Abstracts

In this presentation, I want to further the inclusion of Africa in the global conversations between regions in my classwork. In Janet Abu-Lughod’s Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250-1350, she researched eight interlocking circuits of trade that connected the Eurasian continent in the premodern period. Her study aimed at showing that globalization was not a phenomenon of the modern world but was an essential part of premodern trade and culture. Having looked at the connections between East Africa and the Mediterranean and Arabian Sea in earlier pedagogical work, this presentation investigates a route that was not covered in Abu-Lughod’s wide-ranging study. She neglected the circuit, or series of circuits, linking sub-Saharan Africa to East Asia. For this pedagogical talk, I’ll pilot a module on the cultural link between premodern Blacks and East Asians using the wealth of early images of Africans in Chinese art as a starting point. As Don Wyatt in “The Image of the Black in Chinese Art” suggests, “although it has languished as a topic seldom recognized and even less explored, the image of the black in Chinese art has never been veiled, obscure, or elusive.” The module will ideally use the many early Chinese sculptures and manuscript images as springboards to discuss the global circulation of Africans, their history, and representation in East Asia.

"While teaching about history and culture through art and literature has long been a pedagogical staple of liberal arts programs, I propose that another valuable approach to teaching history and culture—and moreover, cross-cultural exchange and globality—is through the study of foodways.

In Fall 2024, I will be teaching a Global Topics course on food studies, and I propose a paper that draws on some of the teaching I plan, as well as work from my Advanced Writing Studio course on food writing—courses that include a substantial focus on foodways of East Asia and the East Asian diaspora. For example, we trace the evolution of noodles, looking at the archeological discovery in China of a 4,000 year old clay bowl of noodles—the earliest example of noodles ever found in the world—to its consumption in the West, via Arab traders (contrary to the Marco Polo myth).

We also study diasporic cuisines, such as modern Chinese American cuisine and Chinese Korean cuisine; the impact colonialism has on foodways (e.g., French colonial influences on Vietnamese cuisine and Japanese influences on Korean and Taiwanese cuisine); and the role of food as a tool of colonialism (e.g., the Japanese control of rice production during their occupation of Korea). We examine (and, in some cases, visit) the exceptional range of regional Chinese restaurants in NYC, dismantling the perception of Chinese cuisine as a monolith.

Through the study of global foodways, students are able make visceral connections to and among cultures and histories that may otherwise remain foreign, and globality takes on new meaning and resonance."

International students from China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, along with first-generation students with parents from these countries comprise a significant cohort within our core program and major. This cohort brings with it complicated histories marked by colonialism, cultural revolutions, totalitarianism, and social protest. For some East Asian students these histories are unexamined, hidden, and/or passed down in secret from older relatives. In this paper, I argue that the essay writing classroom--with its focus on global reading and research assignments--allows for unique personal and political explorations into these shared histories. In particular, I discuss essay writing and research projects I have created around three texts, Minor Feelings by Cathy Park Hong, "The Gye, the No-Name Hair Salon, the Coup d’État, and the Small Dreamers" by Jung Hae Chae, and The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom. Diasporic, historic, and invested in familial colonial traumas, these texts and students' writing projects create meaningful moments of cultural connection, historical knowledge, and student-centered learning.

"How does China's climate migration program navigate the interplay between ecological/environmental preservation, economic growth and cultural heritage?

In 2021, Bloomberg News declared China to be executing the world's largest climate migration program in response to the environmental stressors of drought, extreme weather, higher temperatures, and desertification. Termed ""ecological migrants,"" 329,000 individuals were relocated from climate-distressed lands to 161 newly made villages in the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, marking the fifth wave of a comprehensive environmental and poverty alleviation initiative in modern China.

This initiative is not new. China, facing internal displacement due to disasters such as floods and typhoons affecting coastal cities like Shanghai, experienced massive internal movement. For example, in 2012, approximately 6 million people were internally displaced by disasters.

To address these challenges, China started its “ecological migration” program in 1983 - to date the world's largest climate migration initiative. Focused on depopulating high-risk areas and relocating millions to urban centers with lower ecological sensitivity, this ambitious plan aims to balance environmental conservation with economic development and cultural preservation. The goal of “ecological migration” involves: relieving environmental pressure, promoting urbanization and economic growth in safer regions, all while supporting cultural heritages.

At a time when we are facing climate (im)mobility across the globe, China's climate migration program could offer insights for addressing global climate-related migration challenges. This paper explores the lessons and challenges this program has encountered and assess its possible impact on global policies. (*This paper will also be a part of the “Migration and Climate Change” course I will teach in 2025)"

When I was a newly arrived undergraduate in the US, I was baffled to discover that I was not considered or counted as Asian on campus.  That label was reserved for people  from Korea, Japan, and China. I would learn much later about a Cold War neocolonial Area Studies intellectual framework, one that divided up the globe into politically convenient tidy geographical units (see Ludden 2002). Since then, Asia as a category has become more capacious; Bangladeshis are counted as Asians in the US census, for instance.  Despite the proclaimed ‘death’ of area studies, its legacy survives within infrastructures of higher education as well as in the popular imaginary in the US. The periodic fear and demonization of China, as reflected in mainstream scholarship as well as in news media, remains a case in point. 

What does ‘China’ look like from other places within ‘Asia’ and from a ‘global’ or transnational perspective? What would such a move achieve? This paper aims to dismantle Euro-American narratives on ‘East Asia’ through an examination of connections between China and Bangladesh, which are intimately conjoined through the global garment supply chain. Indeed, Bangladesh is often described as the world’s largest supplier of garments, “second only to China.”  The Belt and Road Initiative also bears on imaginations of China in Bangladesh.  Specifically, I compare figurations of female factory workers through a transnational lens to illuminate the ways industrial capitalism produces labor subjectivities in both places that diverge from those in Euro American imaginations.

