Date
December 1, 2017

Location

Maison Francaise, East Gallery


Time
9:30 am – 5:30 pm

Event Organizer

Carol Gluck, Kim Brandt, and Laura Neitzel (Columbia)
Rebecca E. Karl (NYU)
Andrew Liu (Villanova)


Event Sponsor

Event Co-Sponsor(s)

Weatherhead East Asian Institute
EALAC Department
History Department
Institute for Comparative Literature and Society
Donald Keene Center and Columbia University
NYU Humanities Institute


There is no application process. The workshop panels are by invitation only.

Beginning in the late 1980s, North American scholarship on modern East Asia entered a period of notable change and creativity.  Following trends in the larger academy,  the study of East Asia was progressively reshaped first, by a renewed interest in the insights of European social theory, and second, by the so-called cultural turn spurred by the (often competing) approaches of literary theory, cultural anthropology, and psychoanalysis.

The theoretical ferment was at first evident in modern Japanese history with the work of scholars like Harry Harootunian.  He and others brought new attention to world historical processes such as the development of capitalism, fascism, and imperialist nation-building, and offered challenges to older narratives and approaches drawn from modernization theory, structuralism, and “area studies” models of scholarship.  By the turn of the century, scholars working in fields ranging from Chinese religion to Korean literature were drawing upon a coherent if wide-ranging and diverse repertoire of conceptual tools—many taken from key European texts of critical theory—to produce innovative new work and to train graduate students across disciplinary fields.

Now, in 2017, how can we assess the achievements of the “critical turn” in East Asian studies?  Where has it brought us?  And how might we build upon this thirty-year legacy of research, critique, and teaching?

This workshop intends to bring together 60 or so scholars working in a wide variety of fields and disciplines to consider the past thirty years, along with the present and, most important, the future of East Asian studies.  The one-day event, organized around the three panels and one workshop session, will examine the theoretical and pedagogical frameworks we have brought to critical studies of modern East Asia and consider their resonance for the future in the midst of a changing world.

 The Heyman Center for the Humanities, Room B-101
74 Morningside Drive
New York, NY, 10027
  (212) 854-4541
  (212) 854-3099