Asian and Asian American Studies Institute Affiliate Faculty members Alexis Dudden (History), Manisha Desai (Sociology/WGSS), Fred Lee (Political Science), and Peter Zarrow (History) are engaged in commentary in the news and premiering new scholarship in the classroom and in public speaking events to kick-start 2016 Spring Semester accomplishments.
Professor Dudden joined Park Yu-Ha of Sejong University (South Korea) and author of a book translated as “Comfort Women of the Empire” in sharply criticizing the recent Japan-South Korea accord to resolve this long-standing dispute, in a Japan Times report that appeared on January 12, 2016.
Professor Manisha Desai (Sociology and WGSS), author of the forthcoming book from Routledge Subaltern Movements in India is teaching a new course called “Gender Politics in South Asia” [WGSS 3998-section 4] that will study the ways in which the body has been the site of that struggle and continues to define transnational discourse in the region, building borders among India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka but also facilitating bridges for women’s rights that provide possibilities for more gender just societies in the region.
Professor Fred Lee (Political Science) and Peter Zarrow (History) are both slated to give Humanities Institute public talks. On Friday, February 17 at 12:30pm Lee addresses “The Power of Judgment in U.S. Racial Empowerment Movements” in light of Hannah Arendt’s understanding of judgment that appeals to a common sense of the world and guides this exploration of how specific black, Asian, and Amerindian activists decided upon their affiliations, conflicts, and demands.
On Tuesday, April 12 at 4:30pm, Professor Zarrow, who is a recipient of a 2015-2016 UCHI Fellowship will deliver “Utopian Democracy and the Birth of Chinese Liberalism: John Dewey, Chen Duxiu, and Hu Shi” that presents two case studies of “Chinese liberalism”, an idea that may strike many inside and outside of China as an oxymoron. Zarrow will argue that notions of liberty and equality, democracy and civil society came together in the politically tumultuous 1910s and 1920s, focusing on Chen Duxiu, who later became a founder of the Chinese Communist Party, and on Hu Shi, who later became Chiang Kai-shek’s ambassador to the United States, and their takes on Deweyan ideals.