Published on Mar 8, 2021
The Body in East Asian Imaginaire
Spring Quarter 2021
Virtual Lectures
This series of lectures will investigate the role of the body in the East Asian imaginaire, and how it has been configured in religious, historical, and cultural contexts from the medieval period to the modern era. In the medieval period the body is still largely conceptualized from the lens of religious thought, in response to ideas and taboos concerning purity, pollution, karma, and medical/astrological concerns. The modern period, by contrast, sees the rise of medical and pathological discourses which further the view of the body as grounded in biology. Scholars will address the following questions based on thorough examination of textual sources: are there Chinese or Japanese paradigms of the body? What value did religions ascribe to bodies? What sexual and cultural knowledge can be extracted when objecting the body to critical inquiry? How did state institutions, commercial enterprises, and ordinary citizens mobilize the body for social and political gains? How have literary authors, ritualists, statesmen, and military officials prescribed and rewritten masculinity and femininity? Addressing theoretical dilemmas and unresolved issues in the study of the body in China and Japan, the participants will look particularly for links across time and space, pay attention to embodiment, affect and sexuality, and attempt to rethink theoretical parameters of the study of the body in the East Asian cultural sphere.
SCHEDULE:
Jeffrey Kotyk (Sheng Yen Education Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in Chinese Buddhism, University of British Columbia)
"The Body and the Stars: Astral-Physiological Thinking in Medieval China"
Monday, May 3, 2021
5:00 PM US Chicago Time
Click here to view the lecture on YouTube.
Howard Chiang (Associate Professor in the Department of History, UC Davis)
"Castration Fever: On Trans, Body, and Psychoanalysis in Modern China"
Monday, May 10, 2021
5:00 PM US Chicago Time
Virtual Lecture (Please note that the speaker did not authorize the recording of their lecture)
Or Porath (Postdoctoral Researcher and Instructor, EALC, University of Chicago)
"The Dharma of Sex: The Body in Medieval Tendai Sexual Consecrations"
Monday, May 17, 2021
5:00 PM US Chicago Time
Virtual Lecture (Please note that the speaker did not authorize the recording of their lecture)
Emily B. Simpson (Lecturer, Dartmouth College)
"Cooling the Womb of Stone: Empress Jingū and Embodied Pregnancy in Late Medieval Origin Stories"
Monday, May 24, 2021
5:00 PM US Chicago Time
Click here to view the lecture on YouTube.