UChicago Participates in 2025 Association for Asian Studies Conference

January 28, 2025

CEAS AAS Reception InvitationThe University of Chicago Center for East Asian Studies will host a reception at the Association for Asian Studies Annual Conference taking place this year in Columbus, Ohio.  The reception will welcome alumni, students, faculty, and friends on Friday, March 14, 2025 from 7:30 pm to 9:30 pm in the Ema Spencer Room at the Hilton Columbus Downtown.

Below is a chronological listing of University of Chicago faculty and students who are participating in this year's conference. 


March 13, 2025

Jacob Eyferth
Associate Professor of Modern Chinese History in East Asian Languages and Civilizations, History, and the College
Organized Panel Session Discussant
7:00 PM - 8:30 PM
Room A215 (Level 2, Conv. Center)
1-020 - Rethinking Commodity Frontiers in Asia: 18th to 20th Century

Yuting Dong
Assistant Professor of East Asian History and the College
Organized Panel Session Chair
7:00 PM - 8:30 PM
Room A212 (Level 2, Convention Center)
1-016 - Rethinking Cold War Asia through Architecture, Technology, and Empires

Qicheng Yao
Graduate Student
Presenter - Individual Papers
7:00 PM - 8:30 PM
Room A224 (Level 2, Convention Center)
Feeling Market Heat, Mobilizing Player Sentiment: Collective Trading in Chinese NFT Wechat Groups, 2022-2023

Johanna Sirera Ransmeier
Associate Professor of History and the College
Organized Panel Session Chair and Discussant
7:00 PM - 8:30 PM
Fairfield (2nd Floor, Hyatt)
1-006 - Crosscultural Interpretations of Law on the Fringes of Modern China: Crises in (Understanding) Legal Transplantation - AAS Conroy Prize Winner


March 14, 2025

Xavier Ante
Graduate Student
Organized Panel Session Organizer
9:00 AM - 10:30 AM
Union D (2nd Floor, Hyatt)
2-015 - Materials of Modernity: Asia in the Global Pursuit for Natural Resources from the 18th to the 20th Centuries

Xavier Ante
Graduate Student
Presenter - Abstract
9:00 AM - 10:30 AM
Union D (2nd Floor, Hyatt)
Making the World Your Forest: The Globalization of Timber Markets in Republican China

Jacob Eyferth
Associate Professor of Modern Chinese History in East Asian Languages and Civilizations, History, and the College
Organized Panel Session Chair
9:00 AM - 10:30 AM
Morrow (2nd Floor, Hyatt)
2-018 - On Copying: An Interdisciplinary Conversation

Yurui Hu
Graduate Student
Presenter - Individual Paper
9:00 AM - 10:30 AM
Marion (2nd Floor, Hyatt)
Mining, Labour, and Superstition: The Rise of Male Dominance in Mining Industry in North China

Anthony Stott
Graduate Student
Organized Panel Session Organizer
11:00 AM - 12:30 PM
Room A211 (Level 2, Convention Center)
3-038 - Reading the Politics of Intellectual Print Culture from Meiji to the Present

Anthony Stott
Graduate Student
Presenter - Abstract
11:00 AM - 12:30 PM
Room A211 (Level 2, Convention Center)
Traversing the Elite/Subcultural Divide: Azuma Hiroki and the Contemporary Critical Magazine

Jieming Zhu
Graduate Student
Presenter - Abstract
11:00 AM - 12:30 PM
Room A225 (Level 2, Convention Center)
Toward a Communist-Feminist Utopia: Theoretical Discussions of Family Abolition and Collectivizing/Automating Housework in the Great Leap Forward

Ian Cipperly
Graduate Student
Organized Panel Session Organizer
1:30 PM - 3:00 PM
Room B232 (Level 2, Convention Center)
4-030 - Legacies of the Shogun: Then and Now

Ian Cipperly
Graduate Student
Presenter - Abstract
1:30 PM - 3:00 PM
Room B232 (Level 2, Convention Center)
Rereading the Shogun’s Deification in Cultural Context

Ariel Fox
Associate Professor, East Asian Languages and Civilizations
Organized Panel Session Chair and Discussant
1:30 PM - 3:00 PM
Room A122 (Level 1, Convention Center)
4-010 - How to Do Wonders with Places: Rethinking Literary Geography through Late Imperial Chinese Literature

Chelsea Foxwell
Professor of Art History, East Asian Languages and Civilizations, and the College
Organized Panel Session Discussant
1:30 PM - 3:00 PM
Room A214 (Level 2, Convention Center)
4-016 - Textual Things: Materiality and Visuality of Writing and Script in East Asia

