East Asia Program Lecture Series presents “Walls-as-Media: Between Cheng (Wall-City) and Ping (Wall-Screen)"

Speaker: Jinying Li, Assistant Professor, Modern Culture and Media, Brown University

Description:

As global networks promise boundless access, we are facing increasing layers of walls. From computer firewalls to China’s Great Firewall, from the Facebook wall to the virtual walls in virtual reality, digital media, in fact, are largely walled. The existence of these walls shatters the myth of what Manuel Castells has famously called “the space of flows,” and highlights the significant functions of walled enclosure in managing, controlling, and mediating information, knowledge, and experience. It problematizes the enlightenment ideals of transparency, depth, openness, and universal knowledge, and underlines walled mediation as the fundamental condition of modern experience. My talk proposes a theoretical framework to explore the meanings and functions of the wall in media history by studying its archeological formation as a media device as well as its genealogical development as a discursive metaphor. I first examine the media archeology of the wall as a material artifact, focusing on cheng 城 (wall-city) and ping 屏 (wall-screen) as two archetypal walls in Chinese media history. In their various renditions and configurations, both cheng and ping define the wall as an asymmetrical and contradictory structure, which is simultaneously a blocking barrier that encloses a territory and community as well as a displaying surface that expresses feelings and powers. This duality between a barrier and a surface further informs the genealogy of wall as a discursive formation, which I examine by comparing the development of the wall as a structure metaphor with that of the window metaphor in the competing conceptions of screen as a media system. I argue that the wall presents an alternative genealogy from the window, shifting from optical apparatus to spatial devices. This conceptual shift from the window to the wall, from optical projection to spatial construction, is also a move away from the perspective-centric conceptualization of modern media, pointing toward surface-oriented media configurations of environmental management, mobility control and socio-political demarcation.

Speaker Bio: Jinying Li is Assistant Professor of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University where she teaches media theory, animation, and digital culture in East Asia. She co-edited two special issues on Chinese animation for the Journal of Chinese Cinemas, and a special issue on regional platforms for Asiascape: Digital Asia. Her first book, Anime’s Knowledge Cultures (University of Minnesota Press, 2024), explores the connection between the anime boom and global geekdom. She is currently competing her second book project, Walled Media and Mediating Walls. Jinying is also a filmmaker and has worked on animations, feature films, and documentaries. Two documentary TV series that she produced were broadcasted nationwide in China through Shanghai Media Group (SMG). She is one of the co-writers of animated feature film Big Fish and Begonia (Dayu Haitang, 2016). She also produced an experimental VR documentary 47km (2017) in collaboration with Chinese director Zhang Mengqi at Beijing Film Academy.

About East Asia Program

As Cornell’s hub for research, teaching, and engagement with East Asia, the East Asia Program (EAP) serves as a forum for the interdisciplinary study of historical and contemporary East Asia. The program draws its membership of over 45 core faculty and numerous affiliated faculty, graduate, and undergraduate students from eight of Cornell’s 12 schools and colleges.

Wang Tiande, the 2025 Wong Chai Lok Calligraphy Fellow at Cornell University, will conduct a special demonstration of his calligraphy process, free and open to all. Visitors can view the demonstration from the Hirsch Lecture Lobby, where the artist will work, or from above in the Gussman Entrance Hall.

This event is cosponsored by the East Asia Program and the Wong Chai Lok Calligraphy Fund.

This artist’s talk with Wang Tiande, the 2025 Wong Chai Lok Calligraphy Fellow at Cornell, is presented in conjunction with an installation of his work in the Johnson Museum of Art’s fifth-floor Rockwell Gallery (on view April 8–July 20).

From 4:00–4:30PM, the artist will be in the Rockwell Gallery to connect with visitors about his art. The talk will begin at 5:15PM in the Frank and Margaret Robinson Lecture Hall. The talk will also be available to live stream.

Celebrated for his revolutionary takes on traditional Chinese art both in China and abroad, Wang Tiande is best known for his burned landscapes, consisting of a painted underlayer and an overlayer burned with cigarettes or incense sticks. More recently, he has incorporated landscape rubbings of famous ancient steles from his own collection. In their fusion of the fleeting and the timeless, Wang Tiande’s works meditate on creation and destruction. They are both elegies to the past and celebrations of its present persistence. A reception will follow the talk.

