Faculty, Student, and Alumni News | Asian Studies Center

The Asian Studies Center Welcomes new Assistant Director for Partnerships & Programming, Linda Lieu

Please join the entire Asian Studies Center staff, faculty, students, and community in welcoming Linda Lieu to her new position as Assistant Director for Partnerships & Programming.

Linda was formally the Assistant Registrar for Student Records and Graduation for the University of Pittsburgh’s Registrar’s Office. Prior to working at the University of Pittsburgh Linda spent many years in community engagement roles at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh and Pittsburgh Action Against Rape. She has presented on topics such as sexual assault, the Model Minority Myth, Pitt’s PeopleSoft student information system and conducted programs in the Allegheny County Jail. She is currently co-chair of the Asian American and Pacific Islander Caucus through the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers (AACRAO).

As ASC’s Assistant Director for Partnerships & Programming, she will be responsible for most of the great programming held by the center. Additionally, she will oversee partnerships with community organizations. Welcome Linda!

Farewell to Rachel Jacobson

The Asian Studies Center is saying a bittersweet farewell to our longtime, beloved Administrative Assistant, Rachel Jacobson. Rachel has been working with Asian Studies since her student days, and has been a wonderful source of knowledge on topics ranging from Anime, getting student scholarships processed, Japanese light novels, and Asian film procurement. She is moving on to bigger things, and we could not be more excited for her! We look forward to seeing Rachel at various Asian Studies events.

Byeonsa: Crossroads of Youth

On Saturday, November 5th, with help from the Asian Studies Center, Screenshot: Asia, and Pitt Professor Seung-Hwan Shin, The Crossroads of Youth Byeonsa Performance US Tour visited the University of Pittsburgh, bringing its troupe from South Korea to the United States for a multi-city tour in Fall, 2022. The byeonsa troupe presented Crossroads of Youth (Cheongchunui sipjaro, Ahn Jong-hwa, 1934), Korea’s oldest surviving silent film, with live storytelling, music, and acting in accompaniment. The troupe reimagined and reconstructed byeonsa culture, Korea’s unique film watching tradition from the colonial period. The performance was held in the Alumni Hall Auditorium alongside food and period attire.
Byeonsa refers to film narrator. Byeonsa performance was a mode of movie watching popular in colonial Korea. This tradition was unique to the film culture of East Asia at its early stage. As opposed to the intertitles common in Western silent film, byeonsa performance would usually include both description of events and verbalization of characters’ voices. It came to Korea via Japan—benshi—during the colonial period and Korea developed its own style of film narration with its distinctive stylistic flourishes. Byeonsas were highly trained and highly respected artists and allegedly, some of them enjoyed greater celebrity than famous actors.

2022 SCREENSHOT: Asia Film Festival

The second annual SCREENSHOT: Asia Film Festival took place from September 28th to October 2nd. Students, faculty, and members of the Pitt community gathered in auditoriums across Pitt’s campus and in the Pittsburgh Cultural District to share and experience Asian and Asian American Culture through film. Eleven films were shown in just a few days celebrating the powerful artistic medium of film and creating a space in the Pitt Community to engage with Asia.

On the second day of the festival, Screenshot: Asia celebrated the Japan Documentary Film Award which recognizes an outstanding filmmaker for a project they may submit to the competition. The award was given to director Mizuko Yamaoka for her film, Maelstrom. Yamaoka and her sister traveled to Pitt from Japan to participate in a reception, ceremony, and screening of the film.

Local Students Excel at the 2021 High School Japanese Speech Contest

Local Students Excel at the 2021 High School Japanese Speech Contest

PITTSBURGH, PA – The Japan-America Society of Pennsylvania (JASP) and the University of Pittsburgh’s Asian Studies Center jointly hosted the 24th Annual High School Japanese Speech Contest. The contest was held online the week of March 1, and the awards ceremony was broadcast to YouTube on Friday, March 12.

This year, 37 students from Western PA competed virtually in spite of the difficulties of the last school year. Japanese language students of all levels and students who are involved in Japan-related cultural activities participated in one of four speech levels (beginner, intermediate, advanced, and advanced plus) or the poster contest. Participating schools were Pittsburgh Allderdice High School, Shaler Area High School, and Upper St. Clair High School. Students from Shaler Area Middle School submitted artwork for a vote during the awards ceremony.

