| MAY
2009 |
UTCP Graduate Student Conference
“The Plural Present of Historical Life”
May 15-17, 2009
The University of Tokyo (Komaba)
Organized by:
The University of Tokyo Center for Philosophy (UTCP), in collaboration with New York University, Peking University and East China Normal University
View PDF schedule
View related events by EAS faculty Xudong Zhang
|
Graduate Reading Group
Dept. of East Asian Studies
715 Broadway, Room 312
Meets every other week
Discussion Topics:
February 6, 20, March 6, April 3, May 8 Bataille's theoretical work as articulated in "The Accursed Share"
October 28 Jean Laplanche, "Ch.1 The Order of Life and the Genesis of Human Sexuality" and "Ch. 5 Aggressiveness and Sadomasochism" in Life & Death in Psychoanalysis (Baltimore & London : The Johns Hopkins University Press)
October 23 Miyako Inoue "Introduction : Women's Language and Capitalist Modernity in Japan", "Ch.1 An Echo of National Modernity : Overhearing "Schoolgirl Speech" & "Ch.2 Linguistic Modernity and the Emergence of Women's Language" in Vicarious Language - Gender and Linguistic Modernity in Japan (Berkeley : University of California Press, 2006)
October 16 C. S. Pierce "Ch. 6 The Principles of Phenomenology" & "Ch. 7 Logic as Semiotic : The Theory of Signs" in Philosophical Writings of Peirce (New York : Dover,1955)
October 9 Teresa de Lauretis "Ch.3 Rethinking Women's Cinema : Aesthetics and Feminist Theory" in Technologies of Gender - Essays on Theory, Film, and Fiction (Bloomington & Indianapolis : Indiana University Press, 1987) Elizabeth Grosz "Ch. 9 Lesbian Fetishism" & "Ch. 10 Labors of Love : Analyzing Perverse Desire (An Interrogation of Teresa de Lauretis's Labor of Love)" in Space, Time, and Perversion - Essays on the Politics of Bodies (New York & London : Routledge, 1995)
October 2 Teresa de Lauretis "Ch.1 The Technology of Gender" & "The Violence of Rhetoric : Considerations on Representation and Gender" in Technologies of Gender - Essays on Theory, Film, and Fiction (Bloomington & Indianapolis : Indiana University Press, 1987)
For more information about future meetings, please contact Christophe Thouny |
| MARCH
2009 |
The Institutional Foundations of China’s Economic Growth
A Seminar Series
Professor Yang Yao
National School of Development & China Center for Economic Research
Peking University
Place: EAS, 715 Broadway, rm 312
Time: Thursday afternoon 3:00 – 6:15
Format: 1hr 30 min. lecture and 1hr 45 min. discussions
Students who are able to attend every seminar may enroll in it as a 2 credit course, however, students and faculty are invited to sit-in on any seminar that they'd like to attend. Yang Yao's CV is attached.
Below is a description of each week's topic:
January 29: Does China Offer An Alternative Model to Economic Development?
China’s economic success along with an authoritarian political system raises the question whether China has created an alternative model for economic development. This seminar answers this question at two levels, one pure economic, and the other political economy. At the economic level, China does not create a new model but has rather followed the standard policy recommendations of neoclassical economics. At the political economy level, China does have created experiences that could offer potential lessons to other developing countries. Researchers can find some growth-enhancing mechanisms from the Chinese experience that apply beyond the borders of political systems. The seminar will identify several areas where such mechanisms are likely to be found.
February 5: Incentives before Institutions: A Chinese Way to Economic Reform
Recent development literature reiterates Douglass North’s thesis that “institutions matter”. However, the Chinese experience shows that it requires more than this thesis if one is serious about making institutions work in developing countries. Local conditions almost always oblige imported institutions to be modified. China’s economic reform has often resulted in temporary and mid-way institutions. They worked under the circumstances that created them. In addition, one has to consider how to incentivize government officials to adopt good institutions. The Chinese experience has shown that providing incentives is more important than pursuing institutional purity in economic growth.
