Events

THIS IS AN IN-PERSON EVENT AND WILL NOT BE LIVE STREAMING.

ABOUT THE PROGRAM

This two-day conference brings together scholars with an interdisciplinary focus on sound and writing in East Asia from across the academic fields of literature, history, music, media, sound, and performance. The purpose of the event is to facilitate innovative approaches to understanding and articulating intersections of aural and print cultures. While these explorations of sound and text may be situated specifically within the contexts of China, Japan, and Korea, the conference aims to foster scholarly contributions beyond the field of East Asian area studies.

PROGRAM SCHEDULE

April 27 (Saturday)

9:30-10:00 am Light breakfast on conference site (available to participants and registrants)

10:00-12:00 pm Panel 3: Language

Discussant: Sarah Nooter (Classics, University of Chicago)

• Janet Chen (Princeton University), “Medium or Message? The Politics of Language in Broadcasting in Taiwan, 1955-1975”
• Elvin Meng (University of Chicago), “Rituals of the Wild: The Concept of Orality in the History of Manchu Thought”
• Alex Murphy (Clark University), “Sound-Writing and Acoustics in Kanetsune Kiyosuke’s Structure of Japanese Language and Song”

12:00-1:00 pm Lunch on site (available to participants and registrants)

1:00-3:30 pm Panel 4: Media

Discussant: Thomas Lamarre (CMS & EALC, University of Chicago)

• Linshan Jiang (Duke University), “Voicing Queer Sexuality in Chinese BL Novel and Audio Drama”
• I Jonathan Kief (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), “Listening across Borders in the Cold War Koreas”
• Jiarui Sun (University of Chicago), “In My Words You Feel: Amateur Script Writing and Platformed Care”
• Hang Wu (University of Chicago), “Broadcasting Infrastructures and Electromagnetic Fatality: Listening to Enemy Radio in Socialist China.”

3:30-4:00 pm Tea Break

4:00-5:00 pm Keynote Speech

Jina E. Kim (University of Oregon), “Sonic Contact Zones”

1227 E 60th St, Chicago, IL 60637

SPONSORS

This event is co-sponsored by the Center for East Asian Studies at the University of Chicago, with support from a Title VI National Resource Center Grant from the U.S. Department of Education, the Franke Institute for the Humanities, the University of Chicago Library, and the Arts & Politics in East Asia Workshop.

PHOTOGRAPHY/VIDEOGRAPHY

Please note that there may be photography taken during this educational event by the University of Chicago Center for East Asian Studies for archival and publicity purposes. By attending this event, participants are confirming their permission to be photographed and the University of Chicago’s right to use, distribute, copy, and edit the recordings in any form of media for non-commercial, educational purposes, and to grant rights to third parties to do any of the foregoing.

“The Serial Killer: Making Sense of War and Defeat in Occupied Japan (1945-1952)”

THIS IS AN IN-PERSON EVENT AND WILL NOT BE LIVE STREAMING.

Tuesday, April 30 · 5 - 6:30pm CDT

Joseph Regenstein Library, Room 122 1100 E. 57th St. Chicago, IL 60637

Part of the CEAS Lecture Series, this event is co-sponsored with the University of Chicago Library and features the University of Southern California’s Benjamin Uchiyama. While much has been written about the Allied Occupation of Japan (1945-1952), surprisingly little scholarly attention has been paid to one of the most notorious criminals who captivated Japanese public attention during that period. In August 1946, ex-soldier Kodaira Yoshio was arrested and charged for the murder of seven young women during the last months of the war and the first year of the occupation. Subsequent public debates attempted to explain his crimes in connection to Kodaira’s wartime experience in China, thus underscoring the importance for Japan to fully extirpate its wartime past. Another stream of thought, however, located the crimes in the context of the chaos and breakdown in social order still afflicting Japanese society in the wake of defeat. These debates, coming so soon after Japan’s surrender, helped lay the first building block of postwar Japanese memories of the war and understandings of defeat. Professor Uchiyama is Associate Profess of History and author of Japan’s Carnival War: Mass Culture on the Home Front, 1937-1945 (Cambridge University Press, 2019) which received the 2021 John Whitney Hall Prize from the Association for Asian Studies.