Margaret Rea from Shaler Area High School won the grand prize in Advanced level. Margaret received an iPad as the grand prize donated by the Consulate General of Japan in New York. First place in the Advanced category was tied between Zoe Babbit, Jaime Eichmiller, and Abby Sawa, all from Shaler Area High School. First place in the Intermediate category went to Stephanie Lu from Upper St. Clair High School. The first place in the Beginner category went to Elise Bertolet from Pittsburgh Allderdice High School. Finally, first place in the Poster competition went to Richard Alex Carlson from Upper St. Clair High School.

This event is made possible through the generous support of the Elliott Group, Perryman Company, Temple University Japan Campus, Japan Foundation Los Angeles, the Japanese Consulate General of New York, University of Pittsburgh Asian Studies Center, the Japan Iron & Steel Federation and Mitsubishi Endowments at the University of Pittsburgh, and all participating schools, students, and volunteers.

About The Japan-America Society of Pennsylvania:

Established in 1986, The Japan-America Society of Pennsylvania is an association of individuals, corporations and organizations that seek to promote local understanding of and mutually beneficial participation in the changing US-Japan relationship. The Society provides informative, innovative programming in order to encourage a better understanding of the business, cultural, social, educational and political practices and customs of Japan and the United States. More can be learned about the JASP at our website: http://japansocietypa.org/

Japan Studies Postdoctoral Fellow: Keisuke Yamada

Keisuke Yamada, (PhD University of Pennsylvania, 2020) is an ethnomusicologist who studies Japanese cultural formations. As a Japanese Studies Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Pittsburgh he will be affiliated with the Asian Studies Center in the University Center for International Studies from Spring 2021 through Spring 2022. Dr. Yamada’s scholarship is interdisciplinary, ranging across a number of topics to engage with theoretical questions that highlight the significance of a global perspective in Asian studies. His first book Supercell's Supercell featuring Hatsune Miku (Bloomsbury 2017), examined the fan-based articulation of vocaloid musical personae and the blurring of production and consumption in the domain of prosumer social media. His dissertation research focused on the politics of cultural creativity at the intersection of traditional music, environmentalism, and human/non-human animal relationships, showing how the use of animal parts and products to make shamisen (an iconic instrument in Japan) raises complex questions concerning ethics, aesthetics, authenticity and the integrity of musical traditions, as well as the politics of sustainability and cultural preservation in an era of global environmental activism. Following on a critically incisive study of blackness and racial stereotypes in the intellectual history of Japan’s engagement the west, his current research examines the history of noise (sō-on), making the argument that the creative potential of noise must be understood as a feature of work environments and the history of labor in the context of industrialized production.
While at the University of Pittsburgh Dr. Yamada will complete work on several publications, pursue his ongoing research, play a critical role in the expansion of the Summer Institute for Asian Studies, and in fall 2021 will co-teach Asia Now, an undergraduate course that incorporates a lecture series to highlight contemporary scholarship in Asian Studies.

Edo Avant-Garde Film Screening with Introduction and DIscussion with Linda Hoaglund

Thursday, January 21, 2021
7:00pm - 9:00pm (Eastern Time) / 6:00pm - 8:00pm (Central Time)

DESCRIPTION: Edo Avant-Garde reveals the untold story of the vital role Japanese artists of the Edo era (1603 – 1868) played in developing “modern art.” During the Edo era, Japan prospered in peaceful isolation from Western powers, while audacious artists innovated abstraction, minimalism, surrealism and the illusion of 3-D. Their originality is most striking in images of the natural world depicted with gold leaf on large-scale folding screens that anticipate 20th century installation art. In groundbreaking interviews with scholars and priests, the film traces the artists' original visions to their reverence for nature, inspired by Buddhism and Shinto animism.

LOCATION: Please register here, and then a link to the Vimeo livestream will be sent to the registrant's email account.

SCHEDULE: 7:00 Introduction by Linda Hoaglund, 7:15 Edo Avant Garde livestream begins, 8:45 Discussion with director Linda Hoaglund.

