo-Confucianism can be viewed from many perspectives. We can look at its greatest philosophers or at its broad social significance. We can think of it as development of classical Confucianism or as resource for the modern New Confucian movement. Its schools are distinguished in different ways by different scholars, and these modern scholars also differ in various ways about the significance of Neo-Confucianism. Professor Peng-himself a leading scholar of the tradition will offer a wide-ranging introduction to these perspectives on Neo-Confucianism.
Location: Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies: Seminar Room
Monday, May 05, 2008,
04:30 PM
- 05:30 PM
Japanese Tea Ceremony Demonstration and Tour of the Freeman Family Japanese Garden: Stephen A. Morrell, Landscape Designer
Mr. Morrell, designer of the Freeman Family Japanese Garden, will explain the history and ritual of the tea ceremony. At the close of this program guests will quietly observe the tea ceremony process.
Location: Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies: Seminar Room
Saturday, May 10, 2008,
10:00 AM
- 12:00 PM
Open Days Garden Conservancy Garden Tour of the Freeman Family Japanese Garden: Stephen A. Morrell, Landscape Designer
Mr. Morrell, designer of the Freeman Family Japanese Garden, will provide a tour of the garden and be available to answer questions.
Location: Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies
Saturday, May 24, 2008,
04:00 PM
- 05:00 PM
Japanese Tea Ceremony Demonstration and Tour of the Freeman Family Japanese Garden: Stephen A. Morrell, Landscape Designer
Mr. Morrell, designer of the Freeman Family Japanese Garden, will provide a tour of the garden and be available to answer questions. Alumni Reunion & Commencement Weekend (not open to the public).
Location: Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies: Seminar Room
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Saturday, May 24, 2008,
04:00 PM
- 05:00 PM
Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies: Seminar Room
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