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.

The India Studies Program at UConn is pleased to announce a full slate of sponsored or co-sponsored events.

INDIA STUDIES 2015-2016 PROGRAMS / in PDF

In 2015, as part of expanding its Asian purview, the Asian/Asian American Studies Institute in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences entered into an agreement to host India Studies on its website and to manage the publicity for India Studies guest lectures/events held at the University of Connecticut.

Since the 2014 Fall Semester, the Institute has served as the administrator of the India Studies Minor. Contact either Prof. Cathy Schlund-Vials or Betty Hanson, the Founding Director of India Studies and Prof. Emerita of Political Science for details concerning the minor’s plan of study.

The Study Abroad programs related to India Studies will remain with the Office of Global Affairs.

The Social Science Research Council is pleased to announce its Transregional Research Junior Scholar Fellowship funded with generous support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. These fellowships are aimed at supporting transregional research under the rubric InterAsian Contexts and Connections. Their purpose is to strengthen the understanding of issues and geographies that do not fit neatly into existing divisions of academia or the world and to develop new approaches, practices, and opportunities in international, regional, and area studies.

The intellectual thrust of the project will continue to be the reconceptualization of Asia as an interlinked historical and geographic formation stretching from West Asia through Eurasia, Central Asia, and South Asia to Southeast Asia and East Asia. Proposals submitted for the fellowship competition should bear upon processes that connect places and peoples across the boundaries of regions and countries (such as religion, migration, media, shared access to natural resources, cultural and economic continua, and resource flows), those that reconfigure local and translocal contexts (such as shifting borders, urbanization, and social movements), and those that are situated at the nexus of the global/regional/local (such as youth culture, tourist arts, illicit flows). The broad focus of the project is intended to advance transregional research as well as to establish structures for linking scholars across disciplines in the arts, the humanities, and the social sciences.

Select applicants will be invited to submit full narrative proposals in fall 2015, and fellowships will be awarded in February 2016. Fellowship funds will be disbursed flexibly over the eighteen-month period from February 2016 to August 2017.

These fellowships will continue to help junior scholars (those at the postdoctoral stage, one to five years out of the PhD) complete first books and/or undertake second projects. In addition to funding research, the fellowships will create networks and shared resources that will support fellows well beyond the grant period through intensive workshops and activities that promote transregional perspectives on individual campuses. The Transregional Research Junior Scholar Fellowship will thus provide promising scholars important support at critical junctures in their careers.

Applications and additional fellowship details, including former fellows’ research abstracts and answers to frequently asked questions, are available on the program website at
http://www.ssrc.org/fellowships/transregional-research-fellowship

For additional inquiries, please message: transregional@ssrc.org