Click here to join the webinar.

This event is cosponsored by the Johnson Museum, the East Asia Program, and the Wong Chai Lok Calligraphy Fund.

Cornell Botanic Gardens Tour of Chinese and Asian Plants

Join this guided outdoor stroll exploring different areas of the garden to highlight several plants endemic to China and eastern Asia. Discover the importance of trees and garden plants in East Asian culture, and learn about plans to develop an Asian Summer Garden to showcase tree and herbaceous peonies and other plants native to China, Japan, and Korea. Led by staff and volunteer garden guides. Co-organized by the Cornell Botanic Gardens, the Cornell China Center, and the Einaudi Center for International Studies' East Asia Program.

The walk will take place rain or shine, but will be postponed to the next day, Fri. May 9, 2025 in the event of severe or hazardous weather. Registrants will emailed at least 45 minutes in advance if this outdoor walking tour is postponed. Limited to 20 participants. Register here.

Please meet by the welcome sign/map next to the Nevin Welcome Center parking lot.

East Asia Program Korean Studies Speaker Series presents "Among Women across Worlds: North Korea in the Global Cold War"

Speaker: Suzy Kim, Professor of Korean History, Rutgers University

Description: While social movements may appear to have receded in the 1950s with the rise of Cold War domesticity and McCarthyism (much like the upsurge of authoritarianisms today), the Korean War galvanized women to promote women’s rights in the context of the first global peace campaign during the Cold War. Recuperating the erasure of North Korean women from this movement, this talk excavates buried histories of Cold War sutures to show how leftist women tried to bridge the Cold War divide through maternalist strategies. Socialist feminism in the context of a global peace movement facilitated a productive understanding of “difference” toward a transversal politics of solidarity. The talk weaves together the women’s press with photographs and archival film footage to contemplate their use in transnational movements of resistance and solidarity, both then and now.

Speaker Bio: Suzy Kim is a historian and author of the prize-winning book Everyday Life in the North Korean Revolution, 1945-1950 (Cornell 2013). She holds a PhD from the University of Chicago, and teaches at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey in New Brunswick. Her latest book Among Women across Worlds: North Korea in the Global Cold War (Cornell 2023) was completed with the support of the Fulbright Program and the National Endowment for the Humanities. She is senior editor of positions: asia critique, and serves on the editorial boards of Journal of Korean Studies and Yŏsŏng kwa yŏksa [Women and History], the journal of the Korean Association of Women’s History.

About East Asia Program

As Cornell’s hub for research, teaching, and engagement with East Asia, the East Asia Program (EAP) serves as a forum for the interdisciplinary study of historical and contemporary East Asia. The program draws its membership of over 45 core faculty and numerous affiliated faculty, graduate, and undergraduate students from eight of Cornell’s 12 schools and colleges.

Yumeng Zhang, Ph.D. Student, Asian Studies, will lead this Classical Chinese text-reading.

"Sacred Performances and Epigraphic Echoes: Temple Festivals in North China during Late Medieval China"

Zhang writes:

My study examines the intersection of contemporary anthropological observations and medieval epigraphic records, exploring whether modern temple festivals can provide insights into religious practices in late medieval North China. By analyzing "Invocation and Dismissal of the Deity/Deities" (迎神送神) rituals in both historical inscriptions and present-day festivals, this research investigates their role in village networks, intercommunal relations, and divine-human interactions.

The group meets monthly during the semester to explore a variety of classical Chinese texts and styles. Other premodern texts linked to classical Chinese in Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese have been explored. Presentations include works from the earliest times to the 20th century. Workshop sessions are led by local, national, and international scholars. Participants with any level of classical Chinese experience are welcome to attend.

At each session, a presenter guides the group in a reading of a classical Chinese text. Attendees discuss historical, literary, linguistic, and other aspects of the text, working together to resolve difficulties in comprehension and translation.

No preparation is required; all texts will be distributed at the meeting.