• We will discuss work by Issay Matsumoto (History): “Real Estate and Japanese American Belonging in Territorial Hawaiʻi.” Comment will be provided by Suiyi Tang (American Studies and Ethnicity).

    Thursday, February 13 | 3:00 PM

  • More info here.

  • Wednesday, October 16, 2024 | 12:00PM-1:00PM | ASC 207 | RSVP

    Book Talk by Edward Wong (The New York Times), with introductions by Prof. Viet Thanh Nguyen (English and American Studies & Ethnicity, USC) and moderated by Clayton Dube (USC US-China Institute).

    The son of Chinese immigrants in Washington, DC, Edward Wong grew up among family secrets. His father toiled in Chinese restaurants and rarely spoke of his native land or his years in the People’s Liberation Army under Mao. Yook Kearn Wong came of age during the Japanese occupation in World War II and the Communist revolution, when he fell under the spell of Mao’s promise of a powerful China. His astonishing journey as a soldier took him from Manchuria during the Korean War to Xinjiang on the Central Asian frontier. In 1962, disillusioned with the Communist Party, he made plans for a desperate escape to Hong Kong.

    When Edward Wong became the Beijing bureau chief for The New York Times, he investigated his father’s mysterious past while assessing for himself the dream of a resurgent China. He met the citizens driving the nation’s astounding economic boom and global expansion—and grappling with the vortex of nationalistic rule under Xi Jinping, the most powerful leader since Mao. Following in his father’s footsteps, he witnessed ethnic struggles in Xinjiang and Tibet and pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. And he had an insider’s view of the world’s two superpowers meeting at a perilous crossroads.

    Wong tells a moving chronicle of a family and a nation that spans decades of momentous change and gives profound insight into a new authoritarian age transforming the world. A groundbreaking book, At the Edge of Empire is the essential work for understanding China today.

     

  • Students in Professor Nancy Lutkehaus’ Thematic Options Core 101 class are excited to announce the opening on Thursday, April 25th of their student-curated exhibition “Housed Treasures: Grace Nicholson, California, and the USC Pacific Asia Museum.”

    The exhibition, in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the “Treasure House”—now known as the USC Pacific Asia Museum—examines the life and legacy of Grace Nicholson, the collector and gallerist who built the Treasure House in 1924.

    The program will feature the student curators of the exhibition and guest speakers, including Bethany Montagano, Director of USC Museums; William Deverell, Director of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West, Sonya Lee, Professor of Art History and Director of East Asian Languages and Culture, Karin Huebner, Director of Programs for the Harman Academy For Polymathic Study, and Rebecca Hall, Curator of the Pacific Asia Museum.

    An opening program will be held in DML 240 at 5:00 pm, followed by a reception at 6:00 pm Thursday April 25th.

    Event Address:

    Doheny Memorial Library
    3550 Trousdale Parkway, University Park Campus

    Contact us at lmusacch@usc.edu, ruthdsan@usc.edu, or ebroth@usc.edu  if you have any questions.

    Suggested On-Campus Parking: USC McCarthy Way Parking Structure, 620 USC McCarthy Way, Los Angeles, CA 90089

    RSVP

  • More info here.

  • Mila Zuo is an associate professor in the Department of Theatre and Film at UBC, as well as the Graduate Advisor for the Cinema & Media Studies graduate programs. She is the author of Vulgar Beauty. Accompanying research can be found in Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory, Celebrity Studies Journal, Journal of Chinese Cinemas, Feminist Media Histories journal, and in various anthologies on contemporary cinema and media studies. In addition to her scholarly work, Zuo writes, directs, and produces narrative films, visual essays, documentaries, and music videos. Her short films have screened in international film festivals and universities, including Carnal Orient (2016) which premiered at Slamdance Film Festival, and her short narrative film Kin (2021), which was the recipient of the 2019 Oregon Media Arts Fellowship, and screened at HollyShorts Film Festival.

    Mila Zuo offers a new theorization of cinematic feminine beauty by showing how mediated encounters with Chinese film and popular culture stars produce feelings of Chineseness. To illustrate this, Zuo uses the vulgar as an analytic to trace how racial, gendered, and cultural identity is imagined and produced through affect. She frames the vulgar as a characteristic that is experienced through the Chinese concept of weidao, or flavor, in which bitter, salty, pungent, sweet, and sour performances of beauty produce non-Western forms of sexualized and racialized femininity. Analyzing contemporary film and media ranging from actress Gong Li’s post-Mao movies of the late 1980s and 1990s to Joan Chen’s performance in Twin Peaks to Ali Wong’s stand-up comedy specials, Zuo shows how vulgar beauty disrupts Western and colonial notions of beauty. Vulgar beauty, then, becomes the taste of difference. By demonstrating how Chinese feminine beauty becomes a cinematic invention invested in forms of affective racialization, Zuo makes a critical reconsideration of aesthetic theory.

    Co-organized by the Department of American Studies and Ethnicity & The Center for Transpacific Studies.

    Friday March 29, 1pm PST

    RSVP: bitly.ly/milazuo

  • Dr. Joy James is Ebenezer Fitch Professor of Humanities at Williams College. She is the author of Resisting State Violence; Shadowboxing:

    Representations of Black Feminist Politics, Transcending the Talented Tenth and Seeking the Beloved Community. James has published numerous articles on: political theory, police, prison and slavery abolition; radicalizing feminisms; diasporic anti-black racism; and US politics; and writes on the Captive Maternal through the lens of “The Womb of Western Theory.” James’s most recent books include:

    Contextualizing Angela Davis, In Pursuit of Revolutionary Love and New Bones Abolition: Captive Maternal Agency and the Afterlife of Erica Garner.

    Co-organized by USC Transpacific Studies
    Cluster & Africana Research Cluster

    March 25th, 6-7:30PM PST

    RSVP: bit.ly/new-bones-abolition

     

  • The Transpacific Studies Research Cluster is excited to announce book talk on Surface Relations, with Dr. Vivian Huang, two Fridays from now, on March 1st at 1pm PST. RSVP link: bit.ly/surface-relations

  • Becoming Global Asia Book Launch Image

  • Images Out of Time Seminar