Speaker: Xiao Hai

Title: Adrift in the South: Life and Art in China's Factories

Abstract: Forthcoming

Title: Strange Marriages, Painted Skins, and Ghost Writers: Japanese Responses to Pu Songling from the Eighteenth to the Twentieth Century

Speaker: William Fleming, UC Santa Barbara

Abstract: Through an examination of Japanese translations, adaptations, and imitations of Pu Songling from four distinct historical eras spanning three centuries, this talk traces shifting attitudes not only toward this major author and his work, but toward fiction and translation more broadly.

Speaker's Bio: William Fleming specializes in early modern Japanese literature. His primary research interests include eighteenth- and nineteenth-century fiction, popular theater, book history, and literary and cultural exchange with China and the West; his recent monograph examines aspects of the importation, circulation, reading, and adaptation of Chinese fiction in early modern Japan. He completed his undergraduate and graduate studies at Harvard University and has spent time as a visiting researcher at Kyoto University, Waseda University, and the National Institute of Japanese Literature in Tokyo. Before joining the faculty at UCSB, he taught in the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures and the Theater Studies Program at Yale University.

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.

Speaker: Ben Read, Professor of Politics, UC Santa Cruz

Title: The Struggle for Oversight in Local Government: Mayors vs. Councils in the Heart of Taiwan’s Democracy

Abstract: Having held its eighth straight round of direct elections for the presidency in 2024, Taiwan is widely praised as a model case of democratization. Beneath the central level, though, politics are prone to abuses like those found in many countries, including the amassing of unfettered power by local bosses. This talk draws on a fieldwork-based project that carefully examines the relatively little-studied topic of horizontal accountability in Taiwan’s cities and counties. As in most democracies, local councils there have the duty of checking and balancing the executive. Yet in practice, mayors and magistrates often develop many means of thwarting such scrutiny. The ability or inability of councils to fulfill these responsibilities provides a window on the overall health of democracy. We examine councils’ struggles with formidable and controversial executives such as Ko Wen-je of Taipei (柯文哲, 2014–2022), Fu Kun-chi and Hsu Chen-wei of Hualien (傅崐萁、徐榛蔚, 2009–present), and others. The framework developed for this study reveals new aspects of Taiwan’s politics and also promises to help make sense of problems that are widespread in local governments in the United States, Latin America, and elsewhere.

Speaker's Bio: Ben Read ‘93 is a professor of politics at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His research has focused on local politics in mainland China and Taiwan, and he also writes about issues in field research and comparison. His books include Roots of the State: Neighborhood Organization and Social Networks in Beijing and Taipei (2012), and Field Research in Political Science: Practices and Principles (2015). He co-edits the Cambridge Elements series in Politics and Society in East Asia. As an undergraduate he majored in Asian Studies, minored in International Relations, and wrote for the Cornell Daily Sun. His personal website is https://benread.net.

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.

Speaker: Sandra So Hee Chi Kim, Assistant Professor of Asian and Asian American Studies, Stony Brook University

Title: The Ante-Colonial: A Grassroots Discourse of Korean Diasporic Trans-indigenous Relationality

Abstract: This presentation explores a Korean diasporic social media discourse that reimagines indigeneity as a relational framework for anti-imperial critique, transnational solidarity, and decolonial worldmaking. Through close readings of posts by Korean American community organizations, collectives, cultural workers, and movement practitioners, it traces how grassroots creators situate U.S. militarism on the Korean peninsula within interconnected histories of settler colonialism, global capitalism, and indigenous dispossession. Kim develops the concept of the ante-colonial, a trans-indigenous analytic oriented toward precolonial epistemologies and anticolonial futures that denaturalizes the nation-state, foregrounds indigenous relationality, and enables a planetary critique of empire rooted in care, kinship, collective liberation, and decolonial possibility.

Speaker's bio: Sandra So Hee Chi Kim is an Assistant Professor of Asian and Asian American Studies at Stony Brook University. A transnational cultural studies scholar of Asian American studies, critical Korean studies, and the study of modern empire, her work appears and is forthcoming in Positions: Asia Critique, Korean Studies, Verge: Studies in Global Asias, and Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies, among other journals. Dr. Kim is also the founder and chair of the grassroots community organization, Asian American Justice + Innovation Lab.