Following the June 4, 1989 Tiananmen Square Protest, the Chinese Communist Party forced poet Bei Dao into exile. The poet’s crime?: writing “misty poetry” that helped to incite the Beijing uprising.  The CCP evidence driving the incitement allegations were the numerous students holding signs referencing  Bei Dao’s poem “The Answer.”  The metaphor-laden resistance poem includes, “I don’t believe the sky is blue/ I don’t believe in thunder’s echoes/ I don’t believe that dreams are false.” Seeking greater freedoms and less corruption, students had been gathering in Tiananmen Square since April 17, 1989 and would often break into the chant “I-don’t-believe! . . . I-don’t-believe!” It is likely that many of these students were aware of the literary and resistance history in which this very chant was featured in the 1978 Tiananmen Square protests for greater freedoms. In this paper, I will challenge a common Western perspective that Chinese nationals—particularly Chinese students—are STEM automatons who lack a robust understanding and appreciation of the modern literary arts’ power to move citizens into emancipatory action. My argument will foment an interaction between East and West—as equals—by placing Bei Dao’s “The Answer” in conversation with   Michel Foucault’s ideas around power and truth. Ultimately, this paper will raise questions—and provide answers— about poetry’s liberatory power.

What is East Asian art? It may seem like a simple enough question to answer today, but for Chinese, Korean, and Japanese intellectuals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the term “art” was an ideologically fraught one. Translated from the German word kunst as bijutsu (美術 fine arts) by the Japanese as late as 1872, the creation of this term was symptomatic of a practice of appropriation and adaptation of complex cultural concepts from the West meant to enhance Japan’s standing on the international stage. Through the establishment of arts institutions and the implementation of government art policies the Japanese government was able to guide the formation of a cohesive national cultural identity distinct from and superior to the “oriental/Eastern history” (tōyōshi東洋史) that colonialist scholars would compose about the cultures of Korea and China. Concurrent with their incursion into the peninsula, Japanese bureaucrats systematically unearthed and catalogued Korean artifacts and material culture that fit within their newly constructed categories of bijutsu. Scholars such as Yanagi Sōetsu (1889-1961) would famously aestheticize Korean suffering as the “beauty of sorrow” (hiai no bi 悲哀の美) which he saw most clearly expressed in white Chosŏn porcelains. Further west, Chinese commentators used the term meishu (美術) interchangeably with indigenous terms such as guwu 古物 (antiquities) and wenwu (文物cultural relics) in their own discussions on culture and nationalism. Thus laden with possibility, this neologism was wielded by its various users and producers as a both a tool of and cudgel against colonialist agendas. This paper will look critically at the development and implementation of the term within the three specific contexts of China, Korea and Japan to highlight the agency and interoperability of colonizer and colonized, tradition and modernity, and East and West. 

As a global academic institution strategically co-located in some of the world’s most vibrant cities, we often observe our students coming and going without fully engaging in the local cultural context. This raises an intriguing question: how might we, as educators, design opportunities for more meaningful interactions that transcend superficial experiences? In my research and teaching, I delve into experiential learning practices that integrate the city as both ‘space’ and ‘subject.’ This involves documenting innovative pedagogical approaches by NYU faculty across our global network, who utilize the city as an extension of their classroom and a dynamic learning laboratory. In this talk, I will introduce a model for experiential learning that draws on these learner-centered courses, place-based education principles, and experience design practices. This approach aims to foster deeper, more transformative educational experiences, adaptable to various learning environments.

"Continental philosophy, since its inception, has always had a peculiar chauvinistic relationship to the idea of “China.” From Hegel’s infamous claim that Chinese society is neither free nor spiritual, to Husserl’s project of a renewed defense of European science that proves its transcendence over China and India as “mere anthropological types.” Even Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, inveterate advocates for multiplicity, claim that Chinese “philosophy” is “pre-philosophical” insofar as it does not generate concepts, but only figures. Beyond continental philosophy, Analytic philosophical departments (such as the one at NYU) often relegate Chinese philosophy to “East Asian Studies” (or indeed, Global Liberal Studies) rather than choose to honor it with the name of “philosophy.” 

Is there a consistent logic to this chauvinistic approach that pervades these claims and actions? I will suggest that one of the requirements each of these authors place on philosophy is the task of providing meaning to history or order to chaos. It is tempting to respond by providing evidence that Chinese philosophy can do this, and this would be a worthwhile project. Here, however, I suggest that instead of responding to the terms set by European philosophy, we should instead ask ourselves a different question: why do these authors demand that history have a robust philosophical “sense” in the first place? In setting these specific demands for a meaningful history does Western philosophy not reveal itself as a “mere anthropological type”? Drawing upon some sections from the Zhuangzhi, I argue instead that there might be many different “senses” of history. Rather than demanding Chinese philosophy replicate our own cultural concerns, the onus is on Western philosophy to consider whether it has the historico-philosophical resources to account for a de-centered understanding of history.

Today, a person can go almost anywhere in the world for a cup of tea. The ancient domestication of the tea plant (Camellia sinensis) is believed to have occurred in Southeast Asia around 3000 B.C., and since then has had significant cultural and economic impacts throughout history and around the world. Tea is associated with intimate spaces, yet has also sparked the rise and fall of empires. An examination of the history of tea beyond the walls of European drawing rooms was an opportunity to develop an interdisciplinary and cross-cultural lesson module for the Liberal Studies elective The Fantasy and Reality of Bridgerton. Students began by attending a community event with faculty and staff for a conversation about personal experiences with tea and the roles that tea plays across cultures. This was followed by a series of lectures, discussions and assignments that challenged students to engage with tea from different perspectives. Topics included the exploration of the genetics of the tea plant to examine the evolution and biogeographic timeline of its cultivation around the world. Additionally, discussion of the different varieties of tea incorporated chemistry to explain how they are all derived from the same plant. Finally, an historical and economic analysis of the global tea trade was used to examine its linguistic origins as well as the environmental impact of historic and modern approaches to tea cultivation. This lesson provides a framework that enables students to gain global and interdisciplinary perspectives within and outside of the classroom.

