Association for Asian Studies New England Regional Conference

Date: 

Monday, December 6, 2021, 8:30am to 5:00pm

Location: 

Online (Zoom)

A group of academic centers and institutes that support the study of Asia at Harvard University will jointly host the Association for Asian Studies New England Regional Conference via a virtual platform on Monday, December 6, 2021.

Co-sponsored by the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Harvard Asia Center, Harvard-Yenching Institute, Korea Institute, Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute, Program on U.S.-Japan Relations at Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies

**Register for the conference here**

While there is no registration fee, we suggest that attendees donate to the Association for Asian Studies at a level that is comfortable for them.

Full schedule of the Conference

8:30 – 8:45 AM EST: Welcome and Introduction
8:45 – 10:15 AM EST: Panel A1-A6
10:30 – 11:45 AM EST: Panel B1-B5
12:00 – 1:15 PM EST: Keynote
1:45 – 3:15 PM EST: Panel C1-C4
3:30 – 5:00 PM EST: Panel D1-D5

8:30 – 8:45 AM ESTWelcome and Opening Remark

Elizabeth J. Perry
Former President, Association for Asian Studies (2007-08)
Director, Harvard-Yenching Institute 
Henry Rosovsky Professor of Government, Harvard University

To be followed by Zoom logistics guidelines by Mark Grady, the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies

8:45 – 10:15 AM EST: Panel A1-A6 (The following 6 panels take place simultaneously)

Panel A1 – Liquid State: The Politics of Dam Construction
Chair/Discussant: Rohan D'Souza (Kyoto University)

Hydrosociality and Power in the Struggle over the Ishiki Dam
Charlotte Ciavarella and Joshua Linkous (Harvard University)

Hydropower Dams and Politics of River Development in Vietnam
Nga Dao (York University)

Dam Politics in South Vietnam during the Cold War: The Case of the Da Nhim Dam
Chu Duy Ly (National University of Singapore, currently a visiting fellow at the Harvard-Yenching Institute)

Learning from the Tennessee Valley Authority: Hydropower Cooperation between China and the United States in the 1940s
Xiangli Ding (Rhode Island School of Design)

Urbanization and Rural Politics in the Ch’ungju Flood Zone
Will Sack (Harvard University)

Panel A2 – Margin(s) and Center(s) of Empire and Literature: Wang Wei and Meng Haoran
Chair: Christopher M. B. Nugent (Williams College)
Discussant: Jack W. Chen (University of Virginia)

Meng Haoran and Wang Wei in the Eyes of Their Contemporaries
Paul W. Kroll (University of Colorado)

‘I’m at leisure ( haen) in the mountains ( sraen), but I have to turn back ( hwaen) now and close ( kwaen) my gate’: Rhyme-Words and Poetic Argument
Stephen Owen (Harvard University)

Plowing at a Distance: Perspectives on Agricultural Labor in the Poems of Wang Wei
Christopher M. B. Nugent (Williams College)

Wang Wei as a Case study for Classical Chinese Poetry in Translation
Cathy Shen (Harvard University)

Panel A3 – Knowledge, Books, and Text
Chair: Si Nae Park (Harvard University)

Making Different: Reproducing the Histories of Koryŏ in the Twentieth Century
Graeme R. Reynolds (Yale University)

Making Dungan Literary History: Formation of the Sinophone Muslim Literary Tradition of Central Asia
Kenneth J. Yin (City University of New York)

Choi Namsŏn in the Transnational Publication World
Jeonghun Choi (Harvard University)

The Construction of Knowledge Archive in Early Modern South Asia
Sushmita Banerjee (University of Delhi, Indi)

Flowing with Wind and Stream: The Affect of Fengliu 風流 in the Hongzhi Edition of The Story of the Western Wing 西廂記
Xiaoyue Luo (University of Colorado, Boulder)

Panel A4 – Gender and Sexuality
Chair: Rachael Joo (Middlebury College)

Subfertility as an Active Planning for Pregnancy in Neoliberal South Korea
Jean Young Kim (University of Texas at Austin)

