Global Asia and the Global Mediterranean

All day

Virtual Event

As two macro-regions on the two fringes of the Eurasian landmass, East Asia and the Mediterranean basin have developed their distinct civilizations and cultures whose legacies have important imprints on the world cultural landscape today. Yet, these two civilizations have never developed in isolation but maintained dynamic interactions with other regions of the world. The one-day workshop Global Asia and the Global Mediterranean will address a variety of means by which these two civilizations interacted with other regions. This workshop particularly highlights the role of performance and music as a vehicle of global cultural exchange. Bringing scholars who work on East Asian popular culture, history, and literature into the conversation with scholars who work on ancient Mediterranean performance and literature, this workshop seeks to a better and global understanding of these two civilizations.

Zoom Meeting ID: 938 8280 4781

Passcode: 481936

Speakers (in the alphabetical order):

Meijiadai Bai (Ph.D. UIUC) is Lecturer of Communication Studies at Liaoning University

Yin Cao (Ph.D. NUS) is Associate Professor of History at Tsinghua University

Jannis Chen is doctoral candidate in East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University

Hye Eun Choi (Ph.D. Wisconsin-Madison) is Visiting Assistant Professor of Korean Studies at NYU, Shanghai

Yuan Gong (Ph.D. UMass-Amherst) is Lecturer of Media Studies from Massey University, New Zealand

Yanxiao He is doctoral candidate in Ancient History at the University of Chicago

Xiaodan Hu (Ph.D. PKU) is Junior Research Fellow in History at Fudan University

Areum Jeong (Ph.D. UCLA) is Assistant Professor of Humanities at Sichuan University-Pittsburgh Institute

Xin Luo (Ph.D. PKU) is Professor of Pre-Modern Chinese History at Peking University

Roald Maliangkay (Ph.D. SOAS, London) is Associate Professor of Korean Studies at the Australian National University

Yun Ni (Ph.D. Harvard) is Assistant Professor of English at Peking University

Merey Otan (Ph.D. Nazarbayev) is Lecturer in Art and Culture at Dulaty University, Kazakhstan

Yang Qu is doctoral candidate in South Asian Studies at Harvard University

Haun Saussy (Ph.D. Yale) is the University Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago

Xuechen Shen recently finished his Ph.D. in history from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

Mali Skotheim (Ph.D. Princeton) is Assistant Professor of English at Ashoka University, India

Naomi Weiss (Ph.D. UC Berkeley) is the Gardner Cowles Associate Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University

Di Yan (Ph.D. Cambridge) is Assistant Professor of Classics at Tsinghua University

Agenda:

8:45-9:00 am Opening Remarks: Haun Saussy (UChicago), Yang Qu (Harvard) Yanxiao He (UChicago)

9:00-10:30 am Keynote Event: Is Popular Performance Good to Think With? From Ancient Greece to Contemporary South Korea

A Conversation Between Naomi Weiss (Harvard) and Roald Maliangkay (ANU)

Moderated by Yanxiao He (UChicago)

10:30-11:00 am Coffee Break

11:00-12:30 pm Panel 1: Popular Culture Asia

Hye Eun Choi (NYU Shanghai): Shaping K-pop in Hallyu 1.0 (the mid-1990s through the mid-2000s).

Areum Jeong (Sichuan U-Pittsburgh Institute): Beyond the Sewol: Contemporary Theatre and Performance in South Korea

Yuan Gong (Massey): Neoliberal Aesthetics and Patriotic Subject: Chinese K-pop Fans’ Online Taste Discourse

Meijiadai Bai (Liaoning U): Nationalism and the Cyber-Closet: Danmei Adaptation, Fandom, and Media Censorship in the Case of Word of Honor

Chair/Discussant: Roald Maliangkay (ANU)

12:30-2:00 pm Lunch

2:00-3:30 pm Panel 2: The Global Mediterranean: Comparison and Interaction

Di Yan (Tsinghua): Authorship and Authenticity: Poets and Their Identities in Ancient Greece and China

Mali Skotheim (Ashoka): Apollonius the Pantomime: Silence and Dance in Philostratus' Life of Apollonius of Tyana

Yanxiao He (UChicago): Roman Antioch as Pop City: Ancient Syrian Popular Performance and its Elite Proponents/Critics

Xiaodan Hu (Fudan): Parthian Drums in the Tang Court

Chair/Discussant: Yun Ni (PKU)

3:30-4:00 pm Coffee break

4:00-5:30 pm Panel 3: Global Asia: from Central Asia to Southeast Asia

Merey Otan (Dulaty): The Localization of Global Music in Kazakhstan: the Case of Q-pop

Xuechen Shen (CASS): Figuring the Western Region: A Textual Analysis of Xiyu wenjian lu as an Ethnography

Jannis Jizhou Chen (Harvard): Speculative Memoriality and Regenerative Materials: Narratives on the 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake as the Sinophone

Yin Cao (Tsinghua): A Railway that Had Never Been Built: Imagining, Planning, and Denying the Yunnan–Burma Railway, 1860s to 1940s

Chair/Discussant: Xin Luo (PKU)

5:30-7:00 pm Dinner

7:00-8:30 pm Special event: Book chat on The Making of Barbarians: Chinese Literature and Multilingual Asia (PUP, 2022) by Haun Saussy (UChicago) with Xin Luo (PKU)

Moderated by Yang Qu (Harvard)

Co-sponsored by Princeton University Press Beijing Office