Western perspectives tend to anthropocentrically place select people atop an exploitative hierarchy over other human and non-human beings and systems, severely limiting understanding of and solutions to urgent current environmental crises. In contrast, and increasingly important to modern sustainability, East Asian traditions such as Buddhism connect to ecocentric approaches that more realistically envision human communities as embedded in earth systems and interconnected with other valued life forms. This paper investigates relationships between these ancient philosophies and current biodiversity conservation, environmental health, climate change, and environmental injustice challenges, with regard to key regional examples of the often complex and conflicting interactions between historic ecocentric philosophies and modern economic development. Attending and presenting at the LS Faculty Symposium, and visiting China and NYU Shanghai for the first time, would significantly enhance my pedagogy, service, and research, and help to disseminate non-Eurocentric ideas, by delving into sustainability in the unique East Asian context.

"Machiavelli’s The Prince (1532) holds a distinguished position in the canon of Western political thought, where it represents a supposed shift from transcendent, theological concerns about divine providence to a more temporal, strategic form of political realism. Many have championed the text for its deployment of individualist reason as a watershed moment of political self-determination. In this tradition, The Prince represents the cunning of reason, appealing to a strategic self, seeking to survive the contextual constraints of political violence. As such, it occupies a prized position in Western political thought as one of the earliest modern political statements. 

Relatively contemporaneous, Takuan Sōhō’s Fudōchi Shinmyōroku (The Unfettered Mind), written only decades after Machiavelli’s treatise, offers strategic lessons to a samurai swordsman whose concerns about strategy and survival offer an important point of connection – and a counterpoint – to Machiavelli’s treatise. 

This paper suggests that Western political thought should question the singularity of Machiavelli’s contribution, and hence its own Eurocentric narrative of the birth of modern political realism. I argue that the so-called birth of modern realism in Machiavelli can also be found in Takuan, not to mention in an entire global intellectual legacy beyond Europe, where concerted political reflections on dangerous circumstances shape the contexts for which realist subjectivity might emerge at the birth of the modern era. As a consequence, the paper contributes to a growing critical and anticolonial literature seeking to “provincialize Europe” (Chakrabarty 2000) and the intellectual canons that reproduce its self-appointed centrism in the canon of Western political thought."

From a historical perspective, China is one of the oldest civilizations in the world. The evidence ranges from the building of the Great Wall (220 B.C.) to Beijing’s Ancient Observatory where symbols dating back to 1400 B.C. are still used in modern astronomy. This proposal will share the common ground reached through academic research for best practices in a multicultural exchange.

Many of the higher education courses in East Asia, such as science and mathematics are taught in English. A multicultural exchange would increase global competency and competitiveness. Although China focuses primarily on standardized exams, rote memorization and hard work, students who come to the States develop more critical thinking, creativity, and communicative skills. Novice students learn how science is done through direct instruction but once mastery is achieved inquiry-based learning should be used. This is accomplished by collaborative exercises, experiments/simulations, researching a topic of interest, and finally through students being involved in a strong community outreach program, such as St. Albans Under the Stars which employs engaging activities in STEM for all ages. These practices combined together will increase proficiency much like what scientists do in real life by connecting the universe to the community generating a multicultural exchange in information.

China has a rich history of speculative fiction—including fantastic voyages, tales of the supernatural, and secret utopias—the kind of fantastic literature that is sometimes seen as a precursor to the science fiction genre. Notable examples include Tao Yuanming’s quietly subversive 5th century Peach Blossom Spring and Pu Songling’s wildly imaginative 17th century Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio. The modern genre of science fiction, however, emerged from the Industrial Revolution in Europe and the U.S. and was sometimes viewed with suspicion as a foreign imposition. Chinese science fiction today, however, blossoming, and translations of important writers like Cixin Liu have brought it to a wider international audience. 

This paper will present a brief history of Chinese science fiction and its international reception, focusing on the role of translation and how changing political climates affected its development. I will then highlight the work of contemporary Chinese science fiction writers like Cixin Liu and Hao Jingfang, as well as Chinese American writers like Ken Liu and R. F. Kuang, both immigrants who have written about conflicted identities and ambivalence about the immigrant experience. Liu is an important translator and champion of Chinese science fiction as well as an author, and inaugurated a subgenre of “silkpunk,” while Kuang has written explicitly decolonial novels, including The Poppy War and Babel, an alternate history in which language is magic and alchemical translation is the most powerful tool of domination for colonizers.

Stoicism is a Greek word, but the Stoic outlook probably exists in all cultures, and at all times. And it is probably contested in all cultures, at all times, too. The basic idea is pretty simple: what makes a life worth living is your conduct and your attitude. The rest, to the wise, should be is a matter of indifference. I seek to point out a parallel between one of the famous Stoic classics of the Roman world, The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, and a classic from 17th-century Japan, The Way of the Knight by Yamaga Sokō. We often look for differences between cultures, but I would like to show is that there can also be some deep philosophical similarities. In fact, the Stoic Idea, that it is your conduct and your attitude that make a life worth living, can be found in many texts, worldwide. Many ethical and spiritual traditions have historically been interpreted in many different ways, and yet among these interpretations there is often a Stoic one—a Stoic interpretation of the Christian Bible, for example, or a Stoic interpretation of Taoism as expressed by the Tao Te Ching, or a Stoic interpretation of Buddhism as expressed in a work like the Dhammapada. (I recall the first verse of the Dhammapada, “our life is the creation of our mind,” a verse that is profoundly introspective in the same way that Stoicism is introspective.) This is what we are also seeing in The Way of the Knight.