The Saigon Sisters: Privileged Women in the Resistance
Patricia D. Norland (Independent writer)

Protest with a party: The Semiotic Landscaping of Metro Manila Pride March as Southern Praxis
Christian Go (National University of Singapore, currently a visiting fellow at the Harvard-Yenching Institute)

Japan’s Gay Seoul: Behind the Scene at a Korean ‘Snack Bar’ in Tokyo
Albert Graves (Doshisha University)

Attraction as a Mode of Power: Matchmaking, Romantic Fetish, and the State in Contemporary China
Shanni Zhao (Harvard University)

Panel A5 – Chinese State and Governance
Chair: Elizabeth J. Perry (Harvard University)

Numbers, Fiscal Capacity, and Capacity-Building in China, 1500-1800
Liu Ziang (London School of Economics and Political Science)

Local Deliberations and Market Development during the Mao Era
Kristine Li (Brown University)

Echoes of Revolution and Civil War: Party Building in Chinese Counties, 1949- 2005.
Zheng Zhang (Chinese University of Hong Kong

When Clans Meet Power: Elite Competition and Rural Governance in China
Meina Cai (University of Connecticut)

Panel A6 – Narrative and Translation
Chair: David Wang (Harvard University)

Forgetting as Knowing: Knowledge and Wisdom in Zhuangzi’s Stories from Inner Chapters
Shangtong Cui (Harvard University)

War, World Literature, and the “Real”: Futabatei Shimei and the Problem of Literary Translation in the Post-Russo–Japanese War Period in Japan
Yuki Ishida (Columbia University)

Transcultural Dialogues: Eileen Chang’s Autobiographical Fiction
Jessica Tsui-yan Li (York University)

Visual and Poetic Imagination in The Four Seasons, A Ming Handscroll in the Metropolitan Museum
Mo Zhang (University of Pennsylvania)

10:30 – 11:45 AM EST: Panel B1-B5 (The following 5 panels take place simultaneously)

Panel B1 – Revisiting East Asia through Mission Collections in New England
Chair: Sharon Yang (Harvard University)

Digital Frontiers: The China Historical Christian Database
Alex Mayfield (Boston University)

The Archival Collections on East Asia at the Yale Divinity Library
Christopher Anderson (Yale University)

Harvard-Yenching Missionary Collection
Sharon Li-shiuan Yang (Harvard-Yenching Library)

The Ricci Institute: A Global Resource for the Interdisciplinary Study of Christianity in East Asia
Mark Mir and M. Antoni Ucerler (Boston College)

Missionary Research Library: More than Theology
Leah Edelman (Columbia University Libraries)

Panel B2 – Knowledge Production in State-building during the Early PRC
Chair: Sigrid Schmalzer (University of Massachusetts Amherst)

Woven Together: Cotton Trade and the Making of Trade Practices in Cold War Asia, 1950-1959
Bohao Wu (Harvard University)

Learning through Hosting: Cameroonian Delegations to the PRC and Chinese Knowledge Production on Africa, 1956-1965
Caitlin Barker (Michigan State University)

History Education in Shanghai’s Secondary Schools in the 1950s
Guanhua Tan (University of Massachusetts Amherst)

Quantifying Rural China: Wartime Land Reform, Statistics, and State Fiscal Capacity in North China (1946-1949)
Xiaoyu Gao (University of Chicago)

Panel B3 – Constitutions and Citizenship
Chair: Tyler Giannini (Harvard University)

The Use of Programmatic Beliefs in EU-China Trade Disputes in the WTO DSM
Salvatore FP Barillà (University of Edinburgh)

Myanmar Citizenship Laws: Making Rohingya Muslims Stateless
Ronan Lee (Queen Mary University of London)

Obstructive Constitutionalism: Democratic Transitions and Pre-Emptive Authoritarian Constitution-Making in Southeast Asia
John Chua (Harvard University)

Panel B4 – Folklore, Ghosts, Monsters, and the Fantastical
Chair: James Robson (Harvard University)

Encountering ghosts: haunting and intercommunal relations in Phang Nga
Chantal Croteau (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor)

