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Spotlight April 2024

Anonymous — Wed, 21 Aug 2024 16:26:54 +0000

Spotlight April 2024 Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 08/21/2024 - 10:26

Fluid Asia Through Two Blockages: Labor Unfreedom and Geothermal Justice

A CAS Brief by Shae Frydenlund

The theme of this year’s Center for Asian Studies symposium – Fluid Asia – invites critical engagement with the social and physical fluidities that are shaping life and landscapes in the region. As the symposium approaches, I am thinking about various fluid dynamics of capitalist development in Southeast Asia – the movement of dispossessed rural people into cities where they work, which is commonly described in terms of flooding, the proliferation of hydroelectric dams along the Mekong, agricultural transitions from water-intensive subsistence crops to water-saving commercial crops in the Himalayas, to name a few. Water and its properties are a compelling vantage point for studying changes in capitalism; however, I am especially interested in the generative tension between fluidity and its foil: blockage.

My own research is concerned with two instances of fluidity and blockage in Southeast Asia. First, the quandary of “free-flowing” migrant labor: the movement of workers drives capitalist development all over Asia (and beyond), but they are simultaneously subjected to conditions of labor unfreedom that block their ability to maneuver in labor markets. Second, the fluid properties and politics of geothermal energy development in Indonesia’s Ring of Fire: proposed projects aim to harness steam that is produced as cool water meets molten Earth, but indigenous women in target communities have organized to oppose the construction of well heads that would block social reproduction, erode livelihoods, and defile living space.

The lived experiences of Burmese workers in Southeast Asia and the United States demonstrate that capitalist development – specifically urban development – is predicated on the forced flow of labor and the simultaneous blockage of labor rights. As Stephen Campbell (2022) shows in his recent book, Along the Integral Margin, people dispossessed by disaster and failed promises of rural development in Myanmar are compelled to move to urban centers but are confined to varying types of non-normative work and even enslavement. But why are people who “flow” locked into shitty jobs? Asking this question in the context of the Burmese diaspora, I found that state immigration regimes articulate with racialized labor discipline to direct displaced people into meatpacking and manufacturing work and block their ability to work in other sectors or organize for better working conditions. This blockage is what enables capitalists to dam “flows” of migrant and refugee labor, making migrant labor especially profitable to exploit. In Kuala Lumpur, for example, Malaysian produce and poultry bosses perceive an “inundation” of Rohingya asylum-seekers as an oversupply of dangerous interlopers who have no option but to work for low wages, but this racist narrative of human flooding combines with a lack of legal documentation that actively devalues Rohingya labor and prevents access to jobs in higher-wage sectors. In other words, conditions of labor unfreedom. In Denver, affixing refugee-ness to Burmese workers enables employers to separate people who were resettled as refugees from other minoritized employees and reframe exploitation as justice and a humanitarian gift. The fluidity of migrant labor – like the freedom of wage labor itself – is always so-called.

Read full Brief with citations here.

2024 Asian Symposium: Fluid Asia
Friday, April 12, 2024 8:45am - 5:30pm
Center for British and Irish Studies, Norlin Library, 5th Floor

CAS Has a New Home!

Over winter break, the Center for Asian Studies moved from our temporary location in the CASE Building to our permanent home in the Denison Building.

We have been busy setting up new office space and settling in, but please come by and say "hi"!

Our official address is the Denison Arts & Sciences Building, 366 UCB, 1080 Broadway, Boulder CO 80309.

Teaching Taiwan
an Experiential Learning Essay

By Lauren Collins
One of my favorite undergraduate courses to teach is Memory and the Politics of Heritage in Asia.

This class uses examinations of material objects (not only museums, monuments, and memorials, but also archives, school curriculum, and oral histories) to explore how history does not exist as a passive, fixed account, but is instead an active and ongoing struggle to shape narratives, preserve memory, and influence collective consciousness. In this class, we explore his- tory as a living, contested terrain.1 How- ever, it can be difficult for undergraduate students sitting within the four walls of my classroom, place-bound on my campus, to truly feel how competing narratives of history are actively being contested and fought over in real time as we study them. For this reason, when I had the opportuni- ty in the summer of 2023 to take a group of undergraduate students to Taiwan on a babyֱ��app-led program to explore memory politics there in real-time, I immediately agreed. In my experience, there is nothing more powerful to understanding mem- ory politics than taking students to the physical spaces where history has taken place and is actively being remembered, suppressed, and shifted.

Read full article here

Waging Peace Project Essay Contest Winner Announced

The Center for Asian Studies and Partnership for International Strategies in Asia (PISA) joined Norlin Library and several departments on campus to host the exhibit, Waging Peace in Vietnam: U.S. Soldiers and Veterans Who Opposed the War. Curated by Ron Carver, the display of photographs, documents, and oral histories documented dissent within the United States active duty armed forces, among officers, and returning veterans, as well as their means of disseminating information to mobilize others. Launched on October 30, 2023, the first week included a series of events that engaged multiple units across campus including the College of Music, the English Department, the College of Media, Communication and Information, the History Department, the College of Arts and Sciences Honors Program, the Applied History Program, and the Center of the American West. The Waging Peace Project at CU Boulder was made possible by support from the Chino Cienega Foundation.

With film screenings, panel discussions, poetry readings, and lectures, the Waging Peace project amplified the message that the American War in Vietnam has had a legacy of baneful consequences that endure to this day. Recordings of most of the events can be found on the PISA page on the Center for Asian Studies website.

As a key feature of the project, students were invited to submit essays with their reflections on viewing the exhibit. Renowned photojournalist Nick Ut, whose photo of the so-called “Napalm girl” helped to move public opinion against the war, selected Ian Messa’s essay and Vietnam Veteran Curt Stocker presented the award on behalf of Veterans for Peace. Ian hails from Golden, babyֱ��app. He is majoring in geography and pursuing an environment-society geography B.A. with hydrology and GIS certificates, as well as a civil engineering minor. Congratulations Ian!

Read Ian's essay here

Indonesian Student Exchange Program Launches

Fall 2023 was CU Boulder’s first semester as a host for the Indonesian International Student Mobility Awards (IISMA), through which the Indonesian government provides study abroad opportunities for undergraduate students. We look forward to hosting another group in fall 2024.

Two students who spent a semester at CU Boulder wrote short essays about their experiences.

Find exchange student essays here

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Spotlight October 2023

Anonymous — Wed, 21 Aug 2024 16:13:52 +0000

Spotlight October 2023 Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 08/21/2024 - 10:13

Rachel Rinaldo Returns After Fulbright

Just a few weeks ago, I returned to Boulder after spending a wonderful sabbatical year as a Fulbright Scholar in Yogyakarta, Indonesia.

As I step back into the CAS babyֱ��app director position, I am excited to welcome four new staff members. Shae Frydenlund is a Teaching Assistant Professor. She is a human geographer who studies the relationship between capitalism and displaced people, with a focus on Southeast Asia and Southeast Asian migrants. She earned her PhD in Geography from CU Boulder in 2019 and she will be teaching our new line-up of Climate and Society courses. Lucy Lin is an Accounting and Grant Assistant. Lucy has worked in accounting for many years and will work on the financial management of grant funded projects for CAS and Teaching East Asia. Hannah Palustre is an Outreach Coordinator. She first worked as a business journalist, then worked with legislators and civil society in the Philippines to advocate babyֱ��app and legal reforms. Hannah will be working on outreach and engagement initiatives for CAS. Finally, Nurul Wahyuni is our newest Fulbright Language Teaching Assistant. She is from Palembang, South Sumatra, and has a BA and MA in English language education. She will be teaching Indonesian language classes and organizing cultural events and activities related to Indonesia, including our annual Indonesian potluck.

This academic year our theme is Fluid Asia. With this theme, CAS seeks to gather together divergent interests in ‘blue humanities’, ‘wet ontologies’, environmental justice movements associated with water, climate change induced experiences of flood and drought, and social fluidities of all sorts – from labor migrant streams to ‘be like water’ protest movements – all in the spatial and temporal contexts of Asian places. We are particularly interested in how the social effects of anthropogenic climate change are experienced through human relations with water. Stay tuned for events and speakers related to this theme throughout the year!

