Center for Chinese Studies

April 3, 2012
Tuesday 12 noon to 1:00 pm
Room 1636 School of Social Work Building
1080 South University

Continue reading "Winter 2012 CCS Noon Lecture Series - Ellen Laing"

Posted by zzhu at 02:21 PM

March 22, 2012

The Pleasures of the Peony: Regarding the Floral Temptress in the Song Dynasty

Detail of hanging scroll, anonymous, ink and color on silk, 12th century (Song dynasty), Taipei: National Palace Museum.

Tuesday, March 27, 2012 | 7pm
Helmut Stern Auditorium, U-M Museum of Art
525 S. State St.

Celebrating 90 Years of the Nichols Arboretum Peony Garden!

Roslyn Hammers (PhD '02), a U-M History of Art alumna and expert on peonies in Chinese culture, will speak on the various facets of the peony in Song-dynasty Chinese art. The appreciation of the peony has an extensive history in Chinese art and literature, and peonies have always stirred passions. According to Professor Hammers, “as early as the Tang dynasty (618–907) the allure of the peony had become obsessive, bordering on mania.” The temptations of the flower, long associated with feminine seductiveness, compelled poets to write poems extolling its sensuous charms. This presentation explores varying aspects of the Song-dynasty peony as presented in paintings, poetry, and prose in order to reclaim the complexities it evoked as well as to consider the anxieties the peony inspired.

Free and open to the public. A reception to follow.

Sponsored by Matthaei Botanical Gardens & Nichols Arboretum, Center for Chinese Studies, U-M Museum of Art, History of Art, and the Confucius Institute.

From the CCS image archives: The CCS commemorative kite for the September 2011 CCS Kite Festival held in Nichols Arboretum was specially designed by Kitemaster Ha Yiqi with peonies to highlight one of the Arboretum’s main attractions.

Posted by zzhu at 10:16 PM

Chinese Crosstalk Comedy Show (相声大会), March 25, 2012

Sunday, March 25, 2012 | 7pm – 10pm
Great Lakes Room, Palmer Commons
100 Washtenaw, Ann Arbor
(Directions: http://palmercommons.umich.edu/directions/)

Free and open to the public. English subtitles are provided.

Posted by zzhu at 08:38 PM

Liu Junhai: "Globalization and CSR Requirements" - Thursday, March 29, 2012

Globalization and CSR Requirements for Multinationals Doing Business in China

Liu Junhai
Professor, School of Law
Director, Business Law Center
Renmin University of China

Thursday, March 29, 2012 | 5pm-6:30pm
Room R2230 Ross School of Business
715 Tappan Street

Professor Liu will discuss the requirements of Corporate Social Responsibility from both legal and moral perspectives, and the significance of CSR-oriented corporate governance for corporations including multinationals doing business in China.

His core argument is that CSR is not a financial burden or transaction cost for multinationals. Instead, socially responsible multinationals will gain competitive advantage and reduce transaction costs substantially. He will analyze the causes of CSR scandals at multinationals in China, and prescribe some reform suggestions for multinationals, Chinese governments, institutional investors and consumers. For the purpose of building a win-win and harmonious environment for doing business in China, multinationals need to improve their corporate governance, create CSR-friendly supplier chain management frameworks, and enable the stakeholders in their supply chains to influence their decision making. Further, government procurement should be used to motivate socially responsible business.

Prof. Liu Junhai is the first Chinese scholar to study corporate social responsibility (CSR) in China. His academic work The Corporate Social Responsibility based on his visiting research at Norwegian Institute of Human Rights from 1996 to 1997, was published by Press of Law in 1999 as the first monograph on the research of CSR. Many of the suggestions in this book were endorsed by Article 5 and other articles of Corporate Law of 2005, which is the first statute in the world to include a special CSR article. Additionally, employee representatives on the board of directors in state-owned or controlled corporations and the board of supervisors in every corporation were also made mandatory by the legislature in 2005, due to the pressure from the All China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) and his theoretical support to ACFTU with the employee participation in corporate governance in his monograph. Prof. Liu has been making efforts in advising Chinese legislature to extend the CSR philosophy broadly to many other legal areas such as consumer law and labor law. His current research covers modernization of Chinese corporate law, securities regulation and private equity funds. He is a Hughes Fellow and Grotius Fellow at Michigan for the academic year of 2011-2012.

This presentation is co-sponsored by the U-M Center for Chinese Studies and the ERB Institute for Sustainable Enterprise.

