Japanese

Distinguished linguist and photographer, Kuo-ming Sung is Associate Professor and Chair at Lawrence University.

Prof. Sung has published several books on Tibet and the Tibetan language, and is currently working on a textbook of Colloquial Lhasa Tibetan language.

Celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Asian Studies Program at Bowdoin.

Free and Open to the Public.

Dr. Winnie Wong, Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows, explores the unlikely connections among photojournalism, documentary photography, and conceptual art in depictions of Dafen village, the world's largest production center for hand-painted art products.

This lecture explores the visual rhetorics of manual labor and creativity in China's most famous cultural site and traces the value of "truth" in American journalists', artists', and photographers' representations of China.

Sponsored by the Blythe Bickel Edwards Fund, the Asian Studies Program, and the Department of Art History.

Open to the public and free of charge.

A performance/demonstration of kabuki and traditional Japanese dance by Sachiyo Ito based in New York City. Sachiyo Ito has brought together East and West through her delicate and powerful performances of classical, traditional, and contemporary Japanese for nearly forty years. 

Organized in conjunction with "Fantastic Stories: The Supernatural in Nineteenth-Century Japanese Prints" on view at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art through March 3, 2013 and supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Fund.

Professor Joseph Fewsmith (Boston University) is a renowned scholar of Chinese elite politics.
His most recent book, The Logic and Limits of Political Reform in China, examines the evolution of post-Tiananmen reforms to local governance.  Prof. Fewsmith's talk will explain the significance of the 2012 Chinese leadership transition.

Recognizing 25 Years of the Asian Studies Program at Bowdoin.

Co-sponsored by the Asian Studies Program and the Department of Government and Legal Studies with support from the John C. Donovan Lecture Fund.

Free and open to the public.

Japanese prints from the Edo period (1600-1868) often feature haggard ghosts, vengeful demons, and mischievous beings. Daniel McKee will discuss these prints in connection with literary, theatrical, and political discourses, reading them as a medium of socio-political critique.

McKee, Japanese studies bibliographer and adjunct assistant professor in Cornell University's East Asian Program, was formerly the curator of the Clark Center for Japanese Art.

This talk is organized in conjunction with Fantastic Stories: The Supernatural in Nineteenth-Century Japanese Prints, on view at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, and is presented as part of the series of events recognizing 25 years of the Asian Studies Program at Bowdoin.

Sponsored by the Lectures and Concerts Committee, Blythe Bickel Edwards Fund, Asian Studies Program, Art History Division of the Department of Art, and the Bowdoin College Museum of Art. Presented by Asian Studies and the Bowdoin College Museum of Art

By invitation only.

Organized on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of Asian Studies at Bowdoin College, the exhibition "Fantastic Stories: The Supernatural in Nineteenth-century Japanese Prints" features forty prints by well-known artists such as Utagawa Kuniyoshi, Kawanabe Kyosai, Utagawa Kunisada, and Katsushika Hokusai. Viewers will delve into the world of mythical creatures and ghostly apparitions in the Edo period. The exhibition continues through March 3, 2013.

Image: Utagawa Kunisada, Japanese, 1786-1865, The Cat Witch, color woodblock (detail).

Hatsune Miku is a virtual-media singing sensation from Japan. Created by an enthusiastic fan base using a music synthesizer package called Vocaloid, she is a crowd-sourced pop star.

Using her as an example, Dr. Ian Condry, a cultural anthropologist from MIT, will discuss how pop culture, like politics, depends on energetically undertaken collective actions. Based on fieldwork in Japan and the U.S., his talk will also explore the dynamics of the social media in contemporary Japan, using examples from the aftermath of the 3/11 earthquake and tsunami.