February 12: The Ruling Party and Economic Growth
Why does the CCP, the single dominant power in China, care about economic growth? One explanation resorts to its ideological convictions. Another theory proposes that institutionalization within the party is the key to the explanation. This seminar suggests that looking at the CCP’s sources of legitimacy and the Chinese social structure may provide a better understanding on why the CCP cares about economic growth. The lack of procedure-based legitimacy forces the CCP to seek for legitimacy from continuous delivery of outcomes to the society. The Chinese society is a socially equal one, preempting the CCP’s intention to court a few strong groups; that is, it is in its self-interests to deliver growth to China as a whole.
February 19: Land Tenure, Productivity, and Farmer Protection
Land tenure is a contentious issue in current China because it not only has a lot to do with productivity, but also affects farmers’ welfare, especially facing government requisition of land. Land is both an economic asset with fungible values and a means which together with labor enables farmers to insure against negative shocks. The current land tenure may have reached a balance between these two functions of land. This seminar will both review the history of Chinese land tenure and provide an account of recent developments in making land a more fungible asset.
February 26: Democratization in the Countryside and Its Impacts
China has had democratic elections in its villages for more than 20 years. It is a question why an authoritarian state allows for democratic elections in the first place. One possible explanation is that village elections allow the authority to make a credible commitment to ordinary farmers that the state would give up its progressive policies implemented in the commune era. Based on nation-wide surveys, this seminar will provide evidence to show the nature, scope, and impacts of village elections. It will also discuss the prospect of democratization in the country at large.
March 5: Interest Groups, the Disinterested Government, and Economic Growth
One serious impediment to economic growth in many developing countries is that the government is either captured by a few elites or trapped in divisive interest group politics. One distinctive feature of the Chinese government is that it has been disinterested in interest group politics. This allows it to focus on long-run economic growth of the country. In addition to providing evidence to show that the Chinese government has indeed been disinterested, this seminar will also provide a discussion on the political and social foundations for such a government to emerge in China.
March 12: Demographic Transition, Exports, and China’s Growth Perspective
The Chinese economy is the mirror image of the American economy: While the American economy is driven by innovation, consumption, and services, the Chinese economy is driven by imitation, investment, and manufacturing; while the US runs on huge trade deficits and capital inflows, China runs on huge trade surplus, but also on capital inflows. This seminar argues that the Chinese growth model has a lot to do with its demographics, which means that exports will still serve as a major engine for China’s economic growth in the next ten to fifteen years. The mirror symmetry between China and the US may continue. In addition to offering an explanation to China’s export-led growth model, this seminar will provide suggestions to break up this symmetry. |
NYU China House & Dept. of East Asian Studies are pleased to present:
A Literary Night with Mo Yan: Bilingual Readings from Selected Works
Readings from: Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out, Big Breasts and Wide Hips, The Republic of Wine
Time: 6:30-8:30pm, Tuesday March 10th, 2009
Location: Kimmel Center 914
*Reception follows
Mo Yan is author of Red Sorghum (made into a film by Zhang Yimou), The Republic of Wine, Shifu, You’ll Do Anything for A Laugh, Big Breasts and Wide Hips, The Garlic Ballads, and, most recently, Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out. After a brief introduction by Professor Xudong Zhang, Mo Yan will read from a selection of his works and answer questions from the audience.
“For those who strive in vain for a definition or a mere coherent description of post-Tiananmen China, Mo Yan’s Jiuguo (The Republic of Wine) offers an imaginary solution, aesthetic pleasure, and even moral catharsis.”
Xudong Zhang, Postsocialism and Cultural Politics
“Mo Yan transforms the wreckage of everyday life into something useful, cheering and rare.”
Michael Porter, The New York Times Book Review
“If I were to choose a Nobel laureate, it would be Mo Yan.”