Posted by zzhu at 02:15 PM

March 21, 2012

Call for Papers: Asia Pacific Reader - Passages

About the APR
The Asia Pacific Reader (APR) (www.asiapacificreader.org) is an online interactive platform for the research, discussion and publication of academic subjects concerning the Asia-Pacific region. Research notes, opinion pieces and photography published in the APR are read by academics, students and other readers across the world. The APR is run by an interdisciplinary board of graduate and undergraduate students at the University of Toronto, and is a collaborating partner with the South Asian Development Council (SADC) (http://southasiandc.sa.utoronto.ca/).

Passages
Passages is a yearly publication organized and edited by a group of graduate and undergraduate students at the Asian Institute at the Munk School of Global Affairs. Our goal is to tap into the knowledge of students and faculty by promoting and publishing their work. To view last year’s publication of Passages, please visit http://www.asiapacificreader.org/sites/default/files/aprpassages2011.pdf

Call for Submissions
The APR is currently accepting submissions which relate to the Asia-Pacific region and South Asia from students, faculty and alumni for our yearly publication, Passages. Accepted submissions will be published on the website, as well as in printed format. If you have a piece you would like to submit, please send it to meaghan@asiapacificreader.org. Please note that given the volume of submissions, the APR does not guarantee publication, however every piece submitted will be carefully considered.

Continue reading "Call for Papers: Asia Pacific Reader - Passages"

Posted by zzhu at 04:57 PM

Marshall M. Weinberg Symposium 2012: Bilingualism

All are invited to a one-day event on bilingualism on Thursday, March 29 in the Rackham Amphitheater. The "Marshall M. Weinberg Symposium 2012: Bilingualism" will feature five leading bilingualism researchers from around the world and a distinguished philosopher who will discuss relevant issues in the philosophy of language and cognition. The schedule includes:

• 9:00-9:25 Opening Remarks by Dean Terrence McDonald
• 9:25-10:20 Bimodal bilingualism: When language is both spoken and signed, Karen Emmorey (San Diego State University)
• 10:20-11:15 From language mixing to "mixed languages": When style becomes grammar, Peter Auer (University of Freiburg)
• 11:40-12:35 Early bilingualism: Perils and possibilities, Fred Genesee (McGill University):
• 2:00-2:55 Creeping and scooting on two languages, Nuria Sebastian-Galles (University Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona)
• 2:55-3:50 Child bilingualism: Two first languages or early second language acquisition? Jürgen Meisel (University of Hamburg & University of Calgary)
• 4:15-5:10 Philosophical implications of bilingualism, Gilbert Harman (Princeton University)
• 5:10-6:00 Panel discussion with questions from audience

Additionally, there will be breakfast from 8:30-9:00 am and closing reception from 6:00-7:00 pm that are open to anyone attending the conference. More information about the talks (including abstracts) are available at: http://www.lsa.umich.edu/linguistics/events/marshallmweinbergsymposium.

Everyone is welcome to attend all or part of this symposium.

Feel free to e-mail Jennifer Nguyen at jgnguyen[at]umich[dot]edu for more information.

Posted by zzhu at 11:31 AM

China-Greece Roundtable & Gala

The Confucius Institute at the University of Michigan (CI-UM)
& U-M Modern Greek Program
jointly present

Roundtable and Gala celebrating
“The Classical in Modern Times: A Year on China and Greece” – a collaborative project of the Confucius Institute at U-M and the Modern Greek Program

Join us for discussions, music, and food!

Friday, March 30, 2012 | 4pm
Gerald R. Ford Library
1000 Beal Avenue, U-M North Campus, Ann Arbor
(Directions can be found here: http://uuis.umich.edu/cic/buildingproject/index.cfm?BuildingID=62)
Free and open to the public. Seating is limited, please e-mail ChinaGreeceGala@umich.edu by Wednesday, March 28 to reserve a spot.

DISCUSSIONS BY:
• Vassilis Lambropoulos, Classical Studies & Comparative Literature
• Despina Margomenou, Classical Studies and Kelsey Museum
• Yona Stamatis, Ethnomusicology, Kalamazoo College
• Joseph Lam, Musicology
• David Porter, Comparative Literature & English
• Christian de Pee, History

LIVE MUSIC BY:
• Pantelis Polychronidis, piano
• Aphrodite Roumanis, voice
• Stavros Sianos, guitar
• Yona Stamatis, bouzouki
• Zhang Ying, Chinese flute
• Qi Baiping, voice

AUTHENTIC CHINESE AND GREEK BUFFET WILL BE SERVED.