If you have any questions, please contact asia@pitt.edu

Largest Collection of Tsukioka Kōgyo’s Woodblock Prints Digitized by the University of Pittsburgh Library System

The University of Pittsburgh Library System, which holds the largest collection of artist Tsukioka Kōgyo’s (1869-1927) color woodblock prints outside of Japan, has digitized four complete sets that depict Noh theatre. This online collection comprises the largest digital representation of Kōgyo’s work freely available online. The set contains: Nōgaku zue 能樂圖繪 (Pictures of Noh), Nōgaku hyakuban 能楽百番 (Prints of One Hundred Noh Plays), Nōga taikan 能画大鑑 (A Great Collection of Prints of Noh Plays), and Kyōgen gojūban 狂言五十番 (Fifty Kyōgen Plays) and is available via the Kōgyo: The Art of Noh website at: http://exhibit.library.pitt.edu/kogyo/

The Artist

As the preeminent graphic artist of the Noh and kyōgen theatres, Tsukioka Kōgyo created hundreds of Japanese woodblock prints, paintings, magazine illustrations, and postcard pictures of Noh and kyōgen plays. Kōgyo also produced paintings and prints of flowers, birds, and even wartime scenes, but he is best known and remembered for his theatre paintings and prints. All the prints were published in Tokyo between 1897 and 1930.

Noh Theatre

Noh theatre, a well-known and long-established art form that originated in 14^th century Japan, is a combination of dance and drama that plays on themes of the supernatural and the natural world.

The Collection

The online collection contains 632 digitized prints from the four sets, along with over 200 Japanese synopses of Noh plays with English summaries provided by P.G. O’Neill in his A Guide to Nō (Hinoki Shoten, 1964).

As described by Elizabeth Oyler, professor of Japanese Studies at the University of Pittsburgh, “Kōgyo is recognized as a master whose art imbued traditional woodblock printing with the new techniques and perspectives of the global modernity of the turn of the 20th century. His four collections of Noh prints embrace the breadth of his artistic vision and provide invaluable documentation of the world of the Noh theatre. Access to a carefully catalogued and cross-referenced digital archive containing all four collections is a treasure trove for scholars of studio arts, art history, the Noh and theatre history, and world history.”

Remembering E. Maxine Bruhns

The staff of the Asian Studies Center join with our colleagues in UCIS to remember the life of E. Maxine Bruhns who served as director of the Nationality Rooms and Intercultural Exchange Program from 1965 until her retirement in January of this year. Up until her death on July 17^th at the age of 96, Bruhns dedicated her life to promoting cross-cultural understanding and helped to build diversity into the very foundation of international studies at the University of Pittsburgh. The Nationality Rooms in the Cathedral of Learning serve as a window to the world for our students and as a powerful symbol of the values of inclusiveness, open mindedness and global understanding that are the heart and soul of a liberal arts education. Countless students have benefited in direct and indirect ways from the support they have received from the Nationality Rooms and Intercultural Exchange Program. We see this over and over as our Asian Studies certificate students are awarded fellowships to conduct research in the humanities, social sciences, business, health sciences and other areas. In remembrance of E. Maxine Bruhns, we in the Asian Studies Center join our colleagues at the University to recognize a life lived fully in the service of transforming students into global citizens. With great appreciation for all they do, especially at this time of loss and at this moment in history, we look forward to working with the dedicated staff of the Nationality Rooms and Intercultural Exchange Program toward the ongoing realization of a vision for the future embodied by E. Maxine Bruhns.

Local Students Excel at the 2020 High School Japanese Speech Contest

PITTSBURGH, PA – The Japan-America Society of Pennsylvania (JASP) and the University of Pittsburgh’s Asian Studies Center jointly hosted the 23rd Annual High School Japanese Speech Contest. The contest was held on Friday, March 6th at the William Pitt Union on the campus of the University of Pittsburgh. This year, 54 students from Western PA competed in this daylong competition. Carley Soley from Upper St. Clair High School won the grand prize in Advanced Plus level. Carley received an electronic Japanese-English dictionary as the grand prize donated by the Consulate General of Japan in New York. For a full list of winners, see here.