Contemporary East Asian media culture is a dynamic and rapidly evolving field, characterized by the integration of traditional media forms with new digital technologies. Since the last decades of the twentieth century, the region’s media culture, centered on anime, popular music, TV dramas, films, video gaming (esports), and webtoons, has reshaped popular culture and media practices worldwide. Thus, an examination of the media culture of East Asia offers new perspectives on the interplay between local and global forces, regional interconnectedness, media ecology, transmedia storytelling, platformization, and fandom, with rich empirical sources. Its market-led regional dynamism further enables us to reconsider sociopolitical and cultural theories, such as cyber citizenship, decolonization, and nation-branding, while decentering ideological and historical conflicts in the region. The recent expansion of East Asian media culture has also challenged West-centered theories and practices and offered alternative paradigms for media creation and circulation. Thus, it is essential to introduce courses centered on the digitalized media culture of East Asia as a significant center of global cultural flows. Consequently, I have developed and taught a course titled “Contemporary East Asian Media Culture.” This transnational and interdisciplinary course enhances students’ understanding of how East Asian countries arrived at the forefront of the mediascape in politico-economic and cultural contexts. It further examines key media productions and regional trends. Students therefore develop a solid grounding in the cultural geography of the region.

"China’s Belt and Road Initiative ( BRI) BRI has brought Chinese investment and consequently Chinese labor to the Caribbean region, approximately 175 years after the first Chinese indentured laborers were brought by the British to work on Caribbean sugar plantations, following the abolition of slavery in the British colonies. 

The history of Chinese indentured labor in the Caribbean has been treated as marginal to the history of the region and to the development of its societies. For Caribbean scholars images of the Chinese across the range of Caribbean fiction have become a means of exploring the relationships between Chinese characters and their African Caribbean coworkers and neighbors, and also a means of exploring the colonial labor history of the region, and its legacies. 20th century Caribbean fiction portrays 19th century Chinese migrants as instrumental to the “divide and rule” strategy integral to colonial practice on plantations; Chinese workers were expected to help neutralize unrest by African Caribbean, or Indian workers, and consequently, were seen as extensions of the colonizers.

Today, China's BRI initiative is perceived by many in the Caribbean as a colonizing campaign by the Chinese state. Chinese investment in Jamaica between 2020 and 2021 exceeded $2.1 billion and as of 2022 there were more than 60,000 Chinese nationals working in Jamaica. Focusing on Jamaica, this paper aims to examine evolving relations between Chinese workers, and their Jamaican counterparts as portrayed in Patricia Powell's historical novel The Pagoda (1998) and Diana McCaulay's award-winning short story ""Bridge Over the Yallah's River"" (2022).

Chinese immigrants to the Caribbean have had significant cultural impact on the region. In Jamaica Chinese immigrants have contributed to the development of the music industry on the island and have significantly impacted the food culture as well as visual art and literary productions emanating from the region. Yet for all intents and purpose the Caribbean is an overwhelmingly black culturally West African space. My proposal is to look at the reflexive impact of the dual cultures in the work of two Jamaicans who have Chinese and West African heritages --- the poet Ann Margaret Lim and the visual artist Albert Chong. What I hope to unpack in my presentation is the ways in which both artists negotiate their identities in their respective art forms of photography and poetry. I will be looking specifically for how they handle the place of China in their work and how a Chinese identity is reclaimed or negotiated in their work. Lim has travelled to China to conduct research which she has used in her creative explorations. Chong traces his Chinese roots and routes in his photography but is more resistant to a Chinese identity insisting more on a “Jamaican” one. In this presentation I will seek to eke out the reasons why both artists might have arrived at different ideas about the role that China as a place plays in how they identify as Jamaicans. 

The Japanese Government-General Building (JGGB) was completed in 1926 in Seoul. The building was designed by German architect Georg de Lalande and completed posthumously by Japanese architect Nomura Ichiro. The building features elements of neoclassical and renaissance revival styles. The JGGB is thus an example of classical reception. The Empire of Japan had been experimenting with Western (mostly neoclassical) architecture styles for a number of years in the early twentieth century. In part, Western architectural elements were demonstrative of Japan’s modernization. The JGGB in Seoul is an example of this modernization brought to bear on Japan’s emerging colonial empire. Much of the scholarship on the building focuses on its afterlife in an independent Korea and the controversy around its eventual demolition in 1996. This paper seeks to understand the choice of a neoclassical style on the part of Japan in the context of Western colonial architectural vocabulary. Their respective adoptions while symbolically divergent–Western powers adopting Greco-Roman architectural elements in colonial buildings as a further extension of their imperial power and Japan adopting a similar neoclassical element in some of their most important colonial buildings as a symbol of their modernity–nonetheless create a unified colonial architectural idiom. After a brief history of Greco-Roman architecture in Western colonies, this paper will conduct a formal analysis of the JGGB, and end with a discussion of its context in Japan’s imperial architectural vocabulary and modernization arguing the building is a sort of layered or mediated reception.

As the world’s largest media conglomerate, the Disney Corporation promotes its family-friendly brand through animated works, film, television, music, theme parks, merchandise, and online media. Mickey Mouse, an American cultural icon for almost one hundred/ years, is one of the most recognizable characters around the world, and Disney parks have become the yearly vacation destinations of millions of families in several global centers, including California, Tokyo and Paris. Since the 1990s, Disney has sought to extend its reach into the largest growing consumer market, that of the People’s Republic of China. Disney has faced obstacles in attempting to penetrate the Chinese market for a variety of reasons, including restrictive PRC business policies and culture-based consumer differences. These difficulties have been highlighted in the media giant’s attempts to build and promote its theme parks in Hong Kong (2005) and more recently in Shanghai (2016). With Hong Kong Disneyland, while Disney designers made an effort to take into account Chinese culture and concerns with varying degrees of success, differences between Chinese and American/Western tastes in entertainment ultimately resulted in a lackluster response to the Hong Kong Park. The designers subsequently approached the Shanghai Disneyland project with a different mindset, with the goal being a theme park which could be described, as Disney CEO Bob Iger has noted, as “authentically Disney, distinctly Chinese”; his phrase seemingly epitomizes the trend of glocalization, the integration of the global market with particular local realities. The company’s successes and failures in glocalizing Disney in China have been shaped by Disney’s historical imaginings of Asia and Asians. In addition, in its pursuit of the famed “China market,” the company’s current attempts to accommodate Chinese demands consist of seasoning Chinese culture with Disney magic, and subsequently selling Chinese culture back to the Chinese. Ultimately, an analysis of the Disney-China relationship demonstrates the complexities of globalized cultural production.

