Dear Friends of Asian Studies,

As we welcome November, I’m pleased to share a list of Asia-related courses for the upcoming registration period. I encourage you to explore the diverse offerings and consider adding an Asian Studies course to your schedule, including ASIA 200 Centering Asia and ASIA/REST 312 Nuclear Worlds Asia-Eurasia. There are also a few film screenings coming up, offering opportunities to engage with Asian cultures and perspectives through cinema.

Best,
Yang Song
Asian Studies Program Director

ARTH 109 — Buddhist Arts in Asia
ARTH 343 — Cities of the Gods: Temples Across Southern Asia
ASIA 200 — Centering Asia
ASIA 310 — Contemporary Nepal
ASIA 310E — Contemporary Nepal / Extended Study
ASIA 312 — Nuclear Worlds Asia-Eurasia
CHIN 122 — Elementary Chinese II
CHIN 202 — Intermediate Chinese II
CHIN 266 — Visual China: Moving Pictures
CHIN 304 — Readings in Social Issues
CHIN 406 — Readings in Modern Literature
CORE C136 — Pacific Islands and Diasporas
CORE C166 — India
CORE C167 — Japan
CORE S138 — Advent of the Atomic Bomb
EDUC 205 — Race, White Supremacy, and Education
ENGL 371 — South Asian Diasporas
GEOG 313 — Geographical Political Economy: Asia in Globalization
HIST 264 — Modern East Asia
HIST 269 — The Indian Subcontinent: Raj to Republics
HIST 368 — China, the Great Wall, and Beyond
JAPN 122 — Elementary Japanese II
JAPN 202 — Intermediate Japanese II
JAPN 302 — Advanced Japanese II
JAPN 402 — Readings in Japanese II
POSC 307 — China's Foreign Relations
POSC 434 — Seminar: Immigrants, Refugees, and the Politics of Borders
RELG 215 — Buddhism
REST 312 — Nuclear Worlds in Asia and Eurasia

ASIA 200 Centering Asia| TR 2:45 p.m. - 4:00 p.m. | Professor Sklyar
Asia is home to over half of the world's population. Its dozens of countries feature a stunningly diverse array of languages, religions, cultures, political and economic systems, art forms, histories, etc. How then should we study “Asia?” The instructor and other Asian Studies faculty at Colgate share their multidisciplinary approaches to studying Asia. Over the course of the semester, students learn to understand the diversity and interconnectedness of Asia, gain a sense of the history of Asia, and learn the value of various analytical approaches to the study of Asia.

ASIA/REST 312 Nuclear Worlds Asia-Eurasia | TR 1:20 p.m. - 2:35 p.m. | Professor Sklyar
Students examine lived human experiences of the environmental and medical administration of nuclear disaster in Japan, the former Soviet Union, and post-Soviet contexts. Emphasis is placed on the social and political creation, deployment, and contestation of scientific and non-scientific knowledge by governments, local residents, and experts. How and why did certain Japanese, Soviet, and post-Soviet knowledge and lived experiences get included or excluded in global nuclear knowledge production? How do people make sense of radiation, food, homes, bodies, animals, air, dirt, and being, in the midst of nuclear exposure? Students learn to seek out local voices and pay close attention to understandings of the body and the environment arising from Asian, Eastern European, and Eurasian cultural, sociopolitical, and historical contexts.

Film Screening: Masayume

When describing the title, filmmaker Nao Yoshigai says: "Masayume is a Japanese word meaning that what we see in a dream happens in real life. In Zen, there is no narrative promising salvation through belief; instead, true power arises from the tangible reality felt by the mind and body through practice. One vital lesson I learned was to value direct experience rather than depending on stories."

Prior to the screening, there will be hot, fresh pizza in the lobby outside Golden Auditorium from 5:45-6:30PM. Please come for a bite before the screening. All students, faculty, and staff are welcome to the pizza. Please note, however, that no food or drinks are allowed in the theater itself (other than water).

November 3 (Tuesday) | 6:30 p.m. | Little Hall, 105 (Golden Auditorium)

Followed by Q&A with filmmaker Nao Yoshigai via Zoom at 8:30 p.m.

Co-sponsored by Asian Studies and East Asian Languages and Literatures

Film screening: Fresh Kill by Shu Lea Cheang.  

A disturbingly prescient ecofeminist parable and a brain-wave-scrambling cyberpunk fantasia, the debut feature from new-media pioneer Shu Lea Cheang merges a bold vision of resistance with an exuberant early-internet aesthetic. In a dystopian-chic New York where sushi joints and toxic-waste sites exist side by side, a lesbian couple (Sarita Choudhury and Erin McMurtry) turn to the hacker underground to solve their daughter’s disappearance, in the process exposing a conspiracy involving corporate greenwashing and tainted fish. Swinging between outré satire and agitprop, Fresh Kill sounds the alarm about a capitalist system that pollutes everything from our waterways to our bodies to our minds.

Co-sponsored by Film and Media Studies, Environmental Studies, and Asian Studies

November 11 (Wednesday) | 6:30 p.m. | Little Hall, 105 (Golden Auditorium)

Film screening: Shoplifters by Hirokazu Kore-eda (Ryan Family Film Series)

Winner of the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, Hirokazu Kore-eda’s film Shoplifters (2018) chronicles the life of a makeshift household trying to get by on petty theft on the margins of Tokyo. When the family takes in an abused young girl, they are scrutinized by members of the community and pursued by police who deem the family to be unfit to care for the girl.  The film addresses existential questions of natural and found families and the impoverishment of marginalized people in Japan who resort to crime in order to survive

Followed by a conversation and Q&A with Professors Xiaoyu Wang (East Asian Languages and Literatures) and Noah Shenker (Film and Media Studies).

Co-Sponsored with East Asian Languages and Literatures

Thursday, November 12 | 6:30 p.m. | Little Hall, 105 (Golden Auditorium)

Asian Studies, East Hall | 315-228-6868 | colgate.edu/asianstudies