Finally, while I was in Yogyakarta, I was fortunate to collaborate with babyֱ��app and students at Gajah Mada University, which is also a partner for undergraduate exchanges with CU Boulder. In fact, the first CU Boulder undergraduate student is currently spending the fall semester at Gajah Mada. If you or a student you know is interested in this program, please see https://abroad.colorado.edu/index.cfm?FuseAction=Programs.ViewProgramAngular&id=10285 for more information.

Celebrating a Decade of
Undergraduate Research:
Introducing the 10th Issue of CJAS

Vol. 10, Issue 1, Spring 2023

Welcome to the latest installment of the babyֱ��app Journal of Asian Studies (CJAS), proudly brought to you by the Center for Asian Studies at the University of babyֱ��app Boulder. After a brief hiatus in 2022, we are thrilled to announce the release of our 10th issue in Spring 2023, with an issue featuring both research and creative pieces that span Iran to Japan. Our contributors, hailing from various universities and regions, have produced insightful works that explore a wide range of topics, including protest and political repression, history, literature, and gender.

We are grateful to the contributing undergraduate scholars for their invaluable insights and dedication to advancing our understanding of Asia. We invite you to explore the 10^th edition of CJAS through the virtual edition. Find the complete range of articles and essays here.

We are now accepting submissions for the 11^th edition. They can be submitted here

Upcoming Event:
Green politics in the Lower Mekong Subregion

Wednesday October 11 5:00-6:00 pm
Eaton Humanities 135

Professor Nguyen Minh Quang, a visiting scholar from Vietnam, will speak about the 'conflict' between key players and actors in the Mekong region's green politics – governments and investors vs. local CSOs/NGOs supported by western donors – focusing on recent developments and contests in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Professor Nguyen will emphasize how the geopolitical competition in the region has implications for the US and other western investors and stakeholders.

Nguyen Minh Quang is a geopolitics lecturer at Can Tho University in Vietnam and co-founder of the Mekong Environment Forum. He has specialized in conflict management (Southeast Asia), environmental security issues (Lower Mekong Subregion), and Vietnamese domestic politics over the last decade. His book chapters, commentaries, and articles appeared in publications, including Springer, Routledge, ISI/Scopus-indexed journals, The Diplomat, and East Asia Forum. Since 2017, he has delivered a number of papers and guest lectures to regional and international conferences, including COP27 in Egypt, and foreign universities. His latest edited book is The Political Economy of Education Reforms in Vietnam (Routledge 2022).

Co-Sponsored with Leeds School of Business

Upcoming Event:
Fallout: Asian networks of nuclearity

Two panel sessions beginning at 10am
Friday, October 27, 2023
Flatirons Room, Center for Community (C4C)

with Keynote by Shiloh Krupar (Georgetown University)
at 3:30pm in Guggenheim room 205
co-sponsored by the Department of Geography and delivered as part of the Geography Fall Colloquium Series.

This third workshop in the Tale of Two Asias project seeks to explore the networked and relational nature of Asian nuclearity. That is, what sorts of compartmentalizations, zones of exclusion, and narratives of separation have emerged as Asian people and places grapple with nuclear infrastructures of all kinds? How do we decompartmentalize nuclear governance and grasp the complex assemblage of nuclear energy? What insights might be gained from Asia in addressing this question?

Workshop panelists will include: Meredith DeBoom (University of South Carolina); Donna Goldstein (University of babyֱ��app Boulder); Tong Lam (University of Toronto); Ann-Elise Lewallen (University of Victoria); Maxime Polleri (Université Laval); and Magdelena Stawkowski (University of South Carolina),

with discussion comments by Tim Oakes (University of babyֱ��app Boulder) and Kate Goldfarb (University of babyֱ��app Boulder)

Workshop made possible by a grant from the Albert Smith Foundation.

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Spotlight May 2023

Anonymous — Wed, 21 Aug 2024 16:00:45 +0000

Spotlight May 2023 Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 08/21/2024 - 10:00

The Center for Asian Studies celebrates the following students who have earned a B.A. in Asian Studies

Fall 2022
   Gabriel Hooper
Spring 2023
    Katie Edelson
   Derek Arlo Niederer
   Erin Sandau
Summer 2023
    Luca Gorla

Asian Studies Minor
   Ethan Smith

At our graduation ceremony, students will present their thesis research:

Katie Edelson

A Guide to Traveling to South Korea as a Woman

Luca Gorla

Echoes of Horror: The Enduring Impact of the Nanjing Massacre on Chinese and Japanese Media and Relations

Gabriel Hooper

A different perspective on Asian Studies

Derek Arlo Niederer

Apathy and Outrage, A Comparison Between Comfort Women Activism and Camp Town Prostitution in South Korea

Erin Sandau

The Influence of English Education on Korea Society

The Center for Asian Studies is pleased to announce the winners of Fellowships, Scholarships and Grants awarded to graduate students and babyֱ��app this spring. Congratulations to all successful applicants!

Graduate Student Awards:

Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowships

Academic Year 2023-2024

Aaron Bhatoya
Aaron is an incoming History PhD student. He works on South Asian History with focuses on Women, Gender, and Sexuality, as well as drugs (opium). He is excited to use the FLAS fellowship for the upcoming academic year to strengthen his Hindi skills for future archival and oral history work.

Jeanne Cho
Jeanne Cho (She/her) is in the second year of her Ph.D. program in the History Department. She studies modern Korean history, and plans to use her FLAS award to learn Japanese so that she can use it in future studies of colonial history and also broaden her perspective to consider transnational connections.

Jake Fischer
Jake has always felt that he has a sort of calling to use language skills to help bridge the widening gap between East and West. With the generous support of the FLAS fellowship, he will begin learning Korean to enhance his near-native fluency in Mandarin Chinese in order to further this goal as he explores Confucian and Daoist attitudes towards disability, and specifically how these attitudes may have influenced portrayals in contemporaneous literature. Korea has a strong tradition in Confucianism, and as such, proficiency in Korean language and culture will allow him to explore this topic from a different angle.

Summer 2023 Language Program

David Bachrach
David Fernando Bachrach is a PhD candidate in the University of babyֱ��app Boulder's Department of Geography. He will be attending an intensive Indonesian language course for 8 weeks over the summer at Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia's Language Center in Bandung. This language program will be essential for David to achieve his research goals for his dissertation, which includes long-term qualitative research on the Jakarta-Bandung High-Speed Railway in Indonesia.

Gabriel Hooper
Gabriel will be studying at the Manabi Japanese Language Institute this summer. He is in the MA program in the Asian Languages and Civilizations Department.

Chelsea Kennedy
Chelsea received her undergraduate degree in Philosophy from the University of Portland, and he is currently a MA student in Religious Studies at CU Boulder. Upon completion of her MA Chelsea plans to pursue a PhD program in Philosophy to further her research interests, which center on Islamic Philosophy and its key role in the development of the Western philosophical tradition. She is particularly interested in medieval philosophy insofar as it can be seen as the basis for the historical narrative that has led to the exclusion or delegitimizing of non-western philosophical traditions. She will be utilizing the FLAS Summer Fellowship to study Arabic at Middlebury Language School’s summer program in Middlebury, Vermont. The opportunity to study in this fully immersive 8-week program will be a vital support in Chelsea’s research, providing the tools for a comprehensive investigation of the Arabic language’s role as a conduit of intellectual discourse.

Tsering Lhamo
Tsering Lhamo is a first-generation Tibetan-American PhD student in the geography department. Tsering’s doctoral research examines the embodied experiences of caterpillar fungus harvesters and traders in the Sikkim Himalayas. Tsering plans to improve her Nepali language skills through the CAS FLAS fellowship for her fieldwork in Nepali-speaking Sikkim, India.