How can East Asian perspectives, knowledge, and history promote student engagement and learning in science-themed Global Topics courses? During this presentation, participants will learn about and reflect upon the integral role of East Asian cultural, political, and scientific knowledge and practices in two distinct Global Topics courses: “HIV/AIDS: A Global Perspective” and “The Complex Global History of Cannabis.” In the first example, discussion will focus on learning activities constructed around Elanah Uretsky’s Occupational Hazards, an ethnographic study of the influence that Chinese cultural norms have exerted on sexuality and public health initiatives related to HIV. This will be paired with an overview of significant contributions that East Asian scientists have made to HIV-related scientific advancements. The second example explores historical interactions between East Asia and other global regions that led to the emergence of cannabis from a component of Ancient Chinese medicine to a global medicinal and largely illicit recreational commodity. The study of cannabis will also serve as a lens with which to examine ethnobotany and the intersection of plant medicines with global religious and cultural practices. The intersection between cannabis, politics, and historic anti-Asian racism will also be explored within the context of the global war on drugs, systemic racism, and racist criminal justice practices. In closing, participants will be prompted to reflect upon the implications and responsibilities associated with teaching about contentious and evocative topics, such as sexuality, illicit drug use, and systemic racism to diverse student populations, including those that study away in East Asia.

Globalizing the teaching and learning of writing poses unique challenges compared to other segments of the liberal arts curriculum. As a practical, foundational skill and a universal requirement for underclassmen, writing usually does not claim any content knowledge exclusive to itself. Hence in its pursuit of global reach, it cannot merely expand its topical coverage to include non-Western content, nor is it feasible, as long as English remains the implicit medium, to permit all students to write in their first languages. Although it is always commendable to promote pedagogical values and practices of inclusivity and accommodation toward learners from the cultural periphery, we must simultaneously acknowledge that these traditional liberal approaches to writing instruction are deeply entrenched in Western or North American norms and conventions.

This presentation aims to spark discussions on alternative approaches to teaching and researching writing within liberal arts education that are less centered around American/English conventions and institutional norms. Specifically, it proposes leveraging the indigenous Chinese concept of wen 文, whose semantic range encompasses culture, embellishment, language, writing, and literature, to reimagine disciplinary boundaries and generic distinctions, especially those that currently exist between writing and the various disciplines, academic and creative writing, as well as literature and criticism within a globalized American university. How might even a superficial grasp of wen contribute to revitalizing Western academic discourse and foster a fruitful exchange with Western rhetorical practices? The presentation will conclude by drawing out the pedagogical implications of this intercultural perspective.

In exploring “World-Building” (my NYU Shanghai Perspectives on the Humanities course), I present our central object-of-study as: “In Search of Sino-Futurism.” I challenge my students to ask: How can the exploration of East Asian and Diasporic literature help us envision ways of making the world better? My sections coalesce Chinese Nationals, Overseas Chinese, American-Born-Chinese, North & South American, Western & Eastern European, African, Middle-Eastern, and South Asian students, inviting the multiplicity of our lived experiences to approach Sino-Futurism from unique perspectives.

Scholars often orientalize East Asian futurism. To combat this, we engage with the poetry of 李栋 Dong Li who enriches our historical understanding of contemporary China, and explore visions of an alt-present with Covid-parallels by novelist Ling Ma. We mine novels by authors 刘慈欣 Liu Cixin and Larissa Lai whose fiction pushes us to reimagine a radical future led by change engineers.

If, as Margaret Atwood posits in “The Road to Ustopia,” we must forge a new middle path, negotiating fluidity between the extreme binaries of utopia and dystopia: does ustopia in Sino-Futurism offer us hope? As a point of departure, we examine Afro-Futurism, applying multiple lenses as tools for critical analysis (CRT—perplexing many of my Chinese and non-U.S. students—but also post-colonialism, queer theory, intersectionality) while exploring rhetorical appeals across multiple genres (podcasts, lyrics, visual mediums).

Using “World-Building” as a locus of exploration, nearing four years of inquiry (from Fall 2020 pandemic-Zoom classes to F2F sessions at a Fall 2023 new campus), my project on discovering Sino-Futurism continues to discover.

When anti-mining protests rocked Panama in the fall of 2023, one widely-circulated protest video purported to show dozens of Chinese laborers arriving to work at a Panamanian copper mine that had recently been purchased by a Chinese company. The video confirmed what many Panamanians feared: their elected leaders had sold out Panama and undercut Panamanian sovereignty by giving its resources to foreign investors. As the video and its reaction suggest, the presence of Chinese investment throughout the Global South can be controversial. At the very least, it raises questions about the impacts of China-funded projects on their host countries. For instance, what hidden economic and political costs and benefits do host countries experience? What effects do such projects have on local peoples and environments? What kinds of cultural exchanges emerge as relationships evolve between China and its investment recipients? To answer these questions, this presentation will highlight recent literature on Chinese foreign investment in the Global South. In particular, I will focus on interactions between the Belt and Road Initiative and Indigenous and rural communities in Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Africa, with an eye towards supporting LS/GLS teaching on China, Indigenous peoples, environment, human rights, colonialism, and international development.

The NYU Abu Dhabi Core Curriculum represents a “step forward” with regard to past models of core curricula that took shape in the US soon after WWI and emphasized “Western” historical experience (Columbia University and Reed College are two examples).  It is also a “step forward” with regard to “expanded core” models that, already many decades ago, encouraged “a critique of the historical dominance of the West” and sought to “decenter Eurocentric narratives” (Columbia and Reed again provide two examples).  The case for a “step forward” is made through the speaker’s personal reflections on his experience in three core curricula: at Reed College, as a college student; at Columbia University, as a Postdoctoral Fellow; and at NYU Abu Dhabi, as a faculty member.  The presentation focuses on examples of four course syllabi designed by the speaker for NYUAD: “Animals, Culture, and Society,” “World as Text,” “Pilgrimage and Enlightenment,” and “Indigeneity.”  In each course, East Asia (albeit primarily as China) figures prominently, and it will be argued that each provides a model for delivering a “global liberal arts.”  Curricular design, however, only works in so far as there is a faculty hired to deliver it.

