Melodramatic Afterlives: Visions in Seoul’s Blockchain Space

Simon Posner, Ph.D. student, Department of Anthropology, Cornell University

Posner writes: This chapter looks at blockchain-inspired visions of the future crafted by members of Seoul's largest community of blockchain enthusiasts. I look at the ways in which these visions are less visual and more felt. In particular, I argue that these visions are intended to conjure and re-animate melodramatic structures of feeling that arose during South Korea's period of rapid industrialization to make sense of profound change. This method of envisioning is distinct from ocular-centric visions often described in Western contexts and adds to the repertoire by which we might engage the future.

ROUGH WORK: Discussing research in progress, hence the term, rough work. This rough work session is hosted by the East Asia Program's Graduate Student Steering Committee (GSSC).

Please join us for an invited talk by Prof. Joseph A. Marino, III, generously co-sponsored by the Departments of Asian Studies, History and Philosophy; the South Asia, Southeast Asia, East Asia and Religious Studies Programs; and the Graduate and Professional Student Assembly. The event is open to all interested, and special accommodations can be made for access upon request.
This talk examines the metaphor of hell as a place of burning in early Buddhist literature. Taking a Gandhari manuscript about the "Great Conflagration Hell” as our starting place, we explore foundational Buddhist hell texts and contemporaneous non-Buddhist Sanskrit literature to understand the Buddhist “hot hell” as a combination of two fire metaphors used widely elsewhere: the notion of desire as a fire that must be extinguished, and that of tapas as a purifying fire generated through austerity. Along the way, we see how “hot hell” descriptions develop from and build upon the volatile and violent depictions of a blacksmith’s forge.

Joe Marino is Assistant Professor of Buddhist Studies at the University of Washington, where he teaches Sanskrit and courses on Buddhist history and literature. His research specialty is Buddhist manuscripts from Gandhāra, which he edits, translates, and studies in the comparative context of early Buddhist literature in Indic and Chinese languages. He also writes about the pedagogical and literary functions of metaphor and simile in early Buddhist sutras. Joe received a BA and MA in Comparative Studies from Ohio State University, and an MA in Comparative Religion and PhD in Buddhist Studies from the University of Washington.

Due to COVID-era regulations, all attendees are required to register for this event here: http://cglink.me/2ee/r992968

Upon registration you should receive an automated email with the Zoom link. If for any reason you do not receive this email, please contact Bruno at bms297@cornell.edu.

Image, Stories, and Silences of “Ex-Returnees” Who Defected from North Korea to Japan: Artist Talk with Soni Kum

Kum will discuss her installation work, Morning Dew-The Stigma of Being "Brainwashed" exhibited in Tokyo in November 2020. It is based on interviews conducted with North Korean ex-“returnees” now living in Tokyo. Most are zainichi Koreans (“ethnic Koreans resident in Japan”) or their children, who from 1959 to 1984 moved to North Korea as part of the Repatriation Program. They thought the DPRK was ‘a paradise on earth,’ only to experience the severe living conditions of North Korea’s recovery from the Korean War. They are compelled to hide the fact that they left, or fled from, North Korea, or experience discrimination and other troubling consequences. Facing these fears of her interviewees, Kum’s work weaves together archival images, text, and silences to artistically evoke their hidden stories.

Discussants include Brett de Bary, Professor Emerita, Cornell, and Rebecca Jennison, Art Critic, Kyoto, Japan.

This event is co-sponsored by the Central New York Humanities Corridor from an award by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. This event is also co-sponsored by the Migrations initiative and the Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies (PACS).

The event image is from the installation named, 'Morning Dew-the stigma of being brainwashed'. To learn more about artist Soni Kum, please visit her website: http://www.sonikum.com/

Margaret E. Roberts, Associate Professor of Political Science at University of California at San Diego, discusses her book Censored: Distraction and Diversion Inside China's Great Firewall (Princeton University Press, 2018).

The author will join for a conversation about their work. No formal presentation will be given; please read in advance. A link to the reading will be sent with the registration confirmation.

Part of the Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies (PACS) seminar series.

About the author

Margaret E. Roberts is an Associate Professor of Political Science at University of California at San Diego. Her research interests lie in the intersection of political methodology and the politics of information, with a specific focus on methods of automated content analysis and the politics of censorship in China. She received a PhD from Harvard in Government (2014), MS in Statistics from Stanford (2009) and BA in International Relations and Economics (2009). Currently, she is working on a variety of projects that span censorship, propaganda, topic models, and other methods of text analysis. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in the American Journal of Political Science, American Political Science Review, Political Analysis, and Science.

Mitzi Sutton Russekoff '54 Lecture 2021 featuring Jessica Chen Weiss, Associate Professor in the Department of Government

"How does China’s domestic governance shape its foreign policy? What role do nationalism and ideology play in Beijing’s regional and global ambitions?"