Posted by zzhu at 01:24 AM

March 20, 2012

CECC Employment Announcement - Professional Staff Members

The Congressional-Executive Commission on China is a bipartisan commission created by Congress in 2000 to monitor and report on human rights and rule of law developments in China. The Commission consists of Senators, Members of the House of Representatives, and senior officials from the Administration. The Commission holds hearings, issues an Annual Report, and maintains a database of political prisoners in China, among other activities. For more information on the Commission, see www.cecc.gov.

The Commission is seeking professional staff members to assist in monitoring and reporting on substantive issues, including worker rights, criminal justice, freedom of residence and movement, access to justice, Xinjiang, ethnic minority rights, freedom of religion, civil society, North Korean Refugees in China, and property in China. The professional staff member will assist in assessing China's compliance or noncompliance with international human rights standards and Chinese domestic law. Successful candidates should have substantive background and/or an interest in one or more of these issue areas. Successful candidates should also possess the necessary Chinese language, English writing, and communication skills to effectively research, analyze, and explain such developments to U.S. policymakers and the broader public.

Main duties:
• Monitoring and researching Chinese and English language sources (media, government, NGO) for developments relating to their issue area.
• Identifying and analyzing key developments and reporting their significance orally and in writing, including through drafting sections of the Commission's Annual Reports, short analysis pieces, public statements, and press releases.
• Researching political prisoner cases and creating and maintaining case records in the CECC Political Prisoner Database.
• Assisting in organizing CECC public hearings and roundtables.
• Staff member also may be asked to travel to U.S. cities, China or other foreign locations on official business.

Continue reading "CECC Employment Announcement - Professional Staff Members"

Posted by zzhu at 03:26 PM

March 19, 2012

Recent media contributions by CCS alumni (updated March 2012)

************************************************
Damien Ma (MA '06)
China Analyst, Eurasia Group

Damien appeared on Charlie Rose Wednesday, March 15, 2012 to discussed Bo Xilai's ouster, the biggest political story coming out of China in recent years.

Damien's conversation with James Fallows on recent Chinese crackdown

Damien Ma's other articles on China
in The Atlantic

************************************************
Michael Dunne (MA/MBA '90)
President, Dunne & Company

Need to learn Punjabi, Swahili or dozens of other languages? U-M is the place
The University of Michigan Record
03/12/2012

American Wheels, Chinese Roads
LSA Today
01/24/2012

************************************************
Elizabeth C. Economy (PhD '94, Political Science)
C.V. Starr Senior Fellow and Director for Asia Studies
Council on Foreign Relations

China's Land Grab Epidemic Is Causing More Wukan-Style Protests
The Atlantic
02/08/2012

Elizabeth Economy's other articles on China
in The Atlantic

Foreign Affairs Focus On: Protests in China and China's Interests in North Korea
12/29/2011

Time for the United States to Learn from China
(reviews book by alumnus Michael Dunne (MA/MBA '90))
Asia Unbound
07/11/2011

************************************************
David Moser (CCS MA '89, PhD '96 - Asian Languages and Cultures)
Academic Director at CET Chinese Studies, Beijing Capital Normal University
Thoughts on River Elegy, June 1988-June 2011
The China Beat
07/14/2011

************************************************
David Shambaugh (PhD '89, Political Science)
Professor of Political Science and International Affairs, Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University
Ten Questions for China’s Heir Presumptive
The New York Times
02/10/2012

Posted by zzhu at 10:47 PM

March 18, 2012

Carol Stepanchuk's AAS guest blog

Carol Stepanchuk, CCS Coordinator of Outreach and Student Services, shares observations from her trip to the Annual Conference of the Association for Asian Studies in Toronto, Canada. We thank Carol for her time and attention.

Part 1 - New Ways of Seeing:
AAS is now in full swing--and for those who were able to caravan early to Toronto, there was time before the sessions to wander--the Art Gallery of Ontario (over 80,000 works of art) is only a 10-15 minute walk from the conference on Dundas Street West. Scholars mining the field of 18th century prints might scavenger hunt through "Goya and Gillray: Humor that Bites" to find Gillray's "Reception of the Diplomatique and His Suite at the Court of Pekin 1792." And, to see the palette of the AAS bag, just breeze through Contemporary Art from the Ago Collection (Dubuffet Texturologies, Warhol's silver Liz as Cleopatra, Franz Kline...). If you edge through the new wing to get closer to the part reminiscent of a Guggenheim wrap, you might think you are inside a giant fortune cookie.

