Center for Transpacific Studies 2015-16 Activities
In 2015-16, we integrated guest speakers into a reading group of graduate students and faculty who will read the speakers’ books beforehand. We have scheduled the first book talk on January 14, 2015 by Annette Kim, author of Sidewalk Society: Remapping Public Space in Ho Chi Minh City. We also invitedKatharya Um, author of From the Lands of Shadows: War, Revolution and Making of the Cambodian Diaspora, Kornel Chang, author of Pacific Connections: The Making of the U.S.-Canada Borderlands, Le Ly Hayslip, author of When Heaven and Earth Collided, and Hue-Tam Ho Tai, author ofPassion, Betrayal and Revolution in Colonial Saigon. We are also co-sponsoring a Symposium: Towards a Critical Refugee Studies, to be held May 25, 2016 and University of California, Riverside.
December 1, 2015 (Tuesday)
Screening of “Mardistan”, a documentary by Harjant Gill.
Mardistanlooks at conventions and conversations surrounding masculinity in Punjab. Gill has said in interviews that he chose Punjabi men as his subjects because "Punjabi masculinity has been held up as an exemplar, physically at least". Leaving aside how many eye rolls and dismissive snorts this is likely to evoke among other Indian communities (try telling a Tamil or Bengali, for instance, that a Punjabi man is an exemplar), Gill's narrow focus holds out possibilities. As author Amandeep Sandhu briefly mentions at one point, Punjab has hadstrong but complicated notions of masculinity, thanks to entrenched patriarchy and the region's long martial heritage that has manifested itself in a variety of ways, ranging from army enlistment to terrorism. Gill speaks to four men about their understanding of masculinity and how they negotiate conservative patriarchy in their everyday lives. Nivedita Menon's feminist perspective is brought in from time to time, to provide a context for these men's stories.
Discussion with the director Harjant Gill and Ekta Kumar of the Center for the Study of Women and Men.
January 14, 2016
Annette Kim discussion of her new book: Sidewalk City: Remapping Public Space in Ho Chi Minh City
4-5:30pm in KAP 460
Annette Kim is Associate Professor and Director of the Spatial Analysis Lab at the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy
February 3, 2016
Reading group discussion of Kornel Chang’s book Pacific Connections (in preparation for his visit next week).
February 11, 2016
Kornel Chang “Managing Decolonization: The U.S. Occupation of Korea and the Making of a Global American Empire”
2-4 pm, KAP 445
Kornel Chang is Associate Professor of History and American Studies, Rutgers University, Newark, New Jersey
February 25, 2016
Le Ly Hayslip “A Vietnamese Woman’s Perspective on the American War in Vietnam”
THH 102 11-12;20
Le Ly Hayslip is the best-selling author ofWhen Heaven and Earth CollidedandChild of War, Woman of Peace. Le Ly is also the inspiration behind Oliver Stone'sHeaven & Earth, which is based off of her two autobiographies and is one of the three movies in his Vietnam trilogy. She now spends time educating the public on her experience, war, and peace and working in her organization Global Village Foundation.
March 23, 2016
Distribution and discussion of Khatharya Um’s new book, From the Land of Shadows: War, Revolution, and the Making of the Cambodian Diaspora.
March 30, 2016
Khatharya Um “Remembering Violence and the Violence of Remembering”
Presentation from her new book, From the Land of Shadows: War, Revolution, and the Making of the Cambodian Diaspora.
April 6, 2016
Hue-Tam Ho Tai “Female Spirit Mediums and the Cult of “Uncle Ho” in Today’s Vietnam”
4-6:00 pm THH 371 (East Asian Languages Seminar Room)
Hue-Tam Ho Tai is the Kenneth T. Young Professor of Sino-Vietnamese History at Havard University. She is the author of Passion, Betrayal and Revolution in Colonial Saigon (University of California Press, 2010) and editor of State, Society and the Market in Contemporary Vietnam: Property, Power and Values (Routledge, 2015) and Country of Memory: Remaking the Past in Late Socialist Vietnam (University of California Press, 2001). Her research focuses on the public memory and public history of modern Vietnam, and on the new cult of President Ho Chi Minh as a figure in popular religious practice.
May 29, 2016
Wecollaboratde with the Department of Asian Studies at the University of California, Riverside to invite three speakers/performers to a “Symposium: Towards A Critical Refugee Studies”
We have the expenses for invitingPrachy Ly, a musician and rapper, Ova Sapeng, a Cambodian-American theatrical performer who has developed a play called “Refugee Nation” , and Mai Der Vang, a poet with Southeast Asian Hmong heritage
They took part in a full day symposium from 8:30 am to 5:30 pm in INTS 1113 and 1128. The symposium combined academic speakers with performances and discussions by the artists.
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Updates on former Transpacific Studies Scholars:
Nadine Chan is finishing her two year postdoc at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, and from there she will go to a three year postdoc in the Chicago Society of Fellows.
Patty Ahn will be assistant professor of Communications with an affiliation with the Transnational Korean Studies program at UC San Diego this fall.