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Western Conference of the Association for Asian Studies

2022 Program

The symposium took place on Zoom on October 21 & 22, 2022.

1. Pedagogy Show & Tell: Chinese Philosophy Across Campus
Organizer: Michael Paul (BYU-I)
Friday, October 21, 10:00 -11:30 AM

This panel will feature a discussion of how the teachings of Chinese philosophers are used in General Education, history, area studies, and culture classes spanning multiple disciplines and departments at Brigham Young University - Idaho. Participating faculty include Michael Paul, Scott Galer, Trever McKay, Tyson Yost, and Chris Wilson. Practical application of Transformational Learning Theory will be discussed.

2. Book Talk: Professor Fredrick Green on Bird Talk and other Stories by Xu Xu
Organizer: Steve Riep (BYU)
Friday, October 21, 4:00 - 5:30 PM

This panel will feature a talk by Professor Green of San Francisco State University on his recent translated volume Bird Talk and other Stories by Xu Xu (Stone Bridge Press). Xu Xu, who began his career in Shanghai, China, relocated to Hong Kong in 1950 and established himself there as a writer, critic, editor, and professor. While he also wrote poetry and plays, he is best remembered for his short stories that bring together the modern, the romantic, and the exotic. In the post-1949 era, many of his works were adapted for film and television in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Professor Green will introduce the writer and the cultural and historical milieu in which he worked, read from and discuss his translations, and then field questions from the audience.

3.  Panel: Asian Economic Relations under the Impact of the COVID-19 Epidemic
Organizer: LU Chen
Friday, October 21, 6:30 - 8:00 PM

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, the epidemic has created profound but negative impact on the global economy as an episodic shock. Emerging markets in Asia, in particular, are facing both challenges and opportunities with their market potential and elasticity, offering them possibilities for further development. This panel will focus on the development trends, cooperation paths and development dynamics of Asian economies in the post-epidemic era. Participants include LV Chen, WU Yize, YANG Tianyi, WANG Renjie and CHANG Haozhi.

4. Roundtable Discussion: Discussion about the Influences of the I Ching on Traditional Chinese Thought
Organizer: Alex Yuan (UVU)
Saturday, October 22, 2022, 10:00 - 11:30 AM

The I Ching or Yi Jing, Book of Changes (易经), originated from the legendary world ruler Fu Xi, who created the eight trigrams through observing the patterns of the world. King Wen of Zhou, the Duke of Zhou, and Confucius developed and interpreted the text, which was called Zhou yi or Changes of Zhou. Emperor Wu of Han (138 BC) named the Zhou yi the first among the Five Classics. I Ching has a broad and profound influence on the traditional Chinese culture, philosophy, and thoughts, including Confucianism, Taoism, legalism, yin-yang cosmology, and Wu Xing physical theory. This roundtable discussion by UVU faculty and students in Chinese studies will discuss the major influences of the I Ching upon the traditional Chinese thoughts such as Taoism and Confucianism.

5. Workshop: Archival and Library Source Materials in Japanese Studies
Organizers: Rebecca Corbett (USC) and Michelle Liu Carriger (UCLA)
Saturday, October 22, 12:00 - 1:30 PM

This workshop will feature short presentations about archival and library primary source materials available for pursuing Japanese Studies in the areas covered by WCAAS, including introductions to participants’ current research. That is, projects that in some way connect the study of Japan with locations in the Western United States, either via the location of archival or primary source materials, or via the location of the creators / subjects of primary source materials. Through this sharing of research, participants will learn more about unique resources available within their region and historical inter-connections between the WCAAS region and Japan. Presentations will be 10 minutes in length, with significant discussion time for all participants. Participants include Tara Rodman (UC Irvine), Christopher Hepburn (USC), Emily Anderson (JANM), Jingyi Li (U of Arizona), Matías Chiappe (El Colegio de Mexico)

6. Roundtable Discussion: Building a Community of Japanese Teaching Professionals in Utah
Organizer: Jack Stoneman (BYU)
Saturday, October 22, 2:00-3:00 PM

Japanese language teachers at the secondary and post-secondary levels throughout Utah are invited to participate in a special session of the WCAAS 2022 for a meet-and-greet followed by a roundtable discussion. This session will be held on Zoom. Participants are encouraged to introduce themselves and their institutions and programs in an effort for all to better understand the field of Japanese teaching in Utah’s high schools, colleges, and universities. A moderated roundtable discussion will follow. This discussion will focus on post-Covid lessons and opportunities. The pandemic teaching environment was a unique mishmash of impromptu, developing, and experimental teaching methods and delivery systems sometimes combined with traditional methods and materials. Both the successes and the failures of the last two years can teach us much about what we can do now to improve the learning of future students.

7. Panel: Challenging Discourses about Disability in Sinophone Literature and Culture
Organizer: Li Guo (USU)
Saturday, October 22, 3:00 - 4:30 PM

Disability studies has gained its theoretical foundations since the late 1960s and early 1970s as unique discipline of academic research. However, in light of reconsidering disability in its political, aesthetic, ethical, and cultural contexts, much remains to be researched about the representations of communities of disabled people and their struggles with personal lives, work and social presence in Chinese and Sinophone literature, film, and visual cultures. This panel fills in the gap of current studies by bringing together three studies that expand and challenge existent discourses of disability in Sinophone literary and cinematic traditions. Steve Riep examines how depictions of disability in Mo Yan’s fiction contest and expand the discourses of objectification and (im)mobility, and offers an alternative critical lens for the consideration of the intersecting relationship about health, body, and the nation. Xuesong Shao discusses Xu Tong’s documentary Cut Out the Eyes (2014), which is about the work and life of a blind performer in rural North China. Xu Tong’s documentary accentuates the performer’s heightened theatrical presence, and the ways of seeing activated by his disability, but also questions the ethical risks of the neoliberal (dis)order beneath the audiences’ carnivalesque embrace of the grotesque. Li Guo studies two short reportage works on people with albinism in Taiwan in the collection Moon Children (1986) by Liao Chia-chan and Yan Hsin-chu. Guo discusses how Liao and Yan’s reportage and photography unveil contested discourses about the social-modal of disability, albinist people’s personal struggles with work, life, as well as barriers to employment equality and economic wellbeing.