Please join us a for a screening of the documentary Invisible Nation (2023), hosted by the East Asia Program. The film tells the story of Taiwan's first female president, Tsai Ing-Wen.

Film synopsis: Unprecedented access to Taiwan’s first female president, Tsai Ing-wen, centers this portrait of the constantly colonized island, as it struggles to preserve its hard-won democracy, autonomy, and freedom from fear of authoritarian aggression. Thorough, incisive, and bristling with tension, Invisible Nation is a living account of Tsai’s tightrope walk as she balances the hopes and dreams of her nation between the colossal geopolitical forces of the U.S. and China. Invisible Nation captures Tsai at work in her country’s vibrant democracy, while seeking full international recognition of Taiwan’s right to exist. At a time when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has demonstrated the ever-present threat of authoritarian aggression around the world, Invisible Nation brings a punctual focus to the struggles of Taiwan.

Free and open to the public! Courtesy of Together Films.

Speaker: Ding Xiang Warner, Professor of Chinese Literature, Cornell University

Abstract: The usual procedures of the scholar of Chinese poetry, when asking the question “What is the meaning of this Chinese poem?,” are familiar and generally reliable. Whether we ask the question about a poem’s “original meaning,” a meaning intended by its author, or about the meanings that accrued to the poem in its reception by readers over time, the meanings for which the poem earned a “place” in Chinese literary tradition, there are rich scholarly resources and time-tested methodological tools that help us to work out answers, even if tentatively. How, though, is the task of the literary historian complicated, how are the meanings of a Chinese poem affected, when it and its Chinese readers are “uprooted” from their native land, transported out of their cultural milieu into another? This presentation takes up these questions by way of examining engraved Chinese poems found on WWI trench art made by Chinese volunteer workers on the Western Front in Europe as opportunities for expanding study of classical Chinese poetry outside its expected contexts.

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.

The Fulbright U.S. Student Program supports U.S. citizens to study, conduct research in any field, or teach English in more than 150 countries. The program is open to graduate students, recent graduates, and young professionals. Undergraduate students who wish to begin the program immediately after graduation are encouraged to start the process in their junior year. Recent graduates are welcome to apply through Cornell.

The Fulbright program at Cornell is administered by the Mario Einaudi Center for International studies. Applicants are supported through all stages of the application and are encouraged to start early by contacting fulbright@einaudi.cornell.edu.

Register for the virtual session.

Can’t attend? Contact fulbright@einaudi.cornell.edu.

Speaker: Wu Hung, Harrie A. Vanderstappen Distinguished Service Professor of Art History and the College Chinese Art, University of Chicago

Title: How to Read Chinese Handscroll Paintings

About Cornell Classical Chinese Colloquium
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 also 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.
o 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.
o No preparation is required; all texts will be distributed at the meeting.
o Refreshments will be served.

The Fulbright U.S. Student Program supports U.S. citizens to study, conduct research in any field, or teach English in more than 150 countries. The program is open to graduate students, recent graduates, and young professionals. Undergraduate students who wish to begin the program immediately after graduation are encouraged to start the process in their junior year. Recent graduates are welcome to apply through Cornell.

The Fulbright program at Cornell is administered by the Mario Einaudi Center for International studies. Applicants are supported through all stages of the application and are encouraged to start early by contacting fulbright@einaudi.cornell.edu.

Register for the virtual session.

Can’t attend? Contact fulbright@einaudi.cornell.edu.

Speaker: Quan Gan, Lecturer of History, Rice University

Title: Invest the Gods, Praise the Lord: Royal Speeches on Temple Steles in Wuyue

Abstract: Throughout his political career, Qian Liu 錢鏐 (d. 932 CE) repeatedly petitioned the emperors in the north to grant honorific titles to powerful figures—both living and deceased, human and divine—within Wuyue. In this colloquium, I will examine two temple inscriptions commissioned by Qian Liu to commemorate the imperial bestowal of honorific titles upon two local deities: Pang Yu 龐玉, the patron god of Yuezhou 越州 (908), and the Dragon God of Hangzhou 杭州 (916).
These two steles offer valuable insight into practices of commemoration and political communication in post-Tang China. Both inscriptions are highly stylized, composed in the parallel prose form (pianwen 駢文), also known as “Four-Six Prose.” Written in Qian Liu’s first-person voice, they celebrate the political achievements of the ruler of Wuyue while foregrounding his ritual relationship with the northern emperor. Most intriguingly, both the textual content and the material form of the steles emphasize this connection. The imperial edict authorizing the bestowal of titles is not only incorporated into the inscription’s text but also visually reproduced on the stone itself.
I welcome discussion on how best to preserve the distinct registers, literary conventions, and layered voices of such inscriptions in English translation.

About Cornell Classical Chinese Colloquium
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 also 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.
o 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.
o No preparation is required; all texts will be distributed at the meeting.
o Refreshments will be served.

East Asia Program Lecture Series presents “Invisible Anatomy: Meridians and Math in Chinese Medicine"

Speaker: Lan Li, Assistant Professor of The History of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University

Description:

This talk is based on Body Maps: Improvising Meridians and Nerves in Global Chinese Medicine, which reframes generic anatomical images by considering illustrations of invisible structures as maps. Body Maps offers a long global history of medicine through hand-drawn body maps and spans across the tenth to the twentieth centuries to re-think cultures of objectivity beyond normative geographies of science and medicine. In this talk, I focus on the graphic form of a tu 圖 as a historical category of technical images to understand how illustrations of lines guided diagnostic and therapeutic practice. Scholars often debated whether to discursively interpret these lines as meridians, channels, or tracts; practitioners often debated whether these lines merely visualized nerves to articulate needling and heating practices. Specifically, this talk offers a critical examination of a thirteenth-century image of jingluo 經絡, or meridians, and considers it within the epistemological frameworks of global East Asian medicine. Drawing on analytical approaches from science studies, visual culture, and medical humanities, it traces the aesthetic, conceptual, and political dimensions of these anatomical images across premodern, modern, and contemporary periods.

Speaker's Bio: Lan A. Li is an Assistant Professor in the Department of the History of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University. Li is a historian of the body and media producer, contributing to podcasts and exhibitions related to acupuncture, Buddhist medicine, and metaphors in science and medicine. Li’s first book, Body Maps: Improvising Meridians and Nerves in Global Chinese Medicine (JHU Press, 2025) considers the long history of graphically representing invisible anatomy.

The Fulbright U.S. Student Program supports U.S. citizens to study, conduct research in any field, or teach English in more than 150 countries. The program is open to graduate students, recent graduates, and young professionals. Undergraduate students who wish to begin the program immediately after graduation are encouraged to start the process in their junior year. Recent graduates are welcome to apply through Cornell.

The Fulbright program at Cornell is administered by the Mario Einaudi Center for International studies. Applicants are supported through all stages of the application and are encouraged to start early by contacting fulbright@einaudi.cornell.edu.

Register for the virtual session.

Can’t attend? Contact fulbright@einaudi.cornell.edu.