I propose to share a chapter of a creative/critical manuscript-in-progress. This manuscript is a study of the South Korean illustrator Kim Jung Gi, who passed away unexpectedly in October 2022 after publishing many sketchbooks, serving as the central figure in a global collective of over sixty artists, and developing a worldwide following on social media and through the “live drawing” events that made him famous. My study explores Kim as a global phenomenon, and considers the way in which he transformed himself into a successful online brand while at the same time consciously or unconsciously frustrating that status through complicating factors including his sometimes risqué subject matter and his outsider position (as primarily an illustrator in the world of comics, and as a Korean in the Japanese-dominated world of manga). 

While pursuing this study, I received a grant from Liberal Studies that allowed me to visit Kim’s studio in Paju, South Korea. This research trip proved challenging for several reasons: Kim’s manager was mourning his loss; the studio worried that this project might portray Kim in an unflattering light or compete with studio publications; no one at the studio speaks English, and I conducted a four-hour in-person interview through a translator. I will share the chapter in the book that describes this visit, and tell the story of this interview in order to convey what cross-cultural research in East Asia looked like, in this instance, and articulate what I learned from this experience as a researcher, writer, and teacher.

In the last 50 years, China has been dramatically transformed by two changes in its infrastructure. First, China has constructed new deep-water ports such that, as of 2021, seven of the ten busiest ports in the world are in China. Second, China has connected these ports by railroads to industrial cities of the interior. These developments echo, in many ways, changes wrought in the economy of Great Britain during the 19th century. It would be a mistake to ignore this parallel. During the 19th century, British ships carried much of the world’s maritime cargo, and British railroads connected such ports as London, Bristol, and Liverpool to industrial cities like Manchester. During this same period, Britain continued to subjugate other societies to its imperial ambitions, and yet its ports and railroads also transformed British life domestically. Socially and politically, life changed in at least three important ways. First, British cities saw the growth of a large, impoverished proletariat, accompanied by industrial class conflict. Second, the urban commercial classes demanded greater freedom of speech and freedom of publication. Third, writers like Alexis de Tocqueville, who was especially alert to demographic changes in Britain and in the United States, warned that these changes could generate increasing nationalism and a potential tyranny of the majority. All these trends may now be emerging in China—though on a vastly larger scale. Universities often stress the differences between cultures and societies, but there can also be similarities. And some similarities are just as important as differences.

As Bryan Van Norden has noted in his book Taking Back Philosophy, non-Western philosophies (including East Asian philosophies) are largely ignored in the research and curricula of Western philosophy departments. Often, behind this exclusion is the view that philosophy is a uniquely Western intellectual activity and non-Western philosophies do not exist. Defenders of this view frequently rely on a narrow definition of philosophy that is often linked to Western intellectual imperialism. Their disparaging attitude towards non-Western philosophy makes them unwilling to have any informed and meaningful conversation with non-Western traditions, which leads to their ignorance of the philosophically sophisticated and well-argued works within these traditions. In turn, their intransigence and ignorance perpetuate their Eurocentric view of non-Western philosophies.  

By drawing on the courses (Global Works and Society) and the units about East Asian philosophies I teach at NYU Liberal Studies, I argue that the disparaging view of non-Western philosophies is indefensible. Instead, we should endorse a multicultural conception of philosophy. With this broader conception of philosophy, we can benefit from diverse perspectives, positions, and arguments that are equally valuable and interesting. Moreover, student feedback I have received indicates that engaging in a multicultural dialogue of philosophy is a transformative experience. That is, you will never understand what it is like until you experience it. If so, a direct message to those who argue that non-Western philosophies do not exist would be this: Step out and have a taste!

Convening in Shanghai prompts me to examine (using Powerpoint?) the energetic interplay of western music and architecture with traditional Chinese aesthetics during Shanghai’s 1930s “Golden Age.”  After briefly summarizing colonizing tensions beginning with Jesuit missionaries, through the hostile exchange between the Qianlong emperor and George III and beyond, I will demonstrate how early twentieth-century national and economic forces reconfigured earlier colonizing efforts.  Modernization and economic strength in 1930s Shanghai—then among the world’s largest and most developed metropolises—nurtured coexisting and often competing narratives, goals, and modes of artistic expression evidenced in western (Art Deco) architecture and the popular music, shidaiqu, that developed out of American jazz, dance hall, a vibrant emigrant presence, popularizing technologies of radio and (Hollywood) film, and a Chinese nationalism concerned more with a Japanese enemy than an encroaching West.  Civil War and economic struggle in much of China notwithstanding, Shanghainese cosmopolitanism and luxury prevailed as people simultaneously embraced China’s traditions, an appetite for the exotic, and escape into an aesthetic world that included music soon to be labeled “yellow” (huángsè yīnyuè) because it was considered too erotic. While some period architecture remains, shidaiqu was exported first to Taiwan and is now understood as the origin of C-pop, music that reaches well beyond China. Through buildings that still define the Shanghai cityscape and music that eventually crossed the globe, I examine art during a decade that models modern global interstices that incorporate colonizing histories and prejudices, nationalism, class struggle, economics---and fertile artistic exchange.

I intend to argue for the inclusion of pre-Qin philosophy in the Core and PRD curricula as they relate to the study of international relations.  The pre-Qin era was characterized by many small states competing for influence in an anarchic system, which is not unlike the current international order.  Specifically, I intend to focus on Xunzi’s theory of power, which he conceptualized in terms of three ideal types, in decreasing order of goodness:  humane authority (wang), hegemony (ba), and tyranny (qiang).  From this standpoint, power depends less on a state’s military or economic resources, but upon its adherence to moral rites or norms that facilitate cooperation and collective action among the members of a political community or among states in the international system. 