Sherry Huang
Graduate Student
Presenter - Individual Papers
1:30 PM - 3:00 PM
Knox (2nd Floor, Hyatt)
Light and Shadows of Bunmei Kaika: Meiji Japanese Cityscape Prints and the Tension between Tokyo’s Public Space As Conceived and Lived

Bruce Winkelman
Postdoctoral Fellow
Presenter - Abstract
1:30 PM - 3:00 PM
Room B232 (Level 2, Convention Center)
Remaking the Myth of Tokugawa Ieyasu in Modern-Day Global Pop Culture

Paola Iovene
Director of Graduate Studies; Associate Professor in Chinese Literature, East Asian Languages and Civilizations
Organized Panel Session Chair and Discussant 
3:30 PM - 5:00 PM
Room A122 (Level 1, Convention Center)
5-003 - Rethinking Modernism in Republican China

Kenneth Pomeranz
University Professor of Modern Chinese History and the College
Organized Panel Session Discussant
3:30 PM - 5:00 PM
Room A115 (Level 1, Convention Center)
5-009 - South China in the Global Cold War: New Perspectives

Melissa Van Wyk
Assistant Professor in Japanese Literature
Presenter - Abstract
3:30 PM - 5:00 PM
Room A212 (Level 2, Convention Center)
Theater of Attractions: The Immersive Spectacles of Nineteenth-Century Kabuki

Yuanxie Shi
Graduate Student
Presenter - Abstract
3:30 PM - 5:00 PM
Room A115 (Level 1, Convention Center)
Excavating Markets: Socialist Export Lace Trade under the US Embargo


March 15, 2025

Stephan Licha
Assistant Professor of Japanese Buddhism; also in the College, the Center of East Asian Studies, and the Committee on Japanese Studies
Presenter - Abstract
8:30 AM - 10:00 AM
Room A120 (Level 1, Convention Center)
Quiddities of Transmitting Mind—Esoteric Buddhism and Zen on Mind Transmission

Niu Teo
Graduate Student
Organized Panel Session Organizer
8:30 AM - 10:00 AM
Room B231 (Level 2, Convention Center)
6-013 - Three Little Pigs: Swinocentric Studies of 20th Century China and the World

Niu Teo
Graduate Student
Presenter - Abstract
8:30 AM - 10:00 AM
Room B231 (Level 2, Convention Center)
Sickening Pigs: Rapidity vs. Resistance in Modern Pig Breeding

Jeffrey Tharsen
Associate Director of Technology and M.A. Thesis Counselor
Organized Panel Session Organizer
8:30 AM - 10:00 AM
Room A211 (Level 2, Convention Center)
6-002 - AI, LLMs and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) for Sinology and Beyond

Jeffrey Tharsen
Associate Director of Technology and M.A. Thesis Counselor
Presenter - Abstract
8:30 AM - 10:00 AM
Room A211 (Level 2, Convention Center)
AI and Large Language Models for Literary, Historical and Cultural Analysis

Ruiling Xue
Graduate Student
Presenter - Abstract
8:30 AM - 10:00 AM
Room A213 (Level 2, Convention Center)
Confucian Gods at Court : Literati Religiosity and State Orthodoxy in the High Qing

Yueran Zhang
Assistant Professor
Presenter - Abstract
8:30 AM - 10:00 AM
Room A215 (Level 2, Convention Center)
The Politics of Livelihood and Production: Workplace Democracy and Political Economy in China’s Early Post-Mao Years

Minori Egashira
Graduate Student
Organized Panel Session Chair
10:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Room A114 (Level 1, Convention Center)
7-033 - Confrontations on the Border: Defining Modern Japanese Art in Transnational Contexts

Minori Egashira
Graduate Student
Presenter - Abstract
10:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Room A114 (Level 1, Convention Center)
Caught Between Sculpture and Craft: Conflicting Narratives of Meiji Okimono in Japan and the Euro-Americas

Paola Iovene
Director of Graduate Studies; Associate Professor in Chinese Literature, East Asian Languages and Civilizations
Organized Panel Session Chair
10:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Room A112 (Level 1, Convention Center)
7-018 - Revolutionary Becomings: Mediating Political Strivings in the Sinophone World

Robert Burgos
Graduate Student
Presenter - Abstract
2:00 PM - 3:30 PM
Room A114 (Level 1, Convention Center)
Publishing “Place” in Ikaino: The Origins of Community Networks As Seen in the Minjung Sibo Newspaper in Interwar Korean Osaka

