East Asia Program
EAP Events Spring 2025

Additional events will be updated throughout the semester.
Craft and Learn: Chinese Guardian Figures
Friday, January 24, 2025 | 12:00pm - 1:00pm | Johnson Museum of Art
Facilitated by art museum staff
Cornell Classical Chinese Colloquium: “Biographies of Exemplary Women” in 19th century Vietnam
Friday, January 31, 2025 | 3:30pm - 5:30pm | Rockefeller Hall 374, Asian Studies Lounge
Speaker: Kathlene Baldanza, Penn State University
Book Talk: Seeing China’s Belt and Road
Monday, February 3, 2025 | 4:30pm - 6:00pm | Goldwin Smith Hall 142
Speaker: Rachel Silvey, University of Toronto
The Political Thought of Xi Jinping
Thursday, February 13, 2025 | 3pm - 4pm | Virtual
Speaker: Steve Tsang, University of London
Friday, February 28, 2025 | 3:30pm - 5:30pm | Rockefeller Hall 374, Asian Studies Lounge
Speaker: Eric Lee, Cornell University
Film Screening: Lilting (2014, dir. Hong Khaou)
Wednesday, March 5, 2025 | 6:00pm | Willard Straight Theatre (Cornell Cinema)
Studying China in the Absence of Access: Relearning a Lost Art
Wednesday, March 19, 2025 | 12pm to 1:30pm | Uris Hall, G-08
Speaker: Andrew Mertha, Johns Hopkins University
Friday, March 21, 2025 | 3:30pm - 5:30pm, Rockefeller Hall 374, Asian Studies Lounge
Speaker: Yumeng Zhang, Cornell University
Monday, March 24, 2025 | 5pm - 6pm | Goldwin Smith Hall 64, Kaufmann Auditorium
Speaker: Jimmy Chia-Shin Hsu, Academia Sinica
Wong Chai Lok Calligraphy Fellowship
Artist's Visit with Wang Tiande
Thursday, April 10, 2025 | 5:15pm | Johnson Museum of Art
Speaker: Wang Tiande
Read more about the Wong Chai Lok Calligraphy Fellowship here
Calligraphy Demonstration with Wang Tiande
Friday, April 11, 2025 | 2:30pm | Johnson Museum of Art
Artist: Wang Tiande
Walls-as-Media: Between Cheng (Wall-City) and Ping (Wall-Screen)
Thursday, April 17, 2025 | 4:45pm - 6:15pm | Goldwin Smith Hall 64, Kaufmann Auditorium
Speaker: Jinying Li, Brown University
Friday, April 18, 2025 | 3:30pm - 5:30pm | Rockefeller Hall 374, Asian Studies Lounge
Speaker: Thomas P. Kelly, Harvard University
Japan's “New Pre-War”: On the Repetition of a Capitalist Form
Wednesday, April 23, 2025 | 12:00pm - 1:30pm | Uris Hall, G-08
Speaker: Ken Kawashima, University of Toronto
Among Women across Worlds: North Korea in the Global Cold War
Tuesday, April 29, 2025 | 4:45pm - 6:15pm | Goldwin Smith Hall 64, Kaufmann Auditorium
Speaker: Suzy Kim, Rutgers University
Cornell Botanic Gardens Tour of Chinese and Asian Plants
Thursday, May 8, 2025 | 12:00pm to 1:00pm | Brian C. Nevin Welcome Center
Guided by Cornell Botanic Gardens Staff
Upcoming in Summer 2025:
32nd Japanese/Korean Linguistics Conference
June 13 - 15, 2025 | Ithaca, NY
Organized by the Center for Korean Studies at Binghamton University and the Department of Linguistics at Cornell University
Additional Information
Program
The Rule of Law in Political Conflicts: How Taiwanese Courts Respond to Disobedience in Political Polarization

March 24, 2025
5:00 pm
Goldwin Smith Hall, 64
East Asia Program Lecture Series presents "The Rule of Law in Political Conflicts: How Taiwanese Courts Respond to Disobedience in Political Polarization."
In a severely polarized polity, political actors are sometimes driven to take extra-legal actions to secure their political goals. Such actions, often self-proclaimed as “civil disobedience”, pose serious challenge to the rule of law. How should the courts respond? What does the rule of law mean in such circumstances? Taiwan’s experience in the past two decades offer precious lessons.
Taiwan experienced a surge of social and civic movements since 2008, which culminated in the Sunflower Movement in 2014. It resulted in a series of judicial decisions showcasing the courts’ dynamic interactions with the civil society. Based upon comprehensive study of judicial decisions in Taiwan for over a decade, Hsu identifies evolving patterns of judicial response to disobedience. He argues that the rule of law plays an important role in maintaining fair political competition and facilitating political reconciliation.
Jimmy Chia-Shin Hsu is Research Professor at the Institute of Law, Academia Sinica, Taiwan. He received LL.B. from National Taiwan University, LL.M. and J.S.D. from the University of Chicago Law School. He was Harvard Yenching Scholar 2016-2017. His research includes legal philosophy, comparative constitutional law, civil disobedience, and transitional justice. He has published widely in international journals and books. He is the President of IVR (International Association for the Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy) Taiwan Section. He recently published edited volumes such as Human Dignity in Asia: Dialogue between Law and Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2022) and The Ethics of Historical Memory: From Transitional Justice to Overcoming the Past (National Taiwan University Press, 2024, in Chinese). He is currently working on comparative judicial responses to civil disobedience, theories of human dignity in East Asian contexts, and post-transition justice and ethics of historical memory.
About the East Asia Program
As Cornell’s hub for research, teaching, and engagement with East Asia, the East Asia Program (EAP) is a forum for the interdisciplinary study of historical and contemporary East Asia. Part of the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, the program draws its membership of over 45 core faculty and numerous affiliated faculty, graduate, and undergraduate students from across Cornell's colleges and schools.
Additional Information
Program
Einaudi Center for International Studies
East Asia Program
The Political Thought of Xi Jinping