Interesting facts for hotel guests: Monet painted on his armoire door instead of paying his hotel bill... (you can see the quality expected of such an exchange, the armoire door is on display).

Continue reading "Carol Stepanchuk's AAS guest blog"

Posted by zzhu at 04:57 PM

March 17, 2012

Chancellor Daniel Little's AAS guest blog

Daniel Little, chancellor of the University of Michigan-Dearborn, professor of philosophy at UM-Dearborn, and CCS faculty associate, shares his experience from the Annual Conference of the Association for Asian Studies in Toronto, Canada. We are grateful for his time and attention.

Asianists in Toronto

The AAS is a genuinely multinational, transnational gathering. Think of a particularly active oasis town on the Silk Road and you'll get a bit of a sense of the international and intercultural exchanges that take place here. Scholars born in India, Indonesia, China, or Malaysia now teaching in the United States join scholars based in those countries as well as US-born scholars based in the US and abroad, all focusing on Asian topics and coming together on lively, informative panels. The book display area would be familiar to the medieval traveler as a souk, where academics greet old acquaintances, make connections with acquisitions editors, and examine the latest publications from dozens of publishers.

And we can't overlook the occupational variation. Much as merchants, animal handlers, religious specialists, and itinerant artisans came face to face in Xi'an, the AAS is a place where political scientists, literary specialists, economists, historians, sociologists and anthropologists come together for only partially comprehensible exchanges. (What is that economist nattering on about, the art historian wonders.)

So why is there an Association of Asian Studies anyway, and why does it need an annual conference? There are of course many scholars passionately interested in Asia. But Asia is a large place with a long history. Is "Asia" a construct of a Eurocentric view of the world? Why should we assume that a single association can fruitfully serve this range of academic and regional interests?

One reason is proximity. If you are a historian of Indonesia or Burma, the history and politics of China are of deep importance to you. This is true historically, and it is true in the present. The policies of Ming China towards its southwestern periphery had major effects on the polities now sectioned as Burma, Cambodia, Thailand, and Vietnam. And if you're interested in the environmental prospects for the Mekong River basin, likewise you will be interested in China.

Another is methodological. It is valuable for a China specialist trained in anthropology to have a stimulating exposure to a well-conducted study of evolving CCP policies. It is useful for an historian of China to be exposed to subaltern histories of South Asia, since the perspectives of the subaltern school have little traction in the China field. It is useful for a scholar of the Congress Party of India to have a more engaging exposure to pre-colonial India.

One thing that is difficult to assess is the disciplinary background of people who present on AAS panels. My impression is that humanists are strongly represented -- literature, art history, film and media studies. There are generally a number of panels on topics of contemporary politics and government, including popular movements in Southeast Asia; this implies a representation of political scientists. There are often a few sessions on demographic topics, including historical treatments of famine. And of course historians are very well represented. Unfortunately the conference program doesn't make it easy to do this kind of snapshot analysis, since presenters are identified only by their institution and not department. Some people I've talked to have felt that AAS needs to try to do a better job of bringing the social sciences into the program, and finding some ways of encouraging more comparative research. AAS is very good on highlighting the particular, but some participants would like to see greater efforts at an integrative view as well.

Another practical function of the AAS annual meeting is its role in the job market for new PhDs in fields subsumed within Asian Studies. Mentors are introducing their students to other senior faculty at universities that may be hiring in Asian history, politics, or culture. And there are lots of presentations by late-stage graduate students and recent PhDs introducing their dissertation research to a broader audience. It is often very interesting work, following new topics and sometimes new methods. For example, I heard a paper by Ke Li on Friday describing her fieldwork in China observing the strategies pursued by rural women to gain divorce from unhappy marriages. (The deck is stacked against them.)

I've attended AAS since 1988, as a philosopher with an interest in China. And I've found it to be one of the more welcoming interdisciplinary convenings that I've attended (much more than the American Philosophical Association or the American Political Science Association, for example). As an oasis town, it's a thoroughly rewarding stop on our academic itineraries.

Posted by zzhu at 10:13 AM

March 15, 2012

Winter 2012 CCS Noon Lecture Series - Sophie Volpp

Sophie Volpp
Associate Professor of Chinese and Comparative Literature,
University of California Berkeley

The Translucence of the Medium: Interiors and Interiority in the Eighteenth-century Novel Story of the Stone (红楼梦)