Workshops & Events

Workshops

The University of Chicago emphasizes intellectual interaction outside a formal classroom setting through the fostering of workshops where graduate students and faculty present current work. There are several workshops offered each year that intersect with the work of the department and are sponsored by East Asian students and faculty.

CEAS Workshops Website

Art and Politics of East Asia

The Arts and Politics of East Asia Workshop provides a common intellectual forum for students and scholars of diverse fields investigating the interaction of aesthetics with political economics as reflected in textual and visual media in East Asia. Taking as its focus the cultural products emerging out of East Asian societies as they experience modernity, the workshop confronts existing theoretical frameworks and methodological issues relevant to the study of artistic production and consumption.

Faculty Sponsors: Norma Field and Kyeong-Hee Choi .
Student Coordinator: Anup Grewal
Website: http://cas.uchicago.edu/workshops/apea
Time: Alternate Fridays, 3:00–5:00 p.m., Judd 313.

 

China Before Print

This workshop focuses on recent archaelogical discoveries in China and addresses some of the most pressing issues in the study of civilizations. Placing special emphasis on the history of the book, the workshop considers the following questions: What are some approaches to ancient literacy and manuscript culture? How are different ancient knowledges composed, circulated, transmitted, and stored? What constitutes some of the fabric of the diverse cultures both within China and beyond from the very beginnings to the coming of print? Contributions from literary studies as well as the social sciences, visual and material perspectives and philosophical inquires are examined, the workshop provides an open forum for debates on all these questions, and many more.

Faculty Sponsors: Donald Harper and Edward Shaughnessy
Student Coordinator: Kevin K. Huang
Website: http://cas.uchicago.edu/workshops/china/
Time: Alternate Thursdays, 4:00 p.m., Wieboldt 301

 

East Asia: Politics, Economy, and Society

This workshop focuses on current social science research on East Asian societies, particularly the People’s Republic of China, Korea, Taiwan, and Japan. The scope of the workshop is truly interdisciplinary, as we attract students and faculty from economics, political science, sociology, international studies, and various other areas. Presentations at this workshop are diverse although graduate students are encouraged to present their thesis and dissertation research.

Faculty Sponsor: Dali Yang, William Parish, and Dingxin Zhao
Student Coordinator: Xuefei Ren
Website: http://cas.uchicago.edu/workshops/eastasia/
Time: Tuesdays, 4:00-5:30 p.m., Pick lounge

 

East Asia: Trans Regional Histories

This workshop invites creative and original work that speaks across the national lines of East Asia as well as the disciplinary lines of the academic community. Joint presenations among participants that incorporate multidisciplinary and/or transregional historical perspectives are especially encournation-state in historical understanding, we believe that it is just as important to give exposure to themes of a transnational and regional and/or global nature that have been obscured by the national paradigm. Such approaches can prove particularly fruitful when undertaken at a level of understanding beyond traditional departmental and specialty boundaries.

Faculty Sponsor: James Ketelaar, Prasenjit Duara, and Susan Burns
Student Coordinator: Fei-Hsien Wang
Website: http://cas.uchicago.edu/workshops/eastasia_trh/
Time: Alternate Thursdays, 4:00-6:00 p.m., Social Science 224 (John Hope Franklin Room)

 

Literature and Cultural History in Early Modern East Asia

This workshop serves as a forum for students and faculty to explore the cross-disciplinary and transregional understanding of literature and cultural history in early modern East Asia. While focusing on the flow of cultural productions and ideas across regional boundaries, we will also discuss theoretical and historical issues such as the literati and self-representation, performance and popular culture, gender and sexuality, book-publishing and print culture, and the relationship between text and image.

Faculty Sponsor: Judith Zeitlin and Susan Burns
Student Coordinator: Peng Xu and Jingwoan Chang
Website: http://cas.uchicago.edu/workshops/liteastasia/
Time: Alternate Fridays, 2:00-4:00 p.m., Cobb 102

 

Medicine, Practice and the Body

This workshop explores practice and experience as a middle ground betweent eh formerly dominant polarities of body as brute materiality on the one hand and as mere symbolic representation on the other. It also seeks to provide a venue for reports on bodily matters from several disciplinary orientations and from a variety of non-Western settings. Our thematic interests include: disciplining and disciplines of the body, semiotics and the senses; immigration, globalization, and categories of the body and bodies; violence and memory; ecology and environment; and most centrally, medicine, medical practice, and health care.

Faculty sponsor: Judith Farquhar and Raymond T. Fogelson
Student Coordinator: Nicholas Harkness and Kathryn Tanaka
Website: http://cas.uchicago.edu/workshops/medprabod/
Time: Second and Fourth Thursdays, 4:30-6:00p.m., Haskell 101

Visual and Material Perspectives on East Asia

This workshop is focused on the study of material or visual objects from East Asia (defined broadly to include China, Central Asia, Tibet, Korea, and Japan, and other regions, depending on student interest). It explores the possible uses of recent theories of art, history, and material and visual culture in the study of East Asia. Presentations of studies of objects and visual materials from a variety of historical periods and geographic locations within East Asia serve as case studies for the exploration of such methodological concerns.

Faculty sponsor: Wu Hung, Hans Thomsen, and Ping Foong
Student Coordinator: Christina Yu and Liu Cong
Website: http://cas.uchicago.edu/workshops/vmpea/
Time: Alternate Fridays, 4:00-6:00 p.m., Cochrane-Woods Art Center 152.