Cycle de conférences : Current Research on East Asia

Lighter and Darker Aspects of the Nobel Prize in Literature

Conférencier : Inoue Takashi (Shirayuri University)

Nobel laureates are not chosen purely on their supposed literary superiority. The nomination-selection process also hinges on nonliterary, and sometimes unworthy reasons. Yet, we should still value this prize which enhances literary activities from writers and challenges them to produce original texts. I will illustrate my point through the example of four famous Japanese (or Japan-related) writers: Kawabata Yasunari, Mishima Yukio, Oe Kenzaburo and Kazuo Ishiguro. 

Takashi INOUE is a professor of modern and contemporary Japanese Literature at Shirayuri University. He is a renowned specialist of Mishima Yukio and has notably edited the most recent edition of Mishima complete works. Published in 2020, his updated biography on Mishima was awarded the prestigious Yomiuri Prize for Literature (Yomiuri Bungaku-shô).  In his recent research, Takashi INOUE considers modern Japanese literature from the viewpoint of World Literature.

Digital History: The Japan Biographical Database

Conférencier : Bettina Gramlich-Oka (Sophia University, professeur invitée UPCité)

In this talk I address some of the recent developments in the field of digital history in Asian Studies. Special focus is my ongoing network studies project and the online database “Japan Biographical Database.” Online biographical databases are recent digital tools that allow to conduct network analysis and prosopography. Whereas my own research is the specific time and place of the Tokugawa period (1603–1867), the methodological approach can and is also applied to other regions and time periods in Asia. Since its beginning in 2010, the Japan Biographical Database has steadily grown and various other projects have joined. An overview of the database, its potential, and many functions will hopefully spur further interest in this new kind of research that also can be applied to the classroom.

Bettina Gramlich-Oka is Professor of Japanese History at the Faculty of Liberal Arts, Sophia University. Some of her publications include Thinking Like a Man: Tadano Makuzu (Brill, 2006) and the coedited volume Economic Thought in Early Modern Japan (Brill, 2010). In the past years, her research centers on the exploration of networks of the Rai family from Hiroshima during the Tokugawa period. The development of the online Japan Biographical Database (https://jbdb.jp/) is part of this endeavor, as well as the coedited volume with Anne Walthall, Miyazaki Fumiko, Sugano Noriko, Women and Networks in Nineteenth Century Japan (University of Michigan Press, 2020). Gramlich-Oka is currently the chief editor of Monumenta Nipponica.

The K-body: Corporeal Management and New Masculinity in South Korea

Conférencier : Kenneth Sewoong Koo (Korea Exposé)

Environnement et autochtonie chez les Thổ du Vietnam sous les Nguyễn

Conférencier : Bradley Camp-Davis (Eastern Connecticut State University)

Beginning in the 1820s, the Vietnamese empire under the Nguyễn intensified its control over territory through several changes in policy. For Khmer people in the Mekong Delta and many Tai communities in the Northwest, the imperial authorities used the label « thổ » 土. As this presentation explains, this term became a more than just a label to distinguish Việt and non-Việt groups. It also provided a conceptual grounding for an imperial discourse of indigeneity (autochthonie), one with deep resonances beyond the nineteenth century.

Bradley Camp-Davis is an Associate Professor in Eastern Connecticut State University. A historian of imperial China and Southeast Asia, his work crosses boundaries of geography and discipline, combining ethnographic research with archival sources to investigate the histories of communities in the uplands of the China-Southeast Asia borderlands.

A graphical approach to the story universe of The Journey to the West

Conférencier : Barbara Wall (University of Copenhagen)

Rejuvenating Communism. Youth Organizations and Elite Renewal in Post-Mao China

Conférencier : Jérôme Doyon (University of Edimburg, Lecturer in the International Relations of East Asia)

Aspirations for Change 4.0: The Making of Innovation in Vietnam

Conférencier : Annuska Derks (University of Zurich)