Jun 3–Jun 5, 2018
UC Irvine
Across the past quarter century and more, many have referred to an impending “Asian Century,” referencing the sense that population, industry, and agricultural productivity were centered in Asia until 1800 or so. The present recrudescence has invigorated a reimagining of the borders of Asian Studies, for a global intellectual community.
This conference participates in such reimagining in part by rethinking the place of the problem of “race” or historical difference in the very making of Asia, in part by way of reference to African American, African, and African Diaspora examples. Major participants include John G. Russell, Takashi Fujitani, Jeffrey Wasserstrom, Kyung Hyun Kim, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak.
Conference Schedule
Monday June 4th
9:00AM – 9:30AM – Coffee and Welcome
9:30AM-10:45AM – Keynote Lecture: John G. Russell (Gifu) – “Anaconda East: Fetishes, Phallacies, Chimbo Chauvinism and the Displaced Discourse of Black Male Sexuality in Japan”
10: 45AM – 11: 00AM – Coffee Break
11:00AM – 11:30PM – Marketus Presswood (Amherst and UC Irvine) [Doctoral Scholar] – “Sonicated Blackness in Jazz Age Shanghai: African American Musicians and the Creation of the Soundtrack of Chinese Modernity”
11:30PM – 12:00PM – Parisa Vaziri (UC Irvine and Cornell) [Doctoral Scholar] – “Simulating the Archive: Incantatory Blackness in Iranian Cinema”
12:00PM – 12:30PM – Lunch (not provided)
12:30PM – 1:15PM – William H. Bridges IV (Rochester) [Young Scholar] – “A Brief History of the Inhumanities, a New Futurism, and the Black Pacific Toward Afro-Japanese Futures”
1:15PM – 2:00PM – Annmaria Shimabuku (NYU) [Young Scholar] – “Alegal: Capital, Race, and Sex in the Trans-Pacific Borderland of Okinawa”
2:00PM – 2:15PM – Coffee Break
2:15PM – 3: 00PM – Ariko S. Ikehara (Osaka) “Wafu-Blackness: Performativity of Performance.”
3:00PM- 3:45PM – Kyung Hyun Kim (UC Irvine) – “Plagiarized Authenticity: (In-) appropriations in Korean Hip-hop”
3:45PM – 4:00PM – Coffee Break
4:00PM – 6:00PM – Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Columbia). “Reading Pan Africa” – School of Humanities Distinguished Visiting Professor Public Lecture.
6:00PM – 7:30PM – Reception in Honor of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Sponsored by Blackness and the Asian Century (BASIC), a UC Multi-Campus Faculty Working Group.
Tuesday June 5th
9:30AM – 10:00AM – Coffee and Welcome
10:00AM – 12:00PM – Film Screening, Guangzhou Dream Factory (2018)—followed by Q & A (via Skype) with Director Christiane Badgley and discussion, moderated by Kristen Peterson (UC Irvine), with Jeffrey Wasserstrom (UC Irvine) as lead discussant.
12:00PM – 12:30PM – Lunch (not provided)
12:30PM – 2:00PM – Discussion: “The ’60s, in Theory,” Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Columbia), Ngugi wa Thiong’o (UC Irvine), and Akbar Abbas (UC Irvine) in Conversation. Sponsored by UC Humanities Research Institute, with co-sponsorship by Blackness and the Asian Century (BASIC), a UC Multi-Campus Faculty Working Group.
2:00PM – 2:15PM – Coffee Break
2:15PM – 3:15PM – Workshop Session I – W. E. B. Du Bois and B. R. Ambedkar: The Possible Terms of an Interlocution – Part One: Writings by W. E. B. Du Bois on Asia. Readings. Session lead by Nahum Dimitri Chandler (UC Irvine) and Aishwary Kumar (Stanford). [A Young Scholar Session] Readings: https://goo.gl/TTEq7c
3:15PM – 3:30PM – Coffee Break
3:30PM – 5:15PM – Workshop Session I – W. E. B. Du Bois and B. R. Ambedkar: The Possible Terms of an Interlocution – Part Two: The Thought of B. R. Ambedkar. Session lead by Aishwary Kumar (Stanford) and Nahum Dimitri Chandler (UC Irvine). [A Young Scholar Session] [A Fifth Floor Practitioner Session] Readings: https://goo.gl/TTEq7c
5:15PM – 5:30PM – Coffee Break
5:30PM- 7:00PM – John G. Russell (Gifu) – “Frozen Journey: Science Fiction, Race, and The Limits of Speculative Practice.” A Two-Part Mini-Seminar on “Blacks and Science Fiction” – Lecture One. Organized by the Workshop on Science, Technology, and Race (STAR) of the UC Consortium for Black Studies in California, the Workshops at UC Irvine. [A Fifth Floor Practitioner Session]
Wednesday June 6th
9:30AM – 10:00AM – Coffee and Welcome
10:00AM – 12:00PM – John G. Russell (Gifu) – “Darkies Never Dream: Race, Racism, and theBlack Imagination in Science Fiction.” A Two-Part Mini-Seminar on “Blacks and Science Fiction” – Lecture Two. Organized by the Workshop on Science,
Technology, and Race (STAR) of the UC Consortium for Black Studies in California, the Workshops at UC Irvine. [A Fifth Floor Practitioner Session]
12:00PM – 1:00PM — Lunch (not provided).
1:00PM – 2:30PM – James Ford (Occidental) – “Toward a Du Boisian Critique of Violence” [On Black Reconstruction] Workshop Session II: Presented by the Workshop in Critical Historiography and Social Theoretical Enquiry (CHASTE) of the UC Consortium for Black Studies in California, the Workshops at UC Irvine.
2:30PM – 2:45PM – Coffee Break
2:45PM – 4:00PM – Nahum Dimitri Chandler (UC Irvine) – “The Black Horizon: W. E. B. Du Bois After the Armistice” [On Color and Democracy: Colonies and Peace (1945) and The World and Africa (1947)] Workshop Session III: Presented by the Workshop in Critical Historiography and Social Theoretical Enquiry (CHASTE) of the UC Consortium for Black Studies in California, the Workshops at UC Irvine, and as part of the spring graduate seminar on “Paraontology,” in the School of Humanities, UC Irvine. Readings: https://goo.gl/TTEq7c
4:00PM – 5:00PM – CLOSING ROUNDTABLE – John G. Russell (Gifu), Annmaria Shimabuku (NYU), Aishwary Kumar (Stanford), Kyung Hyun Kim (UC Irvine), Ariko Ikehara (Osaka), and others, with Nahum Dimitri Chandler (UC Irvine) as moderator
5:00PM – 6:00PM – RECEPTION AND CLOSE OF THE CONFERENCE.
Sponsored by the Department of Comparative Literature, UC Irvine, with co-sponsorship by Blackness and the Asian Century (BASIC), a UC Multi- Campus Faculty Working Group.
Sponsored in part by the University of California Office of the President Multi-Campus Research Programs and Initiatives (MRPI) and the University of California Humanities Research Institute (UCHRI), as part of its program, the Pacific Ocean: Multi-Campus Faculty Working Groups, by way of its MRPI funding, MR-15-328710.
Co-sponsored by the Center for Critical Korean Studies, the Departments of Comparative Literature, East Asian Languages and Literatures, Anthropology, History, and Asian American Studies, with additional support from the Humanities Commons of the Office of the Dean of the School of Humanities and the Office of the Dean of the School of Social Sciences – at UC Irvine. Organized in association with the UC Consortium for Black Studies in California, a Multi-Campus Research Program and Initiative, The Workshops at UC Irvine.