Kenzaburo Oe, 1994 Nobel Laureate for Literature
“His latest novel, Shengsi Pilao (Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out), narrates the second half of the century, with all its tragic absurdities (and absurd tragedies). Characterized as ‘a wildly visionary and creative novel’ (New York Times), it puts a human (and frequently bestial) face on the revolution, and is replete with the dark humor, metafictional insertions, and fantasies that Mo Yan’s readers have come to expect and enjoy. ”
Howard Glodblatt, Translator of Mo Yan’s Works
Mo, 51, won the Grand Prize of the 17th Fukuoka Asian Culture Prize for "demonstrating the spirit to drive into the future the literature of Asia that has been bound by the stifling influence of modern Western literature and the weight of history and tradition.”
Mo Yan, speaker at the forum “Mo Yan and the Reemergence of Literary Independence in Post-Mao China”, 2008 Annual Convention of the Modern Language Association (MLA) in San Francisco, the first Chinese author to be so honored. |
NYU China House & EAS Event
A Seminar presented by:
Cui Zhiyuan
Whither Chimerica?
Time: 1:30-3:30pm, Wednesday March 04 2009
Location: East Asian Studies conference room 312,
3rd floor, Broadway 715
On December 25th 2008, the New York Times published an article titled “Chinese Savings helped Inflate American Bubble”. It reported that Bernanke, Paulson and many American economists were arguing that by having invested more than US$1trillion dollars of its own money into American government bonds and government-backed mortgage debt and repeatedly lowering its interest rates China had actually helped fuel a historic consumption binge and housing bubble in the United States. The assertion triggered an angry response from the People’s Daily. This lecture argues that it is a daunting task to answer the American charge that “you spoiled us”, since it requires both internal adjustment of China’s development strategy as well as a reconstruction of the international monetary system.
Cui Zhiyuan is a Professor at the School of Public Policy and Management, Tsinghua University, Beijing. In the spring semester of 2008, he is the Anthony W. and Lulu C.Wang Distinguished Visiting Professor at Cornell University Law School. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from University of Chicago in 1995. His selective writings includes: "The Dilemma of Invisible Hand Paradigm"(Chinese version, 1999, Economic Science Publisher,Beijing;English version, forthcoming from Harvard University Press);"The Second Thought Liberalization Movement and Institutional Innovation"(Oxford University Press, Hong Kong, 1997), "Whither China?"(Seoul, 2003). He is a co-author (with Adam Przeworski et al) of "Sustainable Democracy"(Cambridge University Press, 1995) and the editor of Robert Unger's "Politics"(Verso, 1997). With Huang Ping, he co-edited "China and Globalization: Washington Consensus, Beijing Consensus or what?" (Beijing, 2005) |
NYU China House & EAS Event
A Seminar presented by:
Wang Hui
Variations between Culture and Politics: War, Revolution and Cultural Movement in the Era of May Forth
Time: 1:30-3:30pm, Tuesday March 03 2009
Location: East Asian Studies conference room 312,
3rd floor, Broadway 715
The significance of the May Forth Movement becomes more and more obscure at its ninetieth anniversary. Current May Forth studies tend to focus on the evolvement of the ideas such as Science, Democracy and Republic and favor positivism instead of revealing any innovative value of this historical event. This talk will investigate “the East-West Cultural Debate” between The Eastern Miscellany and The New Youth then edited by Du Yaquan and Chen Duxiu, respectively. Du proposed to reconcile the West and East in terms of culture while Chen radically called for “educating the Youth”. Thus I will argue that the May Forth, situated at the beginning of “the Short Twentieth Century”, is indeed an origin of variations between Culture and Politics that unfolds a historical chapter of “the transformation of consciousness” in modern China.
