Spring 2021 Endowed Lecture Series
The Center for Asian Studies is committed to providing opportunities for the University community to engage in Asian and Asian American cultures. We offer a variety of expert-led lectures throughout the semester such as, The Anlin Ku Lecture on Chinese Culture, Carmen R. & Joseph G. Schneidler Lecture on Pan-Asian Culture, Charlie’s TechTalks and more. See our upcoming and past lectures below.
Spring 2021
Featured lecture: “U.S.-China Relations and Global Governance” by Dr. Huiyao Wang
Wednesday, April 14, 8 p.m. Free virtual event.
Dr. Huiyao Wang will discuss the implications of the recent meeting of high-ranking U.S. and China officials for hopes of a “long-anticipated start of warming bilateral relations” between the two nations during the Biden Administration. In his words, “One face-to-face meeting is worth a thousand other forms of communication.”
Wang’s address takes place at a critical historical moment – following the face-to-face talks between high-ranking U.S. and Chinese government officials; moreover, as a Western educated director of the top Chinese think tank who has close contacts with the Brookings Institute and leading American scholars, he brings a uniquely global and cosmopolitan perspective to his commentary. Read more about Dr. Huiyao Wang.
Asian Culture Forum: “Japanese Culture and Society in Hayao Miyazaki’s Animations and Movies (2)” by Prof. Nami Kroska
Saturday, April 24, 4 p.m. Free virtual event. From her presentation last November, Professor Nami Kroska continues to discuss Hayao Miyazaki’s animations and movies and explore what Japanese culture and society are revealed in his works. Nami Kroska is Visiting Assistant Professor of Japanese at The University of Texas at Dallas.
Asian Culture Forum: “Chinese Muslims and the Second Generation Ethnic Policy Moment” by Prof. Kevin Caffrey
Saturday, March 27. 4 p.m. Free virtual event.
Professor Kevin Caffrey is an expert in Chinese Muslin people and their interlocutors, with particular emphasis on the stigma, rumor, and stereotyping of the Hui as a “dangerous” people. He ahs written many articles on Chinese ethno-religious politics, fear, stigma/rumor, mass sport, and soft power. He currently is Director of Ronald E. McNair Scholars Program and Professor at the University of North Texas.
Director Kratz Gives Talks about “US – China Relations Through A Superheroic Lens”
Tuesday, March 23, noon to 1 p.m. Virtual event. Free. Dr. Dennis M. Kratz, Founding Director of the Center for Asian Studies, will explore the origins of the concept of heroism in Greek antiquity and trace its impact on American and Chinese culture, business and politics. Dr. Dennis M. Kratz is Ignacy and Celina Rockover Professor of Humanities and Senior Associate Provost at the University of Texas at Dallas. He served as Dean of the School of Arts and Humanities from 1997-2019. His scholarship and teaching focuses on the reception and transformation of ideas, concepts and practices inherited from Greek and Roman Antiquity.
Asian Culture Forum: “BTS for BLM: K-pop, Race, and Transcultural Fandom” by Prof. Michelle Cho
Saturday, January 30, 4 to 5:30 p.m. Free virtual event. Dr. Michelle Cho will provide an overview of the online activities, politicization and media coverage of K-pop fans in the Black Lives Matter movement and anti-racist activism; she will also discuss the K-pop group BTS’s cultural and historic relationship with Black pop cultural forms, and Black-Korean relations in the U.S. since the 1980s.
Michelle Cho, is an assistant professor at the University of Toronto in the Department of East Asian Studies. Her research and teaching focus on questions of collectivity and popular aesthetics in Korean film, media, and popular culture. She has published on Asian cinemas and Korean wave television, video, and pop music in such venues as Cinema Journal, the International Journal of Communication, The Korean Popular Culture Reader, and Asian Video Cultures (2019 “Best Edited Collection” Award winner, Society for Cinema and Media Studies).
Charles Yu in Conversation with Dr. Dennis Kratz
Wednesday, January 27, 7 to 8:30 p.m. Virtual online.
Charles Yu’s novel Interior Chinatown won the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction. Yu is the author of four books—including How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe—and a writer for the HBO series Westworld. He received the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 Award and was nominated for two Writers Guild of America awards. He has also written for shows on FX, AMC, and HBO. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Wall Street Journal, and Wired, among other publications.
Dr. Dennis Kratz is Professor and Founding Director of the Center for Asian Studies at the University of Texas at Dallas.
“Orwell between East and West” by Prof. Andrew Rubin
Thursday, January 21, 7 to 8:30 p.m. Free virtual event.
In this featured lecture, Professor Andrew Rubin will explore the connection between politics and the literary imagination. He will ask what is at stake for the novel’s commitment to the human pursuit of truth if we fail to view Nineteen Eighty-Four as, above all else, a work of English literature.
Professor Andrew Rubin is the author of Archives of Authority: Empire, Culture, and the Cold War (Princeton University Press, 2012), and most recently, the editor of The Selected Works of Edward Said, 1966-2006 (Vintage, 2019). He has taught at Georgetown University, Columbia University, and Barnard College.