Japanese Studies Scholarship Fellows
Academic Year 2022-2023

Kathryn Yoshie Bertram, Art and Art History
Evelyn Emery, Asian Languages and Civilizations
Gabriel Hooper, Asian Languages and Civilizations
Akane Elizabeth Kleinkopf, Asian Languages and Civilizations
Jordan Knowles, Asian Languages and Civilizations
Sixuan Lu, Asian Languages and Civilizations
Catherine Otachime, History
Raisa Stebbins, Asian Languages and Civilizations
Emma Von Der Linn, Asian Languages and Civilizations

Edward G. Seidensticker Japan Summer Research Grant
Summer 2023

Kathryn Yoshie Bertram, Art and Art History
Catherine Otachime, History
Raisa Stebbins, Asian Languages and Civilizations

Undergraduate Awards:

Tibetan and Himalayan Studies Scholarships

Aidan Euler
Luke Stumpfl

Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowships
Summer 2023 Language Program

Andrew Ecker
Aidan Euler

Faculty Awards:

Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant

Ida Fauziyah, Indonesian Instructor, Center for Asian Studies
Ida Fauziyah is a Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant at the University of babyֱ��app Boulder for one academic year 2022-2023. She teaches Indonesian Language.

Tibetan and Himalayan Studies Professional Development Grant

The UISFL grant will allow us to strengthen and expand Tibetan and Himalayan Studies at CU by increasing access to THS courses and the number of students who learn about THS. The grant prioritizes expanding curricular offerings beyond babyֱ��app already teaching in Tibetan and Himalayan Studies.

Sharon Mar Adams, Instructor, Philosophy Arts and Culture Residential Academic Program
Sharon was selected to receive a Center for Asian Studies Professional Development Award for her course, WGST 2200 Women, Gender, Literature, and the Arts

Galina Siergiejczyk, Instructor, Global Studies Residential Academic Program
Galina was selected to receive a Center for Asian Studies Professional Development Award for her course, RUSS 3333: Spies Like Us: Espionage During the Cold War

Cultures and Languages Across the Curriculum Course Development Grant

CLAC Co-Seminar Course Development Grants offer a stipend for the development of a supplemental one-credit undergraduate co-seminar drawing students and content from an existing disciplinary course in any department. Faculty develop and teach this co-seminar using primary Asian language sources to enhance the content of the main course.

Antje Richter, Associate Professor of Chinese, Department of Asian Languages and Civilizations
Antje will be developing a CLAC Co-Seminar for CHIN 4300 Open Topics: Readings in Chinese Literature - Chinese premodern travel literature. The course covers a broad range of genres of historical and fictional travel literature through two millennia of Chinese imperial history.

Matthias Richter, Associate Professor of Chinese, Department of Asian Languages and Civilizations
Matthias will be developing a CLAC Co-Seminar for CHIN 3321 Political Thought in Ancient China.

The Asia Symposium 2023:
Environment, Empire, Social Justice

By Tim Oakes, Interim Faculty Director, Center for Asian Studies

On April 21^st, CAS hosted the annual Asia Symposium, focusing on this year’s theme of “Asia, Empire, Social Justice: Home & Abroad.” The symposium featured roundtable discussion panels on Asian indigeneities and environmental justice in Asia, and a keynote speech by Professor Sunil Amrith of Yale University. Panelists included CU graduate students as well as babyֱ��app from across campus and the Front Range. Rather than offering research presentations, panelists discussed a series of questions posed by moderators Natalie Avalos (Ethnic Studies) and Emily Yeh (Geography). Program and participant details can be found here.

During the first panel on indigeneity, panelists confronted the fraught tension between indigenous identity as both a term invented by colonialism and a source of anti-colonial and nationalist struggle. Meanwhile, for some marginalized groups in Asia – such as the Rohingya – indigeneity is not a useful or meaningful concept, or is wielded from a privileged position of oppression. Thus, the panel helped untangle the historical and geographical complexities of the term, suggesting that even though indigenous movements have a transnational aspect to them, the concept seldom translates easily from one local context to the next. The diversity of Asian places represented in the panel – Northeast India, Myanmar, Tibet, and Gaza – allowed for these place-based complexities and contradictions to emerge in the discussion.

After a lunch break, the second panel discussed issues of environmental justice in Asia, with particular attention to the ways climate change produces new vulnerabilities, injustices, and complicated politics across Asia. Topics covered included toxic marine spills in Vietnam, large scale dispossession and ground water depletion in India that results from the construction of massive solar farms which are otherwise heralded for combating climate change, local impacts of carbon capture and storage technologies in China, water treatment infrastructures in Taiwan, and the impacts of increased mining operations on nomadic herding communities in Mongolia. Throughout these discussions a key theme emerged regarding how ‘green’ development often legitimizes oppressive environmental practices for some of the most vulnerable populations in Asia. But an additional theme was clearly one of contradiction, as panelists grappled with questions concerning the outsourcing of hazardous waste and ‘waste imperialism,’ of pollution as a kind of neocolonialism, and of the local goals of environmental justice running up against powerful forces promoting green energy development at larger scales.

Professor Amrith’s keynote – “Life, Moving: Notes from a Small Island” – explored the broad theme of historical and contemporary redistributions of life on earth. He approached this from the case-study of Singapore, a place wealthy enough to insulate itself from its environment, for example through air conditioning or land reclamation. Amrith brought an historian’s perspective by starting his talk with a reference to the Burmese Banyan in the Singapore Botanical Gardens, a kind of colonial refugee – an ‘orphan of empire’ – removed from its native habitat in the 19^th Century by the British and now one of the Garden’s signature specimens. The Gardens, Amrith pointed out, were devoted to the development of tropical babyֱ��app crops for the British Empire, illustrating the fundamental role of colonialism in the redistribution of life on earth. This theme has continued into present day Singapore, as the island-state’s demand for sand for land reclamation has caused massive redistributions of life in the Mekong River – in Vietnam and Laos – where much of the sand is now dredged for export. While Singapore has excelled at developing technologies of insulation (from a hot climate, or from potential sea level rise) it has been unable to escape the seasonal haze that chokes its spectacular skyline from burning plantations in Indonesia. These plantations, of course, are the legacies of colonialism’s redistribution of life and the Garden’s role in cultivating botanical ‘orphans of empire’ for babyֱ��app gain. Thus, despite its various insulations from nature, Singapore remains part of nature as well.

Overall, the symposium drew clear connections between Asia and our worlds closer to home, connections that have developed through technology, legacies of imperial ambition, climate change, and social activism. If there was one key takeaway from the symposium as a whole it was perhaps this: not only does Asia provide a valuable comparative lens through which to gain better perspective on the seemingly ‘universal’ concerns of environmental justice and indigenous rights, but – more importantly – exploring these topics is Asia necessitates that we appreciate the webs of interaction and connection that make it impossible to view our lives ‘over here’ as separate from and unrelated to lives in Asia.

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Spotlight April 2023

Anonymous — Wed, 21 Aug 2024 15:57:21 +0000

Spotlight April 2023 Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 08/21/2024 - 09:57

(Re)Conceptualizing Climate Justice:
The importance of place, scale, and social relations

by Denise Fernandes,
PhD Student, Department of Environmental Studies, CU Boulder

As CAS prepares for its annual Asia Symposium, we feature here a Brief by roundtable panelist Denise Fernandes, PhD student in Environmental Studies at CU. Denise explores an Indian perspective on climate justice and demonstrates here why an area studies approach remains crucial for understanding the issues that we’ll be engaging with in the symposium: how legacies of empire, movements toward justice, and environmental challenges are shaping contemporary Asian societies.

I write this brief as the oceans have recorded the hottest temperatures till date; tornadoes have ripped through the south and midwest US; the island nation of Vanuatu has secured a UN resolution on climate justice; the IPCC released another dire warning on climate change; climate scientists have faced sanctions for protesting more climate action; and globally states and private companies continue to extract oil, gas, and coal. As these events simultaneously unfold around me, my mind is constantly wrestling with the idea of climate justice. What does it mean? Who has agency over it? Who controls the narratives? How is it theorized at different governance and policy scales? Why is it such a contested concept? Over the past twelve years, with my work in policy and academic circles and along with historically disenfranchised communities who are deeply impacted by extreme weather events, I have come to realize that climate justice is not a very simple concept. It is deeply contested at different scales of governance where international climate negotiators, politicians, economists, scientists etc. articulate climate justice very differently in comparison to tribal communities, subsistence farmers, and/or historically disenfranchised/marginalized groups. This constant struggle with the term is what makes it extremely difficult to operationalize “just climate transition policies”.

