Lecture

My presentation will offer a historical perspective on secularism in South Asia through a discussion of a history of religious reform movements from the early twentieth century through the end of colonial India, as a way of historicizing the creation of a constitutional secular state in India in the mid-twentieth century. Though Indian history will comprise the base of the presentation, it will address the issue of religious freedom in contemporary South Asia, drawing on cases from India and Bangladesh primarily.

What is the relationship between everyday human culture and the global realities of anthropogenic climate change? My current book project, “Fueling Tokyo: Japan in the Age of Global Energy,” takes up this problem, knitting together histories of people, resources, technologies, and infrastructures to help us better understand the cultural connections that have fueled the Anthropocene in Japan. The country is the world’s third-largest economy; it imports 95% of its primary energy. Japan built an empire in pursuit of energy: labor and food calories, coal, hydroelectric sites, and oil.

Artisanal production is touted today as part of Japan’s immutable traditional culture, characterized as a rapidly disappearing form of manual labor and long-held customs that are in sharp contrast to the white collar work in office buildings or government organizations so prevalent today. Similarly, the lives of commoners in premodern Japan are often imagined as being removed from the aesthetics, poetics, and cultural heights of the aristocracy. But were these divisions of social group and status so rigidly defined?

Focusing on post-liberalization Bombay cinema's metamorphosis into "Bollywood" during the nineties and noughties, this presentation will theorize cultural globalization as a process of plastic worldmaking. I will track a series of global gestures, comprising entanglements of material and semiotic transformations, that have forged Bollywood performatively. At stake is an understanding of this formation as a plastic emergence, in the sense that it conjures globalities that are mutable, relational, artificial, and often incompossible.

How do we propose the most ethical yet legitimate ways for centuries-long traditions, heritages, and artisanship that require a great deal of nonhuman exploitation to continue existing in the future? This presentation tackles the problem of ontological struggles between the human and the nonhuman, the animate and the inanimate, the living and the dead, with a study of the practice, politics, and ethics that surround the making of a traditional Japanese musical instrument called the shamisen. All the materials that make up the shamisen are imported from other countries.

Yoga, a form of embodied self development with historical roots in the philosophy of southern Asia has become a global phenomenon. As such, the practice of yoga reflects the way in which Asia and Asian Studies in the contemporary moment must be understood in terms of the modernity of globalization. This lecture provides a critical perspective on the twists and turns of tradition that reflects the dislocation of area studies and the value of an inter-disciplinary perspective on cultural history.

On Thursday April 29 at 6:00 pm EDT, please join us for a virtual presentation by Dr. Brenda Jordan on the relationship of ikebana to the practice of tea as well as to daily life from the 1600s to today. Following the lecture, we will be screening the short film Ikebana directed by master practitioner Hiroshi Teshigahara and an artist demonstration and Q&A with Pittsburgh Sogetsu instructor Reiko Nakajima.
Register here.

In the virtual presentation, Dr. Yamada discusses the Vocaloid and DTM (desktop music) phenomena through the lenses of media and fan studies, looking at online social media platforms, the new technology for composing, and fans of the Vocaloid character. He provides a sense of how interactive new media and an empowered fan base combine to engage in the creation processes and enhance the circulation of Vocaloid works.

Mass protests have been seen across Myanmar since the military seized power on February 1. Dr. Will Womack of University of Alabama at Birmingham will provide historical background and context on the current situation unfolding in the country. Dr. Womack's lecture will focus on how the political coup and protests have effected the peace process in Myanmar, with particular focus on the issue of religious and ethnic minorities. Please join us on Tuesday March 30 at 6:00 pm EDT for a virtual lecture on Myanmar.

The People’s Republic of Desire explores the lives of the successes of China’s digital society, a world in which live-streamers are celebrities of fame and fortune with millions of fans and super-rich patrons that lavish them with gifts. And yet, the film is a disturbing look into cyber escapism, loneliness, and isolation. The film won the Grand Jury Award at the 2018 SXSW, among many other awards. It has screened at over 40 film festivals worldwide and broadcasted nationally on PBS Independent Lens.