Although they sell vegetables, milk packets, and cigarettes; owners of small roadside grocery shops in southern India might be described as in the business of time-travel. Shopkeepers’ survival depends on their ability to successfully shift objects and obligations between multiple and conflicting temporal systems. Drawing on recordings of interactions gathered between 2005-08, Brown traces how shopkeepers use refrigeration, accounts of debt, and conversations with customers to negotiate and profit from temporal troubles.

Relocation can lead to professional growth and career advancement, but can also lead to work/family conflict. In this talk Connor will present the stories of three Japanese career women whose relocations led to personal crises. These crises resulted from a workplace policy which made periodic relocation obligatory for male and female employees alike. By analyzing how they faced these crises and what gave rise to them, Connor aims to shed light on issues of work-life balance, gender equity, and obstacles to social and cultural change.

In many areas of interaction in India, negotiations and ‘bargaining’ play an important role. This holds true for doctor-patient interactions as well, especially in the case of small-scale practitioners of Ayurveda, Unani, Homeopathy and other non-biomedical traditions. These practitioners often prescribe a treatment that lies outside of their official medical specialization, which creates a proliferation of various eclectic/hybrid therapeutic forms.

Like most nations, China regulates the content that goes over its airwaves, runs through its printing presses, and is transmitted through its Internet. In July 2009, when tensions in the predominately Muslim population of China’s Xinjiang province escalated into violent riots, Chinese authorities turned off the Internet there. This inspired Jason Q. Ng to devise a computer script to test all 700,000 terms in Chinese Wikipedia to see which ones are routinely blocked on Sina Weibo, China’s most important social media site.

Asia Over Lunch Lecture Series - all are welcome to join and bring a lunch or snack! Abstract TBA.

Asia Over Lunch Lecture Series - all are welcome to join and bring a lunch or snack! Abstract TBA.

You can now search for more than 1.4 million Japanese articles from 220 Japanese academic institutions through PittCat+. There are also over 15,000 Japanese dissertations freely available at the Digital Library of the National Diet Library and 227 LibGuides are developed by Pitt liaison librarians to support your research and course work. Library research tools are evolving rapidly. This presentation will illustrate the state-of-the-art research tools and new functions of Japanese databases.

All are welcome to join and bring a lunch or snack!

Contemporary Japanese taiko drumming (wadaiko) emerged in the 1950s as a way to resurrect and revitalize regional folk drumming traditions. As it evolved, many different regional drumming styles were incorporated, including festival traditions from the Shitamachi area of Tokyo.

The Asian Studies Center welcome reception for students will be held on Thursday, September 13th from 3:00 to 5:30 PM in 4130 Posvar Hall. All students and faculty are welcome to join us to meet center staff and faculty, learn about upcoming events and opportunities related to Asia, including lectures and cultural programming, undergraduate internship and career workshops, language tutoring and study groups, language proficiency testing, volunteering, and more! Announcements will take place at 4:00 pm - refreshments will be served!

The struggle between Russia and Great Britain over Central Asia in the nineteenth century was the original "great game." But in the past quarter century, a new "great game" has emerged, pitting America against a newly aggressive Russia and a resource-hungry China, all struggling for influence over one of the volatile areas in the world. In Great Games, Local Rules, Alexander Cooley, one of America's most respected Central Asia experts, explores the dynamics of the new competition over the region since 9/11.