Wang Hui is a professor of the School of Humanities, Tsinghua University, Beijing. In the past a few years, he was the visiting professor at Università di Bologna, New York University, University of Tokyo and Universität Heidelberg, respectively. He received his Ph.D. from Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in 1988. His research focuses on Chinese literature and intellectual thought. His recent published works include a four-volume work The Rise of Modern Chinese Thought (2004, in Chinese, English version coming out soon), Depoliticized Politics: The end of the Short 20th Century and The Nineties (2008, in Chinese), The Politics of Imagining Asia (forthcoming), The End of Revolution (forthcoming). He was the executive editor of the influential magazine Dushu (Reading) from 1996 to 2007. The US magazine Foreign Policy named him as one of the top 100 public intellectuals in the world in May 2008. |
NYU China House & Dept. of East Asian Studies are pleased to announce
A Symposium on
China and the Current Economic Crisis
Presenters: Cui Zhiyuan, School of Public Administration, Tshinghua University; Yao Yang, China Center for Economic Research, Peking University; Wang Hui, School of the Humanities, Tsinghua University
Commentators: Frank Upham, NYU Law School
Doug Guthrie & Edward Lincoln, NYU Stern School of Business
Time: 6:30-8:30pm, Monday March 2nd, 2009
Location: 19 West 4th Street, Room 101
*Reception follows
Cui Zhiyuan is a Professor at the School of Public Policy and Management, Tsinghua University, Beijing. In the spring semester of 2008, he was the Anthony W. and Lulu C.Wang Distinguished Visiting Professor at Cornell University Law School. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from University of Chicago in 1995. His selective writings includes: The Dilemma of Invisible Hand Paradigm (1999); The Second Thought Liberalization Movement and Institutional Innovation (1997); Whither China? (2003). He is a co-author of Sustainable Democracy (1995) and the co-editor of China and Globalization: Washington Consensus, Beijing Consensus or what?(2005).
Yao Yang is a Professor at the China Center for Economic Research (CCER) and the National School of Development (NSD), Peking University. He currently serves as the deputy director of CCER and deputy dean of NSD in charge of academic affairs and the editor of the center’s house journal China Economic Quarterly. He received his Ph.D. in agricultural and applied economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in1996. His research interests include economic transition and development in China. He has published widely in international and domestic journals as well as several sole authored and coauthored books on institutional economics and economic development in China including Ownership Transformation in China (co-author, World Bank, 2005), Economic Reform as A Process of Institutional Innovation (in Chinese, English version coming out soon) and Globalization and Economic Growth in China (co-editor, World Scientific, 2006).
Wang Hui is a professor of the School of Humanities, Tsinghua University, Beijing. In the past a few years, he was the visiting professor at Università di Bologna, New York University, University of Tokyo and Universität Heidelberg, respectively. He received his Ph.D. from Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in 1988. His researches focus on Chinese literature and intellectual thought. His recent published works include a four-volume works The Rise of Modern Chinese Thought (2004, in Chinese, English version coming out soon), Depoliticized Politics: The end of the Short 20th Century and The Nineties (2008, in Chinese), The Politics of Imagining Asia (forthcoming), The End of Revolution (forthcoming). He was the executive editor of the influential magazine Dushu (Reading) from 1996 to 2007. The US magazine Foreign Policy named him as one of the top 100 public intellectuals in the world in May 2008. |
| FEBRUARY
2009 |
NYU China House & EAS Event
A Seminar presented by
LU Xinyu
The Pain of Our Society: On Contemporary Chinese New Documentary Movement
Time: 4-6:30pm, Friday Feb 27 2009
Location: East Asian Studies conference room 312,
3rd floor, Broadway 715
*Reception follows
The New Documentary Movement has emerged as an important medium by which to examine some of the social, political, and historical disjunctions in contemporary China. In fact, the New Documentary Movement can be seen as integral parts of those social developments and also as part of a historical movement, which use their own style to maintain a dialogue with society. This dialogue includes investigation, interpretation and intervention. The significance of the New Documentary Movement lies in the activist engagement of the filmmakers with the emotional and living conditions of Chinese people in all walks of life in contemporary China.