Read the full brief here

The Asia Symposium 2023:
Environment, Empire, Social Justice

Friday, April 21, 10:30am - 5pm
CASE Building E422

This year’s Asia Symposium will explore two fundamental contemporary legacies of imperialism and colonialism in Asia: indigeneity and environmental justice. Noting that empire has been a crucial factor in shaping the trajectories of past and present Asian societies, this year’s symposium seeks to draw connections between past and present, between activism and scholarship, and between Asia and the US. The Asia Symposium will feature two roundtables featuring both early-career and more established scholars from the babyֱ��app Front Range region, and a keynote by Professor Sunil Amrath. Please join us for this special day of discussion and reflection on the linkages between empire and changing Asian environments, social movements, and indigenous politics.

Ambassador Ted Osius comes to CAS for a talk and book signing

In early February, former Ambassador Ted Osius (fourth from the left above) came to CU Boulder to give a talk based on his new book Nothing Is Impossible, America’s Reconciliation with Vietnam. The evening was punctuated with wit and insight into the evolution of the US-Vietnam relationship in the years since re-establishing diplomatic relations. After the talk there was a long line waiting for him to sign copies of his book. CAS was thrilled to host him.

CU Boulder Tibetan Losar 2023 Celebration— A Big Hit

On February 24^th, 2023, the University of babyֱ��app Boulder ushered in the new Tibetan year of the Water Hare with Losar celebrations. Losar (ལོ་གསར་) meaning New Year in Tibetan is celebrated widely across the Tibetan Plateau and in the Himalayan regions of Nepal, India, and Bhutan. Taking place on CU Boulder campus for the second time, this year’s Losar cultural program was jointly organized by the Center for Asian Studies (CAS), the Tibet Himalaya Initiative, Department of Anthropology, and the Anderson Language and Technology Center.

The event started with the serving of the ceremonial sweet rice (dresi) – an auspicious food symbolizing prosperity and good fortune— Tibetan butter tea, chai, and Tibetan Losar cookies (khabsey). The khabsey was prepared by the CU Tibetan students with the support and sponsorship of the local Boulder-based Tibetan-owned Cafe, Little Lama Cafe located at Naropa University.

Read more

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Spotlight January 2023

Anonymous — Wed, 21 Aug 2024 15:49:23 +0000

Spotlight January 2023 Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 08/21/2024 - 09:49

Looking Back Fifty Years, America in Vietnam:

Commemorating the 50 Year Anniversary of the Paris Peace Accords

by Steven Dike (History and Honors, CU Boulder)

American combat in Vietnam ended 50 years ago with the signing of the Paris Peace Accords in early 1973. 50 years ago, it would have been hard to imagine that the United States would have close and peaceful relations with Vietnam—specifically a Vietnam united under the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV), a communist government that we had fought a war against for over two decades. Vietnam itself was in the midst of nearly continuous conflict and upheaval from 1940 to 1975, facing decades-old French colonial domination, Japanese occupation and a massive famine during World War II, an 8-year war against France, and then a prolonged conflict of varied intensity lasting from when the nation was temporarily divided in 1954, until 1975, when the DRV defeated the southern, American-backed Republic of Vietnam, marking as well the first time that the United States had lost a major war. The subsequent communist babyֱ��app program failed badly, and Vietnam began to abandon it in the mid-1980s under a liberalization program known as doi moi. Ever since, Vietnam has achieved high, though unevenly distributed, rates of babyֱ��app growth. In the mid-1990s the United States and Vietnam normalized relations and have since become significant trading partners and remarkably friendly nations.

Read the full article here.

The Center for Asian Studies is running a series commemorating the 50^thAnniversary of the Paris Peace Accords that ended American combat in Vietnam. The theme of the events is moving from war to peace. Ambassador Ted Osius was on the ground in the 1990s as the United States normalized relations with Vietnam and began to leave the war behind. During the Obama Administration, he served as ambassador. Our other speakers have all been involved with humanitarian and cultural exchange work between Vietnam and the US in the decades after the war.

We began with a November showing of a rough cut of a forthcoming PBS documentary, The Movement and the Madman about the confrontation between the antiwar movement and the Nixon Administration.

This week we have three more events:
Vietnam and the USA: Looking Forward and Back, a panel discussion with Sister Sen Nguyen, Dr. Ted Ning, and Dr. Pete Steinhauer.
February 2, 5:30 PM, CASE E422

“Nothing is Impossible: America’s Reconciliation with Vietnam” with Former US Ambassador to Vietnam, Ted Osius
February 3, 5:00 PM, Chancellor’s Auditorium, 4^th Floor, CASE
followed by a reception

A showing of the film Hearts and Minds, in conjunction with CU’s International Film Series. Featuring a personal video introduction by director Peter Davis.
February 4, 7:30 PM, Muenzinger Auditorium

In October, as the world watched the Iranian Women's Revolution taking shape, an anonymous student on the CU Boulder campus contributed a Brief, offering their perspective on their home country and the events as they were unfolding there. We were glad to be able to provide a forum for their thoughts as these events were happening. Below, you can find the Brief, which appeared on our blog in two installments on October 26, and November 3, 2022.

Cumulative Reflection on What the Killing of Mahsa Jina Amini Sparked In Iran

Today marks the 40^th day after the killing of Mahsa Jina Amini on Sep 16, 2022. She was a 22-year-old woman taken into custody and killed by “morality” police for her “unsatisfactory” hejab*. This unofficial police force has been oppressing and assaulting the women of Iran for years and it has only grown more violent and absurd with time. Oppression of women in Iran is not limited to how they are required to dress (failure to comply has led to them being arrested, lashed, and even killed,) it dictates their eligibility for jobs (illegal to be a singer or a pilot,) legal age of marriage (9 years,) traveling abroad and divorce (both only permitted by the husband/male guardian.) Over 40 years of such gender apartheid under the Islamic Republic fueled unprecedented uprisings across Iran that are led by women – and now by female students. Since the day of Mahsa Amini’s death, daily large-scale protests with the slogan ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ (‘Zan, Zendegi, Azadi’,) have evolved into revolution-seeking rallies and strikes; people of Iran are demanding freedom, a once and for all end to the current regime which is the cause of years of growing injustice, corruption, abuse of human rights and dictatorship. However, unfortunately but as expected, this regime is implementing every possible oppressive method to silence the freedom movements:

Read both articles here.

CAS Executive Director Danielle Rocheleau Salaz contributes to Cultures and Languages Across the Curriculum in Higher Education: Harnessing the Transformative Potentials of CLAC Across Disciplines

CAS is pleased to announce that our own Executive Director, Danielle Rocheleau Salaz, is a contributor to Cultures and Languages Across the Curriculum in Higher Education: Harnessing the Transformative Potentials of CLAC Across Disciplines, which was published by Routledge on November 18.

Edited by India C. Plough and Welore Tamboura, the volume offers 16 chapters describing Cultures and Languages Across the Curriculum (CLAC) programs and initiatives throughout the US, offering insight into outcomes and opportunities for both students and babyֱ��app members, and describing the adaptability of CLAC concepts to various institutional cultures and needs.

Salaz’s chapter, entitled “CLAC Your Campus: Institutionalizing a Program that Encourages Students to Put Language and Culture Skills to Use,” discusses the structure and progress of the CLAC program at CU Boulder, launched by CAS in 2017-18 with support from the CU College of Arts & Sciences. CLAC enriches learning by encouraging students to study texts and materials in languages other than English, which they typically can’t do in standard content courses due to unavoidable limitations in such settings. CLAC at CAS allows students to integrate Asian language skills into content study in their field of interest. Since launching the program, 11 CLAC co-seminars have been offered at CU Boulder, with plans for a new course offering this spring, associated with Katherine Alexander’s CHIN 3361 Women and the Supernatural in Chinese Literature for students with Chinese language knowledge.

CAS will be offering course development grants to babyֱ��app members interested in creating CLAC co-seminars associated with existing content courses that would benefit from the addition of Asian language sources. The deadline for applications will be Monday, February 27, 2023. An information session about developing a CLAC co-seminar will be held on February 13 from 11:30 to 1 overZoom. Application processes and further information is available on the CAS website.

