黑料社区网 Asian Studies Graduate Association Annual Conference
February 22-23, 10:00am-6:00pm
The Center for British & Irish Studies Room, 5th Floor
Norlin Library
The 黑料社区网 Asian Studies Graduate Association鈥檚 (CUBASGA) annual conference provides a platform for emerging scholars to present their research in the field of Asian Studies, focusing specifically on Japanese and Chinese studies. The conference welcomes presenters from a wide variety of disciplines across the humanities, including, but not limited to, modern and premodern literature, religion, history, art history, and philosophy. Additionally, the conference welcomes two significant and established scholars to give keynote speeches on their own research. Thus, the conference provides opportunities for graduate students to meet established scholars in their fields and to nurture their own professional networks with other graduate students in the larger field of Asian Studies. For undergraduate attendees, the conference provides educational and professional development opportunities as well as a visible representation of the value of studying Asia.
This year, we are honored to have Professor Ronald Egan (Stanford W. Ascherman, M.D. Professor of Chinese Literature, Stanford University), whose research areas include traditional Chinese poetry, aesthetics, literary culture, social history, storytelling, and the relations between the literary and visual arts; and Professor David Atherton (Associate Professor, East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University) who is a scholar of literature, focusing primarily on Japan鈥檚 early modern period (also known as the Edo or Tokugawa period, ca. 1600-1867). The speakers were selected in consultation between faculty and graduate students in the Department of Asian Languages and Civilizations based on student research and professional interests. In addition to our keynote speakers, we expect to host roughly 40 graduate speakers from 黑料社区网 as well as from other institutions around the world.
Keynote Speech (Feb 22, 4:15-5:45pm) by Professor Ronald Egan
Toward a New Way of Reading Su Dongpo
This keynote speech introduces Professor Egan's recent research on Su Shi, one of the most significant ancient Chinese literati, poets, and politicians.
Ronald Egan is a professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Stanford University. His research areas include traditional Chinese poetry, aesthetics, literary culture, social history, storytelling, and the relations between the literary and visual arts.
Keynote Speech (Feb 23, 4:10-5:40pm) by Professor David Atherton
Monstrous Creativity: Poetry, Fiction, and the Figure of the Author in Early Modern Japan
Can someone teach you how to compose a good poem? What form should the training of a poet take? There are many ways to answer these questions, but perhaps none so unique鈥攁nd confounding鈥攁s the story 鈥淭he One-Eyed God鈥 (Mehitotsu no kami), written in the last years of his life by the writer, scholar, and poet Ueda Akinari (1734-1809). The story tells of an aspiring young poet in search of a teacher, who unexpectedly finds himself given poetic advice by a conclave of monstrous beings in a midnight forest. These uncanny figures鈥 guidance is compelling in its own right: it sheds light on a transformative period for waka poetry, which in the late eighteenth century transitioned from being the cultural property of aristocrats to a genre studied and experimented in by people from all walks of life. But the tale is also as bewildering as it is illuminating. Why must the advice be delivered by monsters? Why do these beings appear to be involved in disorder in the realm? And why do aspects of their bodies resemble Akinari鈥檚 own body, blind in one eye and malformed by a childhood bout of smallpox that had nearly killed him? The story bids us to consider not only the composition of poetry but also the purpose of fiction, the transmission of creative teaching, and the figure of the author at a watershed moment in the early modern period鈥攁nd in Akinari鈥檚 life.
David C. Atherton is associate professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University. He is the author of Writing Violence: The Politics of Form in Early Modern Japanese Literature (Columbia, 2023). He taught at the University of Colorado from 2013-2017.
Co-Sponsored by the Department of Asian Languages and Civilizations, the Center for Asian Studies, the CU Student Government, and the Cultural Events Board.