“Transnational Turns and the Future of China Studies”
The UC Santa Cruz Transnational China research hub invites you to the webinar “Transnational Turns and the Future of China Studies” on May 12-13 (Friday – Saturday, via Zoom).
We are honored to welcome over twenty scholars from various disciplines, career stages, and institutions to discuss the state and future of China studies through a critical transnational lens. The keynote session on Saturday May 13 will feature Rey Chow, Andrew W. Mellon Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Duke University, and a panel around the impact of her scholarship.
For details and to join, please register here.
Organizer: Transnational China research hub, seed project supported by UCSC Office of Research and The Humanities Institute
P.I. Shelly Chan (History), Co-P.I. Ben Read (Politics), and Co-P.I. Yiman Wang (Film and Digital Media)
Workshop Co-sponsors: UCLA School of Theater, Film, and Television and Fudan-UC Center on Contemporary China
FINAL PROGRAM
Friday May 12, 2023 (8:45 am- 5:00 pm PT)
8:30-8:45 Event opens to Zoom participants
8:45-9:00 Welcome remarks from UCSC organizers – Shelly Chan, Ben Read, Yiman Wang
9:00-10:30 Session 1: China Studies Now (roundtable)
Chair: Gail Hershatter (UCSC)
Jeff Wasserstrom (UCI), “Are We All Transnational Now?”
Michael Berry (UCLA), “The Age of Silence: Navigating Chinese Studies Today”
Nellie Chu (DKU), “The Politics of Going ‘Global’: Teaching and Studying China after Zero-COVID”
Evelyn Hu-Dehart (Brown), “New Directions in China Studies: Asian American Studies and Latin America”
10:30-11:00 Break
11:00-12:30 Session 2: Cold War Borders and Diasporas (panel)
Chair: Covell Meyskens (NPS)
Els van Dongen (NTU), “Transnationalism in Times of Nationalism: China, Southeast Asia, and the ‘Return’ of ‘Overseas Chinese Students’ during the Cold War”
Joshua Tan (UCSC), “Creating ‘Stranded Chinese Students’ in the Early Cold War, 1949-55”
Wilson Miu (UCSC), “Ideological threat and regulatory concern: Cross-border marriage between Hong Kong and Maoist China”
Denise Ho (Yale), “Borderlands: Families, Property, and Flight at the Hong Kong-China Frontier”
12:30-1:30 Break
1:30-3:00 Session 3: Indigeneity and Ethnicity (panel)
Chair: Amy Lonetree (UCSC)
Jason McGrath (Minnesota), “‘The Soil Never Rejects a Seed’: Indigeneity, Hybridity, and Taiwan’s Settler-colonial Paradox in Seqalu: Formosa 1867”
James Millward (Georgetown), “The Issue of Indigeneity in Xinjiang (and the PRC): How Are We Talking About It?”
Stephen Acabado (UCLA), “Landscape, Habitus and Identity: A Comparative Study on the Agricultural Transition of Highland Indigenous Communities in Philippines and Taiwan” (with Da-Wei Kuan)
Sabina Knight (Smith), “Slaughtered Dreams: Cultural Struggle in Literary Borderlands”
3:00-3:30 Break
3:30-5:00 Session 4: Comparative and Sinophone Configurations (panel)
Chair: Minghui Hu (UCSC)
Sara Friedman (Indiana), “Perspectival Politics: Where/What is the Transnational in Contemporary China Studies?”
Calvin Hui (William and Mary), “A Desire for Hong Kong: Hong Kong Popular Cultures in JIA Zhangke’s Cinema”
Ben Read (UCSC), “What Are We Learning from China-Taiwan Comparisons?”
Hsin-Chieh Chang (Fudan), “Postmodern Ideology under Fertility Change: East Asian Millennials in Comparative Perspective”
5:00 Event closes to Zoom participants
Saturday May 13 (9:30 am – 5:30 pm, PT)
9:15-9:30 Event opens to Zoom participants
9:30-11:00 Session 5: Crossings (lightning talks)
Chair: Sean Metzger (UCLA)
Daphne Lei (UCI), “Sinophone performance and performativity”
Lok Siu (Berkeley), “China, Refracted”
Qianxiong Yang (UCLA), “Chinese Flatliners: The Politics of Underperformance and Social Media”
Hentyle Yapp (UCSD), “The Ubiquity of Asia: Culture, China, and Cycles of Accumulation”
11:00-11:30 Break
11:30-1:00 Session 6: Oceans, Coasts, and Islands (panel)
Chair: Chris Connery (UCSC)
Melissa Macauley (Northwestern), “Translocalism on China’s Maritime Frontier”
Winnie Wong (Berkeley), “Imagined Returns: Unlikely Tales of Worldly Success”
Shelly Chan (UCSC), “The Nanyang was not Southeast Asia”
Erin Huang (Princeton), “Islanding: An Archipelagic Approach to Zones across Militarized (South) Seas”
1:00-2:00 Break
2:00-4:00 Keynote session: Writing Diaspora Thirty Years Later: A Virtual Conversation with Rey Chow (Duke)
Chair: Yiman Wang (UCSC)
Discussants: Boreth Ly (UCSC), Calvin Hui (William and Mary), Evelyn Char (UCSC)
4:00-4:30 Break
4:30-5:30 Plenary discussion – Shelly Chan, Ben Read, Yiman Wang
5:30 Event closes to Zoom participants