Tender Warriors Against the Pandemic in Japan: Kumamon, Quaran & Amabie
Michael L. Maynard ( Temple University)

Viral Monsters for a Viral Era: Japan’s Folkloric Response to COVID-19
Isabel Bush (Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Studies)

A Space of the Subordinate: On the Development of “The Three-body Problem” Fandom
Shuwen Yang (UCLA)

Panel B5  Identity
Chair: Arunabh Ghosh (Harvard University)

Power and Identity of the Manchu and Mongol Bannermen in Qing: A Study of Household Economies by Means of Confiscation Inventory Lists
Yitong Qiu (London School of Economics and Political Science)

Vietnamese International Students in the Asian American Movement (1968-1975)
Cai Barias (University of Massachusetts Amherst)

“In-between” Asian Americans: Falling through the intersectional cracks of Liminality
Kristin Kim (Korea University)

Documentary Betrayal: Migrant Worker, the Aesthetics of Cruelty, and Fabulating Otherwise
Yufan Chen (Harvard University)

Migration, Race and Nation: Chinese Views in Comparative and Global Context, 1900s-1940s
Lisong Liu (Massachusetts College of Art and Design)

History, Identity and Hong Kong: A Constructivist Approach to the De-colonisation of British Hong Kong
Matthew Hurst (University of Oxford)

12:00 – 1:15 PM ESTKeynote

Hy V. Luong
President, Association for Asian Studies
Professor of Anthropology, University of Toronto

Local Culture or Global Neoliberal Ideology?: Reflections on a Shifting Intellectual Landscape

1:45 – 3:15 PM EST: Panel C1-C4 (The following 4 panels take place simultaneously)

Panel C1 – Assessing China’s Belt and Road Initiative: Strategic Evolution and the European Case
Chair: Nargis Kassenova (Harvard University)

From Ambiguity to Articulation: Belt and Road Initiative’s Dynamic Process in China
Min Ye (Boston University)

Burning (Atlantic) Bridges? China’s Rise in Europe and its Implications for U.S. Grand Strategy
Thomas Cavanna (Tufts University)

From Maritime Silk Road to Health Silk Road: Belt and Road Initiative’s Dynamic Process in Europe
Grant Rhode (Boston University)

Panel C2 – Thinking through the Asian Diaspora, Racial Oppression, and Intersectional Identity

Labor’s Advocacy for Whiteness and Chinese Exclusion in Defense of the “American Standard of Living”
Pat Reeve (Suffolk University)

Wang Hao, the Chinese Diaspora, and Philosophy
Montgomery Link (Suffolk University)

Evangelical Christianity, Sex and the Massacre of Asian American Women in Atlanta on March 16, 2021
Amy Fisher (Suffolk University)

A Feminist Critique of Anti-Asian Violence in the Context of U.S.-China Relation
Micky Lee (Suffolk University)

The Invisibility and Microaggression Experiences of Asians in USA: How can we Understand and Reduce their Adverse Impact on Psychological Wellbeing
Sukanya Ray (Suffolk University)

Panel C3 – Empire and Colonialism
Chair: Sugata Bose (Harvard University)

Dandelions, Airships, and the Long Way Around: Orientating Nakayama Miki’s Divine Parental Guidance
Michaela Leah Prostak (Brown University)

Sacred Maneuvers: Maulana Azad and the Career of Muslim Nationalism in British India
Aneeq Ejaz (Dartmouth College)

Sir Robert Hart and the territorialization of Qing rule in aboriginal Taiwan
Georges Moraitis (Queen’s University Belfast)

Industrial Whaling and the Expansion of the Japanese Maritime Empire, 1890- 1912
Fynn Holm (Harvard University)

Discursive Empire: The Shifting Definitions of Japan’s Empire in Manchuria (1905–37)
Yuting Dong (Harvard University)

Panel C4 – Military
Chair: Michael Szonyi (Harvard University)

American Trash, Japanese Treasure: Military Garbage in Occupied Japan
Connor Mills (Dartmouth College)

