Lecture

This year, 2023, represents the 101st anniversary of Emile Licent and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s discovery of a child’s fossilized incisor at Erdos, Inner Mongolia: The first human fossil from China. Since the turn of the 21st century, paleoanthropology in China has made tremendous advances, both in the discovery of new human fossils and in the use of sophisticated analytical tools in geological, paleontological, and systematic studies.

For centuries, Indian culture has embraced the transformative power of yoga and mindfulness. Contrary to modern thought, yoga is not just about physical exercise. It encompasses much more. It includes four paths: jnana yoga (knowledge), bhakti yoga (universal love), karma yoga (selfless action) and hatha yoga (postures and breath control). Yoga is your ultimate gateway to Enlightenment, which is 100% mindfulness! Join Mrs. Jaya Row as she takes you on a journey through the fascinating science behind these ancient practices.

APEC is an integral piece of the Biden Administration's Indo-Pacific Strategy. In this presentation, U.S. Senior Official for Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APCE) Matt Murray will unpack why APEC emerged, how it works, what it has achieved, and what the U.S. as host economy aims to prioritize this year.

What is disrupted through the process of destruction? What space is reconstructed when the rubble of destruction is destroyed? And how do the communities conceptualize and experience the rubble of destruction and reconstruction of religious sites and sacred objects in their everyday life?

Aesthetic Capitalism: a mode of capitalism that rested on, and was fueled by, creating and appealing to sensory and emotional experience. In analyzing aesthetics as a social process, rather than a design feature of commodities, this talk explores how aesthetic capitalism emerged and ow it altered people's aesthetic experience in the United States and Japan from the 1870s to 1940s.

Join us on Wednesday, February 22nd at 6pm ET on CMU campus (Grand Posner Room 340) for Dr. Patrick Galbraith’s second lecture in Pittsburgh, "Erotic Comics in Japan: An Introduction to Eromanga." Dr. Galbraith will discuss Japanese freedom of expression, censorship, and Erotic Manga. He explores how increased visibility of a wide range of manga and anime, including erotic variants, has led to deepening suspicion, public outrage and calls for strengthening regulation, if not banning some content out right. Patrick W. Galbraith is a lecturer at Senshū University in Tokyo.

Jain faith and practice has flourished for more than 2800 years in the midst of a host of different faiths. Haribhadra Virahanka (6th century C.E.) provided a template for what in modern times is called interfaith understanding: acknowledge differences and find commonalities. In his text known as the Yogabindu, he identified karma, yoga, worship (puja), and mantra as practices common to all India's faiths. He also noted and explained religious differences, particularly in regard to notions of soul and self. In this presentation, Dr.

In her poem, Perhaps the World Ends Here, Joy Harjo uses the “kitchen table” as a central metaphor of life and living. The world ends here or begins here because many a history of colonialism, and botany has been told through spices and the spice trade. If spices are central to the history of colonialism, what does that mean for projects on decolonizing botany? How do we understand the history of botany through the colonial, postcolonial, settler colonial and decolonial that centers spices as pivotal points of encounter?

Please join us for a lecture by Dr. Carla Nappi, Andrew W. Mellon Chair, Department of History, in which she discusses her book, "Translating Early Modern China: Illegible Cities". Nappi's book presents a significant new interpretation of the history of translation in China. If you wish to attend this lecture via Zoom, please register here.

In this talk, historian Victor Seow will be introducing his recently published book, Carbon Technocracy: Energy Regimes in Modern East Asia. This book uses the story of what was once the largest coal mine in East Asia—the Fushun colliery in southern Manchuria—to examine how the different Chinese and Japanese states that had owned and operated this enterprise in the first half of the twentieth century came to embrace fossil-fueled visions of development and mobilized various extractive technologies toward that end.