The dominant theory of international relations in the West is realism.  Core texts by Thucydides, Machiavelli, and Hobbes continue to inform modern IR theory.  Including pre-Qin philosophy in the LS/GLS curriculum will expand and possibly transform students’ understanding of international relations, by deepening and thereby enriching modern IR theory.  As I shall argue, Xunzi’s political philosophy can be brought into dialogue with the philosophy of Hannah Arendt, whose theory of power (as the opposite of violence) shares the former’s insight that speech is more important than hard-power resources.  It will also help students become acquainted with the work of contemporary East Asian IR scholars, who are drawing on political thought from the golden age of Chinese philosophy to enrich existing theories or develop new ones. The “Tsinghua approach” to Chinese IR is one such effort, which (cautiously) stands in opposition to the “geopolitik nationalism” that is now engrossing a notable section of China’s strategic and intellectual community.

This presentation will consider Danmei, a Chinese romance genre, and its growing influence on global inclusive romantic fiction. Danmei, translates as ""indulgence in beauty"" and primarily features romantic relationships between men. It has been gaining popularity globally and is establishing a presence beyond its fan fiction roots.

We will consider Danmei's evolution from an online practice to a major cultural force, analyzing its impact on challenging traditional romance narratives and promoting LGBTQ+ representation. The presentation will discuss Danmei's role in shaping a more diverse global perspective on romance.

Focusing on the media and cultural aspects, the presentation will examine Danmei's influence on the shifting global publishing landscape. What is the audience for this work? Does it promote LGBTQ values or undermine progress? How is the work received in China and what issues regarding censorship are present? What is the relationship to mainstream publishing and commercial fiction?

Understanding Danmei and other global genres like Boys’ Love in Southeast Asia is a pivotal element in the evolving landscape of inclusive romance fiction, marking a significant stride in cultural exchange and media representation.

Wonder has regularly been understood as the spring of philosophy in the western tradition, not least due to programmatic statements from foundational figures like Plato and Aristotle who identify 'thauma' (‘wonder’ in ancient Greek) as the pathos from which every philosophical inquiry begins. While recent scholarship has begun to explore the topic of wonder through a broader lens, situating this feeling in the context of philosophical, psychological, literary, and historical paradigms, among others, most analyses remain firmly oriented to a western reception of ideas. In this endeavor, the Greek understanding of 'thauma' continues to supply the prototypical definition and logic of what an underlying philosophical sensibility is and how it arises.

In thinking about wonder beyond the ubiquity of its western formulations, China offers us a fascinating set of possibilities to consider. For one may plausibly ask: Does such a pathos underlie the originary motivation to philosophize in the classical eras of Chinese intellectual history, and, if so, how does it compare to the privileged standard of Greek 'thauma'? I propose an answer to this question by constructing an alternative vocabulary of wonder reading pre-Qin texts in which categories of things, psychological states, and different beings deemed wondrous and strange prescribe unique opportunities for philosophical reflection. Focusing specifically on the early Daoist text, the Zhuangzi, I draw attention to a semantic field of wonder that orients the philosopher-sage in relation to wondrous, strange objects (described as guai 怪or qi 奇) through a constant process of philosophical wandering (you 遊). Such a conception challenges the dominant understanding of wonder, by way of its Greek inheritance. Whereas this latter idea associates wonder solely with the beginning of philosophy, engendering a search for an argument or a body of knowledge that must ultimately reconcile and put to rest the originating wonder, some of the most ardent philosophers in China begin and continually return to a state of wonder. To philosophize with such a sensibility is to endlessly wander in the wonderful.

Like many major world cities, the contemporary metropolis of Shanghai contains intermingling layers of past and present that open up significant opportunities for academic and creative exploration. Arguably more specific to major Chinese cities, however, is the particular manner in which Shanghai’s past (and present) has been consciously removed and deliberately recreated in order to produce a profitable amalgamation of Chinese historical culture and contemporary sites of tourism and capitalism. 

Areas like the Shanghai neighborhood of Xintiandi, with its shikumen-style houses that have been emptied of their residents and turned into high-end shopping structures, or Shanghainese water towns that are purportedly emblematic of the area’s history but have largely become tourist streets, therefore serve as productive case studies for teaching students to approach the city of Shanghai itself as a text. Artistic and literary portrayals of Shanghai and parallel Chinese metropolises surround and enhance this investigation, demonstrating the multiple angles through which writers, artists, and soon-to-be-ex-residents of Shanghainese neighborhoods attempt to wrestle with these transformations. 

This presentation will discuss a selection of literary, journalistic, and artistic texts utilized and produced by NYU Shanghai students in writing courses that mine a shifting Shanghai as a site of change, questioning, textual analysis, and inspiration. 

The First Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95 fundamentally changed the power relations between Qing China and Meiji Japan at the turn of the twentieth century. It marked the decline of the old Confucian order in China and Korea and the rise of new orders led by Japan and Russia. This event has been the subject of numerous studies, but mainly within the context of East Asian history. Its impact outside the region, however, has been rarely dealt with. What was the response from the Arab world to a seemingly faraway warfare in East Asia? What was the image of East Asia in the eyes of Arab intellectuals before and after the war? How did Arab intellectuals form their understandings of East Asia? Arabic news reports about this event became both a source of joy and worry among the Arab intellectuals, who were in completely different cultural, religious, and linguistic worlds. The enthusiasm over Japan’s victory and the sense of urgency over China’s defeat exemplify the aspirations and anxieties co-existing within the Arab world at the time.

Astronomy is one of the oldest sciences, with recorded observations from both Mesopotamia and China dating back thousands of years.  Early Chinese astronomical records were particularly meticulous, and include some of the earliest observations of transient astronomical events such as sunspots, eclipses, and comets. Ancient astronomy informed many aspects of society, from timekeeping, navigation, and agriculture to explaining earthly events, and modern astronomers continue to utilize these unique historical records to understand our solar system.