Elvin Meng
Graduate Student
Presenter - Abstract
2:00 PM - 3:30 PM
Room A122 (Level 1, Convention Center)
Always Already Alphabetic: The Persistence of Heterographic Asia in Modern Chinese Grammatology

Jacob Reed
Graduate Student
Presenter - Abstract
2:00 PM - 3:30 PM
Room A113 (Level 1, Convention Center)*
Singing as Fanqie: Kunqu Theory and Phonology
*Organized Panel Session in Room A125 (Level 1, Convention Center)

Jiakai Sheng
Postdoctoral Fellow
Organized Panel Session Organizer
2:00 PM - 3:30 PM
Room A114 (Level 1, Convention Center)
8-018 - Beyond Treaty Ports: Communities, Identities, and Urban Space in Colonial East Asia

Jiakai Sheng
Postdoctoral Fellow
Presenter - Abstract
2:00 PM - 3:30 PM
Room A114 (Level 1, Convention Center)
Reconfiguring the International Settlement: The Rise of a “Japanese Kingdom” in 1930s’ Shanghai

Susanna Sun
Graduate Student
Organized Panel Session Organizer
2:00 PM - 3:30 PM
Morrow (2nd Floor, Hyatt)
8-011 - Trans/mediating the Dream: Gender, Performance, and Temporality

Susanna Sun
Graduate Student
Presenter - Abstract
2:00 PM - 3:30 PM
Morrow (2nd Floor, Hyatt)
Creating the Cross-Dressed Baoyu: Romance and Revolution in Yue Opera’s Dream of the Red Chamber Film

Xiaogao Zhou
Graduate Student
Presenter - Abstract
2:00 PM - 3:30 PM
Room A214 (Level 2, Convention Center)
Instituting Gender-Affirming Care: Transnational Resources and Politics of Knowledge

Yueling Ji
Postdoctoral Fellow
Organized Panel Session Organizer
4:00 PM - 5:30 PM
Room A115 (Level 1, Convention Center)
9-027 - Connecting Marxisms Across Asia

Yueling Ji
Postdoctoral Fellow
Presenter - Abstract
4:00 PM - 5:30 PM
Room A115 (Level 1, Convention Center)
Marxist Economic Thought in Chinese High Schools, 2006–2019

Xiangning Li
Graduate Student
Presenter - Abstract
4:00 PM - 5:30 PM
Fairfield (2nd Floor, Hyatt)
Runaway Women, Desperate Men: Petition Letters, Fragile Masculinity, and State Paternalism in Mao’s China

Stephanie Painter
Postdoctoral Fellow
Organized Panel Session Organizer
4:00 PM - 5:30 PM
Fairfield (2nd Floor, Hyatt)
9-012 - Resilient Yet Fragile: New Takes on Patriarchy and its Discontents in Qing and Modern China - Sponsored by AAS East and Inner Asia (EIAC)

Stephanie Painter
Postdoctoral Fellow
Presenter - Abstract
4:00 PM - 5:30 PM
Fairfield (2nd Floor, Hyatt)
“Weak Patriarchy” and Young Women’s Pursuit of Intimacy in Eighteenth Century China

Le Vi Pham
Graduate Student
Organized Panel Session Organizer
4:00 PM - 5:30 PM
Room B244/B245 (Level 2, Convention Center)
9-034 - Changing Moralities of Sex: Sex Work, Prostitution, and Concubinage in East Asia and Beyond

Le Vi Pham
Graduate Student
Presenter - Abstract
4:00 PM - 5:30 PM
Room B244/B245 (Level 2, Convention Center)
Japanese Prostitution in Korea, 1876-1910

Qiyu Yang
Graduate Student
Presenter - Abstract
4:00 PM - 5:30 PM
Champaign (2nd Floor, Hyatt)
Reinventing the Past: Early Chinese Citations and Commentaries on Poems Concerning the Origin of Zhou History in the Classic of Poetry

Jiyea Hong
Graduate Student
Presenter - Abstract
6:00 PM - 7:30 PM
Room A121 (Level 1, Convention Center)
Scaling Insider Perspectives in Community Media: Ethnic Duony Filmmaking in Guangxi

You Wang
Postdoctoral Fellow
Presenter - Abstract
6:00 PM - 7:30 PM
Room A222 (Level 2, Convention Center)
Serving the Public and Controlling the Water: Negotiating Masculinities and Gendered Labor Hierarchy in the Early Nineteenth Century


March 16, 2025 

Zhiying Ma
Assistant Professor
Presenter - Abstract
10:45 AM - 12:15 PM
Room A112 (Level 1, Convention Center)
Ruptures, Madness, and the Development of Community Mental Health in Reform-Era China