The Chinese leadership has been at once a revisionist, defender, reformer, and free-rider in the international system—insisting rigidly on issues that are central to its domestic survival, while showing flexibility on issues that are more peripheral. To illuminate this variation and what might lie ahead for US-China relations and the international order, Weiss will discuss her new book project, which theorizes and illustrates the domestic-international linkages in Beijing’s approach to issues ranging from sovereignty and homeland disputes to climate change and COVID-19.

Rough Work: Adoree Kim, Ph.D. student, Government

Loopholes for Lawmakers: Symbolic Prohibition of Bribery

Adoree Kim writes: This chapter process-traces the enactment of the 2016 Improper Solicitation and Graft Act in the wake of the Sewol Ferry tragedy. The Improper Solicitation Act, as introduced by the Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission (ACRC), was intended to reduce public official corruption. National Assembly lawmakers revised provisions they believed would restrict their access to political resources or increase their likelihood of becoming targets of enforcement. Stripped of restrictions on third-party petitioning, the law became a “cheap signal” with limited ability to constrain politician corruption. Indeed, the majority of those investigated and prosecuted for violating the Improper Solicitation Act are low-level public officials. This chapter uses legislative records and in-depth interviews with South Korean National Assembly members and ACRC officials to demonstrate how lawmakers discreetly shape institutions to reflect status-quo preferences.

ROUGH WORK: Discussing research in progress, hence the term, rough work. This rough work session is hosted by the East Asia Program's Graduate Student Steering Committee (GSSC).

Please join us March 4, 2021 at 5 pm EST for the first virtual Science on Tap! This month, we welcome Dr. Yangyang Cheng and her talk, "When Scientists Cross Water," about the ethics and governance of science, focusing on China and China-US relations.

RSVP at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdYb_Cw8-bGQ_JLH3FkK58tlRFCa0M…

Speaker: Dr. Yangyang Cheng (Postdoctoral Fellow, Yale Law School's Paul Tsai China Center).

Topic: Pushing the Frontier: When Science Becomes Transnational.

Description:

Scientific collaboration has become one of the most contentious issues in U.S. - China relations. In a world fractured by nations, races, and governing systems, can science transcend political borders?

Particle physicist and postdoctoral fellow at Yale Law School, Dr. Yangyang Cheng, will discuss this urgent and complex subject.

The Floating World: History, Haiku, Global Modernism

The East Asia Program invites you to join our guest, Chris Bush, (Ph.D. in Comparative Literature, UCLA) Associate Professor of French and Comparative Literary Studies in this Rough Work session.

This “rough work” session shares an account of the genesis and current state of my current book project, The Floating World, along with a narrative outline of the book as a whole and some suggested points of departure for our discussion.

The first half of the book analyzes the impact of Japanese modernization on theories of history and universal civilization in a variety of places around the world. Its three chapters cover triumphalist end-of-history discourses; hopes for anti-Western and anti-colonial solidarity; and yellow-peril apocalypticism. The second half of the book explores, in this context, the rapid spread of the haiku as a literary form in the early part of the twentieth century. Its three chapters focus on World War One-era French-language haiku as a form of anti-epic historical writing; the tensions between cosmopolitanism and nationalism in the Mexican haiku movement of the 1920s; and the place of Japan in Ezra Pound’s cosmopolitan fascism.

Participants will receive a link to access texts by Chris Bush for prereading upon registration.

Bio

Christopher Bush is Associate Professor of French at Northwestern University, where he codirects the Global Avant-garde and Modernist Studies graduate cluster and coedits Modernism/modernity and its Print Plus platform His first book, Ideographic Modernism: China, Writing, Media, was published by Oxford University Press in 2010 and he is currently completing The Floating World for Columbia University Press.

These sessions are small allowing for informal discussion and exploration as well as feedback.

ROUGH WORK: Discussing research in progress, hence the term, rough work.

Rough Work session with Xuewen Yan, Ph.D. student, sociology

The popularity and prestige of the English language in Chinese academia: A missing link in the hegemony of English as lingua franca?

Xuewen Yan writes: With the rise of English as the global language, scholars across the social sciences have long queried the hegemonic power of the English language in the academic world. Most often, sociologists and critical linguists have examined the active dominance or relative privileges of native speakers of English, vis-à-vis the subordination and disadvantage of those from non-English speaking countries. In this study, I theorize a potentially different mechanism in the maintenance of the hegemony of English: actors in non-English speaking countries attach prestige and value to the use of English within their own country, whereby the dominance of English over their native language is perpetuated. I plan to test my theory with the empirical example of China's sociological academia. Currently working on data from a flagship Chinese-language sociology journal, shehuixue yanjiu, I expect to find higher valence associated with English as opposed to Chinese-related indicators. At the level of individual papers, my preliminary analysis shows that publications with more English-language references receive more citations themselves, an effect that one does not observe for Chinese-language references. At the author level, I hypothesize that having professional connections to English will be a strong predictor of higher influence within China's sociology community.

ROUGH WORK: Discussing research in progress, hence the term, rough work. This rough work session is hosted by the East Asia Program's Graduate Student Steering Committee (GSSC).