Despite astronomy’s global roots, undergraduate astronomy education often adopts a western Eurocentric perspective. For example, Both East Asian and Babylonian civilizations mapped the sky into constellations, but typically only the Greco-Roman constellations -- considered “official” by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) --  show up in academic contexts. I will describe approaches to integrate astronomy’s global past, present, and future into the introductory astronomy (History of the Universe) classroom, in ways that emphasize East Asian perspectives and contributions to astronomy. I will also discuss the modern astronomical era, in which billion dollar observatories -- such as the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) -- necessitate and foster international collaborations. I will highlight the incredible science that is emerging out of the ALMA partnership between East Asia, Europe, and North America, as an example of the interdisciplinary and international nature of modern astronomy. Readings, class discussions, and assignments that encourage Liberal Studies students to identify astronomy as a global human endeavor, and to challenge the Eurocentric narrative, will be presented.

The Ballad of Mulan, first written as a folk song between 4th to 6th century AD in China, narrates the story of 花木蘭, folk legend and woman warrior who continues to fuel the imagination and creativity of filmmakers, writers, and creative producers into the 21st century. This piece examines revisionist transnational narratives in Chinese American writer Maxine Hong Kingston’s creative nonfiction book The Woman Warrior, Disney’s animated film Mulan, and East Asian Media, to explore the craft and power of storytelling.

In 629 CE, the Chinese Buddhist scholar and monk, Xuenzang, began his historic journey from Changaan (present day Xian) to India in order to collect Buddhist texts and refine his understandings of Buddhism. For 16 years, Xuenzang travelled and explored extensively across Western China, Central Asia & Afghanistan, finally reaching India and spending considerable time in numerous Indian kingdoms and monasteries. He returned to China in 645 CE, was honored by the Tang Emperor and wrote his travelogue, ""The Great Tang Records on the Western Regions"". Despite their occasional flights of fantasy, Xuenzang’s descriptions offer important information about 7th Century Central Asia and India. 

More than a 1000 years later, in 1982, Vikram Seth, a young Indian student (and incipient poet) in Nanjing, journeyed through South-western China to Tibet which he recorded in his travelogue, ""From Heaven Lake"". Seth covered some of the same regions as Xuenzang – e.g  Xian and Xinjiang – but his experiences were obviously very different. 

My paper will discuss crucial aspects of the identities and imaginaries constructed by a 7th Century Chinese monk traveling to India and a 20th Century Indian writer traveling within China. These constructions are shaped by specific historical, political and cultural circumstances encountered (and embodied) by the travelers. They also provide glimpses into contemporary Chinese contingencies and roles in relation to Central Asia and India during two very different time periods. Routes of silk and surprises configure and refigure Asian trans-regional ties that are as tenuous or tenacious as history permits. 

How are we preparing our CCP seniors for the thesis work they’ll need to produce back on the square? What materials are we providing, and how are these materials helpful in getting them launched into what is more than likely the most daunting project of their young scholarly/creative careers? The old story goes: after a bedazzling first week in China, the traveler says, I’m going to write a novel about this country. A month goes by, and the traveler says, hmm, maybe I’ll make that a short story. By the end of a year, the traveler says (to quote an American Nobelist in Literature), I’m going back to New York City, I do believe I’ve had enough. How does this old story apply to our GLS pilgrims, particularly when they’re back at the mothership confronting the specter of the thesis? Thinking about this from a CCP angle: if there’s any shortcoming in our GLS students’ preparation for the thesis, it’s a lack in familiarity with contemporary texts, contemporary approaches, contemporary voices. What can they learn/how can they borrow from the journals of Susan Sontag, the essays of Jenny Zhang, the creative nonfiction of Emmanuel Iduma, the monographs of Tash Aw, and other practitioners of contemporary poetry and fiction? All of these models provide answers to the question: how to capture the experience of place?

China has apparently entered a new era, with the central state proclaiming the renewal of the nation under Xi Jinping. Two keywords – civilization and community – help reveal the ideological contours of this national rejuvenation. This presentation considers these keywords in two specific senses, ecological civilization 生态文明 and the Chinese national community 中华民族共同体, and frames them as integral parts of an ongoing nation-building project going back many decades. These keywords do signal separate, significant changes – the former a Chinese-led vision for a sustainable, post-industrial world, the latter a (Han) Chinese vision for a harmonious, post-political ethnic nation. However, in addition to expressing a future perfect vision, these keywords reference cultural and spatial changes that have already taken place in China over the past few decades. A short history of domestic tourism in ethnic minority areas will be used to illustrate some of these changes, and to develop the argument that the “ecological” concerns of China’s new era are both a response to a global biophysical crisis and a domestic cultural and political project.

In the 3.8 billion years since life began on Earth, nature has evolved. Inspired by this process, humans have replicated key design features to develop novel materials, devices, and structures. This field known as bioinspiration or biomimicry takes nature as model and looks for novel bioinspired design and solutions to address some of the 21st century’s most pressing issues, such as energy, water, environment, and food. It is, however, not just about technological advancement, but also looking for ways to reconnect with nature that we have exploited so long.

This search for the connection with nature has a deep root in the Eastern philosophy such as Taoism. Lao Tzu, the originator of Taoism, said: “Man follows the laws of earth, earth follows the laws of heaven, heaven follows the laws of Tao, and Tao follows the laws of nature”. If we follow the laws of nature, the ultimate level of Tao, we can live a harmonious co-existence with nature and keep it as an endless source of inspiration for the future. This philosophical thinking can be regarded as the metaphysical thinking of bioinspiration. 

In this talk, I am going to discuss how the human capacity for analogical reasoning has enabled the transfer of ideas from nature to design principles such as shape, surface, and structure. In the East Asian context, I would like to showcase some of the bioinspired architectural examples in Asia such the traditional Han Chinese architecture of Sanheyuan where we can see distinct elements of Taoism.