February 13, 2025
3:00 pm
East Asia Program Lecture Series presents "The Political Thought of Xi Jinping."
Speaker: Steve Tsang, University of London
Description: This talk offers a comprehensive examination of the official dogma shaping today's China. Professor Steve Tsang, Director of SOAS China Institute at the University of London, will delve into Xi Jinping's personal words and writings, unraveling his ambitious plan to achieve the "China Dream of national rejuvenation". Discover how Xi Jinping's transformative leadership has profound global implications and learn about the evolution and significance of his ideology. This session provides an essential understanding of the ideological revolution under Xi Jinping and its impact on China's future trajectory.
Registration required: https://cornell.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_duULB4NUShunou6Nb3anZw#/reg…
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.
Additional Information
Program
Einaudi Center for International Studies
East Asia Program
Cornell Classical Chinese Colloquium: “Biographies of Exemplary Women” in 19th century Vietnam

January 31, 2025
3:30 pm
Rockefeller Hall, 374 (Asian Studies Lounge)
Speaker: Kathlene Baldanza, Associate Professor of History and Asian Studies, Penn State University
Description: In China, Korea, and Vietnam, the genre of “biographies of exemplary women” (列女傳) served both to celebrate individual women for their virtue and to promote widow chastity more broadly. The dozen or so biographies of women collected in Đại Nam hành nghĩa liệt nữ truyện (大南行義列女傳) are quite similar on the surface to Chinese and Korean examples. A closer reading shows elements that are perhaps unique to Vietnam, and certainly reflect the political situation during the Minh Mạng reign period (1820-1839), when many of these biographies were collected.
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.
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.Refreshments will be served.
Additional Information
Program
Einaudi Center for International Studies
East Asia Program
Southeast Asia Program
The Names of Water: China’s Nanyang Project and Other Vernacular Imaginaries of the Southern Seas

May 1, 2025
6:00 pm
Gatty Lecture Series
Join us for a talk by Dr. Rachel Leow from University of Cambridge. Dr. Leow is an Associate Professor in Modern East Asian History at Faculty of History, University of Cambridge.
This Gatty Lecture will take place on Zoom, but will only be open to current Cornell students, faculty, and staff. Please register using your Cornell email address. It will be held at 6pm Eastern Time, not the usual 12:15pm. For questions, contact seapgatty@cornell.edu.
About the Talk
Southeast Asia and the maritime worlds which surround it have always been a zone of dense inter- and intra-Asian mobilities, among which the entangled histories of diasporic, settling, embedded and indigenous Chinese communities across the region have been especially significant. Its waters have been known by many names, testifying to its complex nature as a space of overlapping diasporas, empires and flows. Yet the historiographies of this region reflect its fragmentation. Histories of one nation-state seem to exist in parallel to each other, or in a national vacuum; even when studying the region's many transnational migrants and diasporas, different flows are rarely brought into dialogue; beyond European encounter, entanglements between migrant and indigenous groups—and the complex hierarchies of race, gender and culture between them—remain underexplored; linguistic silos remain formidable. This lecture critically examines the historical construction of “Southeast Asia” as a bounded geographic and disciplinary category, and offers the Southern Seas as a capacious alternative. It explores a range of competing names of water, and the vernacular political and intellectual projects they represent — from Chinese and Japanese oceanic, colonial and neo-imperial projects to Chinese migrant creole imaginaries and Malay revolutionary socialist visions — and in doing so, reveals a complex intellectual and political seascape that challenges contemporary national and regional boundaries, and pushes migrant histories beyond commerce, capital and commodities into the realm of ideas. In asking how might we do justice to the expansive migratory histories trapped within the siloed geographies of the Southern Seas, it calls for a rethinking of what it means to study ‘Chinese diaspora’ in Southeast Asia.
About the Speaker
Rachel Leow is Associate Professor of Modern East Asian History at the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of Murray Edwards College. Her first book, Taming Babel: Language in the Making of Malaysia, explored the ethnolinguistic constructions of Chineseness and Malayness over the colonial-postcolonial transition in Malaysia; it was published in 2016 and won the 2018 Association for Asian Studies Harry J. Benda Prize. Her recent work explores transregional and transnational connections between China and Southeast Asia, and her research has been published in academic venues, including Twentieth-Century China, Itinerario, the Journal of World History, Modern Asian History, as well as in literary venues such as the LA Review of Books China Channel and the Mekong Review, and in film. With her collaborator Professor Emma Teng, she is currently co-editing the Oxford Handbook of Asian Migration and Diaspora, c. 1300s-2000s, and her next monograph, tentatively titled Southern Seas: Chinese encounters on diaspora's horizons, is under joint contract with University of California Press and Penguin Allen Lane.
Additional Information
Program
Einaudi Center for International Studies
Southeast Asia Program
East Asia Program
Funding Research-Related Travel