CAS Opportunities for Students and Faculty

Graduate Students:
Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowships
(deadline February 15)

Edward G. Seidensticker Japan Summer Research Grant
(deadline February 20)
Undergraduate Students:

Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowships for Undergraduate Students (deadline February 15)

Tibetan and Himalayan Studies Scholarship for Study Abroad, Language Study, and/or Independent Research (deadline February 27)
Faculty:
CLAC Course Development Grants (deadline February 27)

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Spotlight October 2022

Anonymous — Wed, 21 Aug 2024 15:30:10 +0000

Spotlight October 2022 Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 08/21/2024 - 09:30

Two new factsheets on China’s global development model published

Over the past decade, China has seemingly exploded onto the international development scene. President Xi Jinping’s 2013 launch of the ‘Belt & Road Initiative’ heralded a newly assertive posture on China’s part, and since then there has been a lot of interest in what China is doing in places like Southeast Asia and Africa, what it means for a changing world political and babyֱ��app order, and what it means for countries on the receiving end of China’s development projects and enhanced trade links. There has also been a lot of misunderstanding and misinformation regarding China’s increasingly prominent role on the global development stage.

Just when, for example, did China become a global development player? Was the Belt & Road really a departure from China’s previous foreign policies and practices? Does China mostly just build big infrastructures? Or is it involved in other kinds of development as well? How powerful is China in dictating the terms of its engagements with other countries? Is China creating a new alternative to the existing patterns of capitalist development? Or is it just the most recent power player within that existing system? Is there a distinct ‘China Model’ of global development?

Text, timeline Description automatically generated with medium confidence The ChinaMade project, based at the Center for Asian Studies, has published two new factsheets aimed at answering these questions. The factsheets were developed in collaboration with the Roadwork Asia project, based at the University of Zurich, and the Environing Infrastructure project, based at the Rachel Carson Center in Munich. They were written by an international team of 22 scholars who have been researching China’s development projects in Central and Southeast Asia for years. Contributors include CAS Interim Faculty Director Tim Oakes, former CAS postdoc Alessandro Rippa, and CU Geography alumni Jessica DiCarlo and Galen Murton.

The factsheets help readers understand that there are multiple versions of China’s development model and that the Belt & Road Initiative is just one part of a much larger set of practices that have a much longer history than just the previous decade. The contributors point out that China’s practices remain embedded within mainstream global development patterns rather than creating new conditions outside of these patterns. They also show how local governments and other stakeholders play a significant role in shaping these projects, and that China’s ability to do what it wants in these places is very limited.

Check them out here: Demystifying the Belt & Road Initiative and China’s Global Development Model: Looking Beyond the Belt & Road Initiative

Announcing a new certificate in Tibetan and Himalayan Studies at CU Boulder

The Center for Asian Studies is excited to announce that CU Boulder students who are interested in learning about the Tibet and Himalayan region are now able to pursue a certificate in Tibetan and Himalayan Studies. Culturally and ethnically Tibetan areas constitute ¼ of the land area of the People’s Republic of China -- roughly the size of Western Europe -- as well as the country of Bhutan and parts of north India, Nepal, and Pakistan. As a focus of tension between the two Asian superpowers of India and China, this region is geopolitically crucial. The region is known as “the Third Pole'' and home to the headwaters of seven of Asia’s major rivers. It is a hotspot for global climate change, biodiversity and ecosystem services.

CU Boulder is a leading center of research, teaching, and scholarship on Tibetan and Himalayan Studies, as well as environmental ciences, including climatology, hydrology, ecology, and geology. Expertise on the region includes strong babyֱ��app leadership in the departments of Anthropology, Geography, and Religious Studies and the Tibet Himalaya Initiative (THI), a multidisciplinary hub for research, teaching, and public engagement on Tibet and the greater Himalaya region housed within the Center for Asian Studies. The town of Boulder itself is a significant location in the history and spread of Tibetan Buddhism in the West.

Certificate Curriculum:

The certificate of Tibetan and Himalayan Studies requires 18 credit hours of coursework, of which 3 credit hours will be an introductory class, ASIA 1700 Introduction to Tibetan Civilization or ANTH 1105 Exploring a non-Western Culture: Tibet. Students must complete 9 out of 18 hours at the upper division level, with a minimum of 12 credit hours taken on campus. Students are welcome to use up to 6 transfer credit hours for either upper or lower division courses, including in language study and study abroad, and to petition for other electives to count for upper division credits.

Spring 2023 Courses:

Students who are interested in the certificate should consider taking one or both of these upcoming spring 2023 courses:

ANTH 1105 Exploring a Non-Western Culture: Tibet: What is Tibet? Who are the Tibetans? This course will provide students with an in-depth anthropological introduction to Tibet and the Tibetan people. We will cover topics ranging from religion to politics, gender to human rights, guerrilla war against the Chinese People’s Liberation Army to the everyday lives of Tibetan peoples in the Himalayas. In addition to providing students with knowledge about Tibet, this class will also provide a brief introduction to cultural anthropology that will prepare students for future coursework in anthropology.

ASIA 1700 Introduction to Tibetan Civilization: Explores the dynamic history of Tibet from its early empire to the present. Offers interdisciplinary perspectives on Tibetan civilization, including arts and literature, religion and politics, society and culture.

ASIA 4700 Tibetan Literature and Culture: This course focuses on Tibetan literary writings, mostly secular, from the 12th to the 20th century. The course will familiarize students with the cultural, intellectual, and historical movements that contributed to the development of Tibetan literary tradition.

RLST 4250: Buddhist Literature in Tibet: Tibet has a vast literary heritage in which Buddhist texts hold a prominent place. In creating this literature, Tibetan authors adopted a number of Buddhist models from India and also integrated Buddhist concerns into indigenous Tibetan oral styles. This course takes a thematic approach to the study of Buddhist literature in Tibet, and this semester we will pay special attention to the interplay between literary style and doctrinal content in several genres: songs of experience (nyams mgur), advice literature (zhal gdams), and tantric liturgies (sgrub thabs). Throughout the course, we think critically about rhetorical strategies, genre conventions, and ways of reading Buddhist literature in Tibet.
Language courses:

Students interested in Tibet and Himalaya Studies have the opportunity to pursue study in four languages that are spoken in the region: Tibetan (TBTN), Nepali (NEPL), Hindi/Urdu (HIND), and Mandarin (CHIN).

If you are interested in pursuing this certificate or have any questions you can reach out to Asian Studies program director Dr. Lauren Collins (collinlk@colorado.edu) or teaching assistant professor Dr. Tenzin Tsepak (tenzin.tsepak@colorado.edu).

Announcing a new Southeast Asian Studies track for Asian Studies majors

We are excited to announce that CU Boulder students who are interested in learning about Southeast Asia are now able to specialize in Southeast Asian studies through the newly approved Southeast Asia track for Asian Studies majors.

Southeast Asia is one of the most geostrategically and babyֱ��appally important regions in the world. Not only is it home to Indonesia, the world’s fourth most populous country, but it is also home to one of the world’s busiest and most important shipping lanes—the Straits of Malacca— and home to a rich diversity of people, religion, culture, geography, and history. The 11 countries of Southeast Asia (Brunei, Cambodia, Timor-Leste, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam) have a total population of over 660 million and a combined GDP in 2020 of over $3.1 trillion.

Students who specialize in the Southeast Asia track will:

Gain understanding of the immense cultural, religious, ethnic, and linguistic diversity of Southeast Asia, as well as knowledge of how such diversity has been shaped by a long history of exchange and interaction with communities and cultures within/beyond the region.
Assess and appreciate how histories of imperialism, decolonization, nationalism, and war have shaped the contours of Southeast Asian history over the 19th and 20th centuries.
Obtain familiarity with a wide range of issues facing contemporary Southeast Asian societies, including current debates around themes of social inequality, gender/sexuality, faith, human rights, democracy, urbanization, cultural heritage, etc.

Students who are interested in learning more about Southeast Asia should also consider two unique study abroad opportunities available this summer and fall.

Global Seminar: Primates of Vietnam (Ho Chi Minh City, Cat Tien, Da Nang, Vietnam) – A 3 week babyֱ��app led study abroad program in summer 2023. Interested students can learn more at the ANTH Global Seminars Info Session on October 12th at 4:30 PM in Hale 450 (Library).

Spend a semester studying at Gadjah Mada University (UGM) in Yogyakarta, Indonesia – CU Boulder students can spend a semester taking courses in English at Gadjah Mada University, one of the highest-ranked universities in Indonesia, on a direct exchange program.