Lu Xinyu: Professor and Chair of the Broadcasting Department, School of Journalism, Fudan Univisersity where she also serves as senior research fellow. Her many writings include the publication Documenting China: The New Documentary Movement (Beijing, SDX Joint Publishing Company, 2003). Her research is focused on the relationship between Chinese Visual Culture, mass media and the social development. Her new book named Writing and What It Obscures has published by Guangxi Normal University Press, 2008. Originally trained in literature, she joined the faculty of Fudan University in 1993, shortly after completing the university’s Ph.D. program in Western aesthetics. Professor Lu will spend a year as a visiting scholar in the department of cinema studies at New York University. |
The Waseda University Presentations
Sponsored by the Department of East Asian Studies
Presented by Waseda Graduate Students with Hatsue Shinohara
"The Comfort Women Problem"
"Japan in Thai Pop Culture"
"'Corruption' in Japanese Politics"
Where: 715 Broadway, rm. 312
When: Wednesday, February 18th
Time: 4:30-5:30 with reception to follow |
| JANUARY
2009 |
|
A Seminar presented by:
Photographers of The Beijing Film Academy
Photography and Social Change in Contemporary China
Presenters:
Su Zhigang, Cheng Qiang, Cao Ting, Du Qiang, Gan Lu, Liang Xiaokun, Shi Pengfei, Tang Xuan, Wen Min, Zhu Tao
Commentators:
Xudong Zhang, Director of China House and Chair of East Asian Studies,
New York University
Gerald Pryor, Photo Head, Steinhardt, New York University
Time: 3-5pm, Friday Jan 23 2009
Location: East Asian Studies conference room
*Reception follows 5-7pm
Sponsored by NYU China House and the Department of East Asian Studies |
| NOVEMBER
2008 |
JET Program Information Session
Monday, November 3rd
2:30pm - 3:30pm
Dept. of East Asian Studies
715 Broadway, Room 312
For more information or to apply, go to the website:
www.us.emb-japan.go.jp/JETProgram/homepage.html |
| OCTOBER
2008 |
Tom LaMarre
"Permanent Neoteny: Animation and Japanese Empire"
Wednesday, October 29th
5:00-6:30
the Dept. of East Asian Studies
715 Broadway Room 312
Tom LaMarre is a Professor of East Asian Studies at McGill University. |
| SEPTEMBER
2008 |
WORKSHOP: WORKERS CULTURAL MOVEMENT
DEPARTMENT OF EAST ASIAN STUDIES, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY
715 Broadway, 3rd Floor
All sessions: Room 312
MONDAY 8 September 2008
SESSION I 9:30 – 12:30
Yoshihiko Ikegami, “Discovery of Circle Poetry Movement: Editing ‘Sengo minshû seishinshi’ (Postwar History of People)
Chikanobu Michiba “1950’s South Tokyo through Circle Movement – Shimomaruko Literary Group and Its Times”
Ryuichi Narita “1950’s Local Cultural Movement and Post-war Minshushi”
Harry Harootunian “"The Unpredictable Past."
12:45-1:45 Lunch Break
SESSION II 2:00- 5:30
Hideto Tsuboi “ Yi Sang and East Asian Modernism”
Naoki Watanabe “Discourse on ‘Manchuria’ and the Political Unconscious in Colonial Korea – Around the Figure of Literary Critic, Lim Hwa”
Koji Toba “1950’s and Anti-historicist Author: Abe Kobo”
Izumi Sato “Tanigawa Gan Discourse”
TUESDAY 9 SEPTEMBER 2008
SESSION III 9:00-12:30
Justin Jesty “Aesthetics of Woodcuts in Sakuru Undo”
Yukiko Hanawa “Rentai as Practice of Creating Uncommon Practice: Yamashiro Tomoe and Minwa o umu hitobito”
Brett de Bary “Tanagokoro no kotoba: Morisaki Kazue and the Perplexities of Writing in the Body”
Sabu Kohso ““Between Activism and Art — Reflections on the use of artistic language in
Discussants:
Rebecca Karl, Ken Kawashima, Thomas Looser, Toru Shinoda
For more information, please email: yukiko.hanawa@nyu.edu |
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