Tips from the Graduate School
Grad students: The Einaudi Center offers a range of global funding opportunities to support you—from your first year to your final semester.
Additional Information
Information Session: Latin American Studies Undergraduate Minor

January 28, 2025
5:00 pm
The undergraduate minor in Latin American Studies spans across disciplines and allows you to explore the history, culture, government, politics, economy and languages of Latin America and the Caribbean. Qualifying courses can be found in many of the colleges.
Register here. Can’t attend? Contact lacs@cornell.edu.
Additional Information
Program
Einaudi Center for International Studies
Comparative Muslim Societies Program
East Asia Program
Southeast Asia Program
Latin American and Caribbean Studies
Institute for African Development
Institute for European Studies
Migrations Program
Accepting applications for 2025-2026 LB Korean Studies Research Scholar

Calling for applications: 2025-2026 LB Korean Studies Postdoctoral Associate within the East Asia Program.
The Cornell East Asia Program is accepting applications for a post-doctoral associate in residence at Cornell (Ithaca Campus) for the 2025-2026 academic year. Advanced Ph.D. candidates and recent Ph.D. graduates within 5 years of their Ph.D. conferral whose research pertains to Korea are encouraged to apply to this research residency. Applications must be submitted through Academic Jobs Online (AJO) here and are due February 1, 2025.
The LB Korean Studies Postdoctoral Scholar research program within the East Asia Program and the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies at Cornell University aims to cultivate new collaborations that advance scholarship, knowledge dissemination, teaching, outreach, and engagement with general public for a deeper understanding of Korea in the contemporary world. The program is open to scholars whose research and teaching focuses on Korea, especially with a comparative, global, and interdisciplinary perspective.
Applicants can have backgrounds in any humanities discipline, broadly conceived. In addition to traditional Korean studies fields, such as literature and history, we also envision Korea-focused work that transcends conventional disciplinary, temporal, and regional boundaries, in fields including but not limited to the environmental humanities, material culture, Indigenous studies, the blue humanities, gender studies, and Asian American studies. Selection will be based on the potential of the candidate’s research to cultivate dialogue and nurture collaboration across academic disciplines, as well as integrate, synthesize, and build upon existing disciplinary contributions to Korean studies research. Scholars will work within the East Asia Program and the Einaudi Center for International Studies as well as engage with mentors and peers across Cornell. Undergraduate teaching is optional and depends on the applicant’s preference.
Additional Information
Program
Information Session: Fulbright U.S. Student Program for Undergraduates

February 24, 2025
4:45 pm
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. 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 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 here. Can't attend? Contact fulbright@einaudi.cornell.edu.
Additional Information
Program
Einaudi Center for International Studies
Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies
East Asia Program
Southeast Asia Program
Latin American and Caribbean Studies
Institute for African Development
Institute for European Studies
South Asia Program
Migrations Program
Information Session: Global PhD Research Awards and Dissertation Proposal Development Program

February 20, 2025
5:00 pm
The Amit Bhatia ’01 Global PhD Research Awards fund international fieldwork to help Cornell students complete their dissertations. Through a generous gift from Amit Bhatia, this funding opportunity annually supports at least six PhD students who have passed the A exam. Recipients hold the title of Amit Bhatia ’01 Global PhD Research Scholars. All disciplines and research topics are welcome. The award provides $10,000 to be used by the end of the sixth PhD year for international travel, living expenses, and research expenses. Applications are due March 7, 2025.
The Einaudi Dissertation Proposal Development Program supports 12 students over the course of a year to participate in seminars, workshops, and mentoring sessions and receive up to $5,000 for summer research. Applicants’ research projects must focus on global issues, but the proposed research setting may be international or domestic. In addition to six weeks of summer research, the program includes community-building and mentoring events. Applications are due by March 2, 2025.
Register here. Can't attend? Contact programs@einaudi.cornell.edu.
Additional Information
Program
Einaudi Center for International Studies
Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies
Comparative Muslim Societies Program
East Asia Program
Southeast Asia Program
Latin American and Caribbean Studies
Institute for African Development
Institute for European Studies
South Asia Program
Migrations Program