Soldering Across Space and Time: “Taiwanese” Servicemen Under the Japanese and U.S Empires (1930s – 1970s)
Shang Yasuda (University of Pennsylvania)

The Rhythms of Commodification: Mid-Qing Military Horse Provisioning
Charles Argon (Princeton University)

Neoliberalism and the Political Economy of Bangladesh Military
Matt M. Husain (The University of British Columbia)

3:30 – 5:00 PM EST: Panel D1-D5 (The following 5 panels take place simultaneously)

Panel D1 – More than the Sum of it Parts: Piecing together Chinese Fragment Histories in the Harvard Art Museums
Chair: Sarah Lauren (Harvard University)

Seeing through the Cracks: Kharakhoto Fragments in the HAM Collection
Victoria Andrews (Harvard University)

Putting Face to Place: Fragments from Warner’s “Elephant Chapel”
Isabel McWilliams (Harvard University)

From Henan to Harvard: Three Sixth-century Buddhist Heads in Context
Michael Norton (Harvard University)

Reframing Tianlongshan: Facing the Past and Looking Ahead
Sarah Laursen (Harvard Art Museums)

Panel D2 – Nation, Religion, and Society in Modern Korea: Examinations of Religious Freedom & Restriction, Modern Social Engagement, and (Inter)National Identity and Belonging
Chair: Kyuhoon Cho (University of Regina)

Rational Restriction on Religion? How North Korea Conceives of Religious Freedom
John G. Grisafi (Yale University)

Shifts in the Social Engagement of Modern Korean Buddhism
Jusung Lee (Yale University)

George May’s Lost Town: Remembering Yongsan Garrison through Seoul American High School, 1974-2019
Karis Ryu (Yale University)

Panel D3 – International Relations and International Politics
Chair: Mesrob Vartavarian (Harvard University)

Making Sense of China’s Western Neighbourhood Diplomacy: A Neoclassical Realist Argument
Giulia Sciorati (University of Trento)

Wrestling with the Past: Sumō and the Restoration of Japan-China Relations in the 1970s
Erik Esselstrom (University of Vermont)

Before the Storm Comes: Diplomatic Exchanges between Mongols, Korea, and Japan Before 1274 Bun’ei Campaign
Lina Nie (University of Southern California)

Hegemony and Indirect Balancing in Mainland Southeast Asia
Paul Un (University of Chicago)

Panel D4 – Places and Cities
Chair: Nicole Newendorp (Harvard University)

Decoy of the Gods: Votive Artillery at Asuke Hanchimangū Shrine and Population Politics in a Shrinking Suburb of Japan’s Fourth Largest City
Christopher S. Thompson (Ohio University)

Collective Construction: Building “Community” and “Chumchon” in Bangkok
Hayden Shelby (University of Cincinnati), Trude Renwick (Hong Kong University)

The Timing of the largest flower market in Asia
Rui Sun (Chinese University of Hong Kong, currently a visiting fellow at the Harvard-Yenching Institute)

Seeing Time in Space: Temporality of Symbolic Landscape in Laos
Anna Koshcheeva (Cornell University)

Panel D5 – Performance
Chair: Alex Zahlten (Harvard University)

Secularizing Bollywood: Mother Images in Popular Hindi Cinema
Liangdong Chen (Beijing Normal University, currently a visiting fellow at the Harvard-Yenching Institute)

A Centennial Portrait: Ballets Performed in 2021 for 100th Year of the Chinese Communist Party’s Founding
Eva Shan Chou (City University of New York)

“Even if it Means our Battles to Date are Meaningless”: The Anime Gundam Wing and Postwar History, Memory, and Identity in Japan
Genevieve R Peterson (University of Massachusetts Boston)

Local Performing Arts and Recovery from the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami: A Descriptive Qualitative Study
Akiko Iizuka (Utsunomiya University)

Musical Borrowing for Career Advancement: Daechwita in K-pop
Sunhong Kim (University of Michigan)

Thank you for participating in the NE AAS 2021 Conference. We hope to see you in Honolulu, Hawai’i and online in March, 2022!