If you are interested in pursuing or learning more about the Southeast Asian Studies track in the Asian Studies major, you can reach out to babyֱ��app director Dr. Lauren Collins (collinlk@colorado.edu) or academic advisor Christine Luft (christine.luft@colorado.edu)

Finding Beauty in Data: Exploring the Indian Subcontinent Through Climate Research

By Berkley Larson

Over the summer I had the opportunity to work on an incredibly exciting project to gather climate data on the Indian subcontinent to be made available to the scientific community. I have always had a deep love for the environment, spending all of my free time in the mountains or exploring whatever small corner of nature I could find near home. As soon as I realized my love for statistics and data, I knew that it was important for me to apply this to one of the greatest projects our society has been tasked with: exploring climate and the impact humans have had on it. The research being done throughout the Indian subcontinent is fascinating and there is so much we can learn from it. Throughout this experience I was able to gain so many valuable insights through observing and gathering data from academics based around the world. The science being done to determine environmental changes is mind boggling, and I found so much beauty in seeing how much can be learned from something as simple as a tree trunk or lake sediment. I am thrilled to have been a part of this project and can’t wait to see the impact that it will have.

Berkley Larson is a junior majoring in Quantitative Finance. Participation in this research project was funded by the Undergraduate Research Opportunity Grant at CU Boulder.

Virtual Shakuhachi Research Made Possible by Seidensticker Grant

The Center for Asian Studies offers support for summer research or language study to graduate students working on Japan through the Edward G. Seidensticker Japan Summer Research Grant. Brandon Stover was a 2022 grant recipient and reports on his activities below. Applications for summer 2023 will be due on February 20, 2023.

I am studying how the Japanese shakuhachi flute is taught and disseminated online. I want to see what changes teachers have made in order to teach online (as opposed to in-person) as well as what such changes might be doing to the tradition. I also hope to look more specifically at how timbre and the idea of timbre is taught online. Timbre is the different characteristics of sound that help us distinguish one sound from another. The shakuhachi is an instrument which makes broad use of different timbral sounds and colors, therefore, how these ideas are taught online is important for the future of the tradition.

I began the summer taking lessons with Shawn Head. Shawn is an American-born shakuhachi performer and teacher who currently lives in Japan. He has cultivated a community of shakuhachi players and enthusiasts on Discord and through my grant-funded lessons, I was introduced to this community. I was able to attend several virtual masterclasses as well as perform for the group (albeit only half of a piece because I had to watch my then seven month old).

I next took several lessons from Riley Lee, who is located in Australia. Riley has been teaching and performing for many years and is considered one of the best shakuhachi players outside of Japan. With Riley, I worked on a piece of music that I had learned from Shawn (Sanya - Mountain Valley) to see the differences in the way Riley taught online. My lessons were on Skype, so I was also able to see differences between the platforms. I was fortunate to be able to take an in-person lesson with Riley when he visited babyֱ��app in June and learn a piece of music he composed for the shakuhachi (Fumai Inga - Without Ignoring Causation).

Lastly, I took lessons with Kaoru Kakizakai, located in Japan. With Kaoru, I also learned a piece I learned from Shawn (Honshirabe - First piece). I was able to learn Tamuke (Hands Folded Together), one of the most well-known shakuhachi pieces and I performed it for a church service in early July.

Thanks to the grant, I was able to take all these wonderful lessons and learn 7 different pieces of music. I also recorded each of my lessons and have been working to transcribe them. This data will be important in my research on the transmission of timbre. I found that different teachers use slightly different techniques. Often, the teachers resort to verbal or visual cues, holding their shakuhachi up close to the camera, in order to convey techniques used when trying to alter the timbre of the instrument.

Shawn relies heavily on pre-recorded YouTube videos to help his students learn a piece of music. After the student becomes proficient enough with the notes, he is able to guide them in making it musical (through adjustments to timbre and dynamics). Kaoru relies heavily on practicing Robuki, playing the lowest note on the instrument for long periods of time. Through this technique, students can develop their sound without having to work on playing right or wrong notes or even changing fingerings. Riley uses repetition and mindfulness to help guide students toward an acceptable timbre and musicality. He asks his students to play the part again, this time holding in mind a certain part of the performance (maybe it is holding steady pitch, or volume, etc.). My main teacher, Justin Williams, also uses mindfulness to guide students.

I plan to continue this research over the next few years as I write my PhD dissertation. I would like to say thank you again for the opportunity to study online timbre transmission and Shakuhachi.

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Spotlight April 2022

Anonymous — Fri, 15 Apr 2022 15:36:29 +0000

Spotlight April 2022 Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 04/15/2022 - 09:36

China's Nuclear Belt and Road:
CAS Brief and Upcoming Event

Over the past decade, China has emerged as a major global actor in the financing and construction of energy infrastructures, particularly in Asia. With Beijing’s recent announcement that it plans to discontinue funding and building coal-powered electricity plants beyond China’s borders, nuclear power has received increasing emphasis in China’s energy infrastructure investments abroad. As part of the Xi administration’s ‘Belt & Road Initiative’ China has proposed building as many as 30 new nuclear power plants across Asia, in addition to the 43 reactors already planned for construction within China. Will China’s efforts bring about a new era of nuclear energy expansion around the globe? As part of our initiative on living in and beyond the nuclear age in Asia, we invited Professor M.V. Ramana, Director of the Liu Institute for Global Issues at the University of British Columbia to offer his thoughts on China’s role in the future of nuclear power in Asia. Professor Ramana is one of our speakers for the CAS-hosted workshop on “China’s Nuclear Belt & Road” on the CU Boulder campus, taking place on Friday, April 22nd. The workshop will gather international experts on nuclear technology, security, vulnerability, and safety to discuss the role of China in global issues of nuclear power development. In addition to political and strategic issues, there are significant environmental & climate issues and debates surrounding the question of nuclear power development. These will all be central to the workshop’s presentations and discussion. The workshop is free and open to the public.

~ Tim Oakes, Professor of Geography, CU Boulder

Even China Cannot Rescue Nuclear Power from its Woes

By MV Ramana

What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object? This well-known Irresistible Force paradox comes to mind when considering the role that China could play in shaping the future of nuclear energy. Over the last quarter century or more, China has repeatedly demonstrated the ability to build infrastructure within budget and on schedule. But can it do the same for nuclear power plants, thereby rescuing that technology from declining gently into oblivion?

Before answering that question, I should first explain why I say nuclear power is declining, and explain why that is happening. The impression the news media offers is one of sunny optimism, with glowing accounts of innovative and sophisticated new nuclear reactor designs, often offered up as our only hope for solving the climate crisis. This is misleading.

Nuclear power is a technology whose golden age is long over. Commissioning of new nuclear power plants peaked in 1984-85, and new nuclear power additions in subsequent years have been a mere fraction of that peak. In the first two decades of this century, 95 reactors were started up around the world while 98 reactors were closed down.

All of these have resulted in a decline in nuclear energy’s role in providing power. Measured in terms of the share of global electricity generation, nuclear power has come down from a maximum of 17.5 percent in 1996 to barely above 10 percent in 2020. In contrast, the fraction of global electricity generated by what are called modern renewables, namely solar, wind, geothermal, and biomass-based energy, has consistently risen, from 1.2 percent in 1997 to 10.7 percent in 2020.

This decline is a result of nuclear power’s inability to compete babyֱ��appally, in turn because of the high and rising cost of building nuclear reactors. Nuclear plants also take a long time to build—at least a decade from the start of planning to actually being connected to the electric grid—and they cost a lot to operate. These factors limit how fast nuclear power can grow even if some reactors were to be built.

China’s experience testifies to the stubborn problems of nuclear energy. The country started relatively late on building nuclear power plants, but as with many other elements of infrastructure, the country has emerged as the leader in building nuclear plants. Despite its breakneck pace of construction, nuclear energy contributed just under 5 percent of electricity generated in 2021. But China is also building just about every other source of power too, including the technologies that will be critical to climate mitigation: wind and solar energy. Together, these two sources contributed roughly 250 percent as much electricity as nuclear plants in 2021.

Of missed targets

Chinese officials have periodically laid out impressive targets for all of these technologies. Targets for wind and solar energy capacity have routinely been met, sometimes more quickly than envisioned. This might well be the case for even the ambitious target of 1,200 gigawatts of solar and wind power by 2030, as laid out in the Nationally Determined Contribution report from October 2021.

Nuclear targets, on the other hand, have been declining in ambition, and these are no longer being met. The most recent target is from March 2022, when the National Energy Administration (NEA) set the target of increasing installed nuclear power capacity to 70 gigawatts by 2025. Considering that the current capacity is only around 51 gigawatts, that might seem ambitious. But a target of 70 GW was first suggested for 2020 by the China Nuclear Energy Association in 2010; around the same time period, even targets as large as 114 GW by 2020 were reported.

Since then, and especially after multiple reactors melted down in Fukushima in neighbouring Japan, China’s government has become more cautious about nuclear power, and rightly so. The target in the 13^th five year plan was only 58 gigawatts by 2020, and, as of April 2022, China is yet to reach that capacity target. Judging by what is under construction, China will miss the target of 70 gigawatts by 2025 as well.

The systematic missing of targets is not accidental. Nuclear power plants are difficult to build, and China can no more sidestep those hard technical challenges than France or the United States. Many Chinese nuclear plants have been delayed and construction costs have exceeded initial estimates. Take, for example, the twin High Temperature Gas Cooled Reactor units (Shidao Bay 1-1 and 1-2). When construction started in December 2012, the promise was that it would “take 50 months” to build them, and the plant would start generating electricity by the end of 2017. The plant was connected to the grid only in December 2021, roughly twice as long as was projected, and at a cost significantly largerthan other sources.

In addition to high costs, there are other barriers to the expansion of nuclear power within China. Thus far, all nuclear power plants in China are located on the coast. But only a limited number of reactors can be built on existing sites and there are few coastal sites available for new nuclear construction. At the same time, there is real and justified resistance to building nuclear power plants in inland sites, next to rivers and large lakes. There are accident risks and concerns about the high requirements for water to cool nuclear plants. Water from these sources is already in great demand for drinking, agriculture, and other higher priority uses. In the long run, then, geography will limit how much China can expand nuclear energy.

What about China’s role in nuclear power elsewhere?

Nuclear power features prominently in China’s plans for exports of energy technologies under the Belt and Road Initiative. In February 2022, China National Nuclear Corporation signed an agreement to build a nuclear plant in Argentina. This marks China’s first export of a nuclear reactor to a country other than Pakistan (with whom China shares a special relationship that also extends to sharing nuclear weapons and related military technology).

But a swallow does not a summer make. Many other nuclear reactor vendors have won one or two contracts but have not managed to translate that into future orders. South Korea, which beat out France in 2009 for the contract to build the UAE’s first nuclear power plant, is perhaps the best example. Since that “victory”, South Korea has not won a single reactor export contract.

A different example is that of Russia, which has dominated the nuclear export market since 2009. Following its attack on Ukraine and resultant sanctions, many of Russia’s contracts, including in Finland and in Hungary, are likely to be cancelled if they have not already been. Russia’s ability to even complete the remaining contracts is also being questioned.

The future of the Argentina project is also uncertain. Historically, Argentina’s commitment to new nuclear construction has an on-off character. In 2007, for example, the country signed an agreement with Canada and China to construct a CANDU reactor—which never happened. In 2015, Argentina signed an agreement with China to build two nuclear plants. That, too, never happened. The current agreement might not come to fruition because the Argentinian government is dealing with high debt levels and is pushing China to fully finance construction of this plant. Notwithstanding China’s deep pockets, there is a limit to how many multi-billion dollar nuclear plants it can finance—on top of all the other Belt and Road construction projects it is involved in.

At a more basic level, all countries have to contend with the unbabyֱ��appal nature of nuclear power plants, whether it is Argentina or it is any of the countries that had planned to import reactors from Russia (for example, Bangladesh). If countries with decades of experience with nuclear power cannot make that technology competitive, the odds that newcomers will be able to do so are slim at best.

Putting it all together

Nuclear power in China has grown dramatically in the last decade or more, in large part because of high level political decisions to promote the technology even if it was not really technically or babyֱ��appally justified. This rapid expansion and the ambitious targets announced by the Chinese nuclear establishment, both for domestic and foreign construction, have led to the expectation that China might give the nuclear industry a new lease on life.

These expectations are at odds with how the energy sector is changing, especially due to rapid reductions in the costs of renewable energy technologies. Photovoltaic panels, in particular, have become dramatically cheaper, partly because of China’s role in manufacturing these. This is why the International Energy Agency dubbed solar energy the “new king of electricity” in 2020. In contrast, nuclear power costs have been increasing. These trends essentially ensure that nuclear capacity will continue to decline. China’s unstoppable capacity for construction might shake the nuclear world, but it is unlikely to move. However, each new reactor that is built will result in additional risks and burdens, especially that of accidents leading to widespread radioactive contamination, and dealing with radioactive nuclear waste streams that remain hazardous for hundreds of thousands of years.

M.V. Ramana is the Simons Chair in Disarmament, Global and Human Security and Director of the Liu Institute for Global Issues at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, and the author of The Power Of Promise: Examining Nuclear Energy In India.

If you are interested in further exploring this topic, attend the China's Nuclear Belt & Road workshop April 22-23, details below.

China’s Nuclear Belt & Road

Socio-technical perspectives on China’s export nuclear infrastructures

In-person workshop, free and open to the public

Friday April 22^nd
9:30am - 4:30pm
Venue: Center for British & Irish Studies, Norlin Library, CU Boulder Campus

Saturday April 23^rd
10am - 11:30am
Venue: Flatirons Room, Center for Community, CU Boulder Campus

Center for Asian Studies 2022 Symposium
Intermountain Asia and DEI:
Asian Studies in babyֱ��app and Beyond

CAS’s 2022 Annual Symposium will draw attention to the myriad connections between our corner of the world and Asia. We aim to better connect with our fellow Asianists nearby, and to cultivate a vision of Asian Studies that does not limit “Asia” to a distant place, or an object of inquiry far removed from our everyday lives here in babyֱ��app and the Rocky Mountain region more broadly. Former Association for Asian Studies President Christine Yano has called for Asian Studies to take a more global perspective, emphasizing transnational circuits and dynamic encounters, focusing on mobilities and interactions across oceans and borders. Asia cannot be artificially separated from the rest of the world, including the United States. We aim for this symposium to promote discussions of linkages between the US and Asian societies, and we hope that examining the ways Asian societies and Asian diaspora communities are grappling with issues of diversity and inequalities can also help us to think about how we as scholars of Asia can contribute to ongoing efforts to build justice, equality, diversity, and inclusion in our communities.

This public-facing symposium will bring together babyֱ��app from several Front Range higher educational institutions to discuss these issues. The symposium will be structured as a series of roundtables during which the presenters will share their perspectives and experiences, and audience members will have a chance to ask questions or make comments. CAS looks forward to bringing the study of Asia, Asian America, and transnational Asia into dialogue.

~ Rachel Rinaldo, Director, Center for Asian Studies

Center for Asian Studies 2022 Symposium
Intermountain Asia and DEI: Asian Studies in babyֱ��app and Beyond

British and Irish Studies Room, Norlin Library 5^th Floor (CBIS)
Friday, April 29, 2022
Noon to 4:30 pm

Introductory remarks from John-Michael Rivera, Associate Dean for Arts and Humanities

This symposium will be structured around 3 inter-locking roundtables:

12:15 pm Roundtable 1 - Inter-Asian Connections, will ask participants to reflect on the importance of teaching about Asia in babyֱ��app and what is gained by examining connections and linkages between Asian societies and babyֱ��app.
Alvin Camba, Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver
Einor Cervone, Associate Curator of Asian Art, Denver Art Museum
Carole McGranahan, Anthropology, University of babyֱ��app Boulder
Andrea Stanton, Religious Studies, University of Denver
Moderator: Rachel Rinaldo, Sociology and Center for Asian Studies, University of babyֱ��app Boulder

1:30 pm - Roundtable 2, Diversity and Marginalization within and among Asian Societies, will ask participants to reflect on historic and recent struggles over religious, racial/ethnic, sex/gender and other forms of inequality and diversity within and between Asian societies and what can be learned from such struggles.
Lucy Chester, History, University of babyֱ��app Boulder
Joon Kim, Ethnic Studies, babyֱ��app State University
Evelyn Shih, Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of babyֱ��app Boulder
Tenzin Tsepak, Center for Asian Studies, University of babyֱ��app Boulder
Moderator: Keller Kimbrough, Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of babyֱ��app Boulder

2:45 pm - Roundtable 3, Asian Studies in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Work, will ask participants to reflect on how scholars of Asia can participate in JEDI efforts, in babyֱ��app and elsewhere.
Aun Hasan Ali, Religious Studies, University of babyֱ��app Boulder
Mithi Mukherjee, History, University of babyֱ��app Boulder
Stephanie Santos, Gender, Women, and Sexualities Studies, Metropolitan State University Denver
Moderator: Katherine Alexander, Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of babyֱ��app Boulder

A reception with light refreshments will follow

CAS Congratulates Graduating Seniors

Spring 2022

Asian Studies Major
Odette Shin
Thesis title: Declining Quality of Life: Korean Beauty Standards

and

Tate Keeney - History Major, Asian Studies Minor
Cameron Feken - Japanese Major, Asian Studies Minor

Fall 2021

Asian Studies Majors
Anne Marie Feller
Rose Marie Gilfillan
Makinna Jean Miller
Amy Yuka Vogenthaler

Student Spotlight: Nori Catalano

Asia has always been a place of interest to me. There is so much rich culture, language, food, history intertwined through so many countries. The diversity and heritage bring beautiful stories, architecture, and art. I am currently a junior majoring in Asian studies and minoring in studio art. Art has always had a place in my life whether it be drawing, sculpture, or digital art and I believe Asian art is so beautiful and intricate. I hope my love for art and Asia come together at some point down the road. Asian studies called to me because it was something that I was truly passionate about. Based on my background as a Chinese adoptee, I found myself drawn to Asia through music and food. I also have a passion for cooking, and hope to connect my love for cooking with my knowledge of Asia in the future. In my few trips to various countries, I truly found my love for Asia. I knew I wanted to pursue this passion of mine in studying Asian studies because there are endless possibilities to learn and expand my knowledge about so many different topics. Asia has so much to offer and it is such a large place that it cannot be defined in one way. Asia is a booming place at the moment through babyֱ��apps, trade, population, and many other aspects. I am excited to be a part of these rapid changes in the coming years and hope the future brings me there.

During the pandemic, we have seen so many accounts of discrimination against Asians. We also see history repeating itself by discriminating against those who are seen as “different” or “dangerous.” The treatment of the Uyghurs in Xinjian is utterly astonishing and horrific. The re-education camps and the exploitation of these people remain silenced continuing the cycle of ethnic cleansing. Although this topic reaches some mainstream media I believe it needs to be talked about more and bring more attention to this genocide. In my research, I came across a moving piece from a survivor named Gulbahar Haitiwaji. I learned her story and knew I wanted to draw her face and show the silencing of the Uyghur ethnic minority. The horrors that this woman faced are unimaginable. She had to be careful not to yawn, whisper, or wipe her mouth, or else she would be accused of praying which was a sign of terrorist behavior. Honestly did not know very much of the details about Uyghurs before doing some research and understanding some background. I wanted to expand my knowledge on this topic and my final project for Asia 4500 was a perfect place to do so. Hearing personal narratives from those who experienced these atrocities gives the reader a better understanding to put yourself in someone else's shoes. Art is a very powerful tool to show emotion and feelings through depictions and personal representations. I hope my artwork stirs some type of emotional reaction in the viewer to bring attention to the situation and the horrible treatment of the Uyghurs. I decided to convey my understanding and learning of the situation in Xinjian through artwork in hopes that it can educate others in the process.

First Indonesian Potluck Since 2019

On Friday, April 1, CAS brought together Indonesians and friends of Indonesia for a potluck and Ramadan eve celebration. It was our first Indonesian potluck since 2019, and there was terrific energy in the room as people reconnected in person. It was attended by CU Boulder babyֱ��app, staff, and students as well as community members and many brought home-cooked Indonesian food to share.

Over the last few years, CAS has sought to build Southeast Asian studies, including the study of Indonesia, on the CU Boulder campus. Since the 2018-2019 academic year, CAS has hosted a Fulbright Language Teaching Assistant from Indonesia who teaches Indonesian language classes and organizes this annual potluck as outreach to the Indonesian community. This year's FLTA, Akhmad Taufik, has had a growing number of students in his classes. We will bid farewell to Taufik in May and expect to be joined by a new FLTA in August.

Thanks to everyone who helped make this cultural event possible!

CU Boulder Celebrates Tibetan Losar for First Time

By Tenzin Tsepak

On March 4, 2022, the University of babyֱ��app celebrated Tibetan Losar for the first time on campus. Losar, the Tibetan New Year, is celebrated across the Tibetan plateau and in the Himalayan regions of Nepal, India, and Bhutan. This cultural program was jointly organized by the Center for Asian Studies (CAS), the Tibet Himalaya Initiative, and the Anderson Language and Technology Center with gorshey (Tibetan dance), food from the Boulder-based Little Lama Café, and lots of smiling, laughing students and babyֱ��app dancing together.

The event started with the serving of ceremonial sweet rice (dresi)– an auspicious food symbolizing prosperity and good fortune–Tibetan butter tea, chai, and Tibetan cookies (khabsey). CAS Instructor Tenzin Tsepak gave a brief background of Losar and its importance in Tibetan culture. Anthropology Professor Carole McGranahan introduced the Tibet and Himalayan studies program at CU. This was followed by second-semester Tibetan language students, David Kwei and Aidan Euler, who read the Tibetan and English translations of the Sixth Dalai Lama's love songs. Sangay Tashi beautifully emceed the event and melodiously sang a stanza from the Sixth Dalai Lama’s songs.

The dinner along with the ceremonial food and drinks were catered by the newly established Tibetan-owned cafe, Little Lama Cafe at Naropa University. The food menu included a wide variety of cuisines like Tuninisian potato salad, grilled tofu and chicken, red radish pickle, and roasted beets. After the yummy food, Sangay Tashi and Bhumshik Gyal dropped the beat and led the Tibetan gorshey dance party for the next 45 minutes.

This cultural event brought together CU students, babyֱ��app, and the Tibetan community to celebrate and learn about Tibetan and Himalayan culture. The event was attended by 30-35 people.

On March 3, 2022, the U.S. Department of State organized the 2022 Virtual Losar Celebration with messages from the US Secretary of State, Anthony J. Blinken, and Under Secretary Uzra Zeya.

Professor Jane Menken Pioneer in Women's Reproductive Rights

An article in A&S Magazine profiles the research and impact that Professor Menken's work has had in Bangladesh. Written by Lisa Marshall, the article linked below is a great overview of Professor Menken's long-term research and advocacy.

Decades-long CU Boulder-led study shows access to family planning shapes lives for generations

On a sweltering July day in 1984, Jane Menken stepped off a plane in the teeming capital city of Dhaka, Bangladesh, boarded a van for a dusty, four-hour journey to the remote villages to the south and embarked on a decades-long quest to answer a question of global importance:

What happens when women gain the ability to control their reproductive destiny?

Read full article here

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Spotlight November 2021

Anonymous — Thu, 18 Nov 2021 16:45:04 +0000

Spotlight November 2021 Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 11/18/2021 - 09:45

Center for Asian Studies Event and Fundraiser

Wednesday, December 1 at 5pm MST

CAS invites you to our first ever virtual fundraiser on Wednesday, December 1 at 5 pm US mountain time. We aim to raise $25,000 for our speaker series. Join us as we highlight three of our babyֱ��app affiliates talking about their exciting and timely research. The event is free to attend, but we do hope you'll donate to this important effort.

Stephanie Su
Assistant Professor, Art and Art History
Ladies Sewing: Women, Color, and Modernity

Aun Hasan Ali
Assistant Professor, Religious Studies
Studying Islam in the Age of Anger

Lauren Collins
Program Director and Instructor, Asian Studies
Insights from Teaching Asian Studies

Reflections on the Tragedy of Afghanistan

By Jennifer L. Fluri

Afghanistan garnered a significant share of media attention when the Taliban took control of the capital city, Kabul. This attention continued during the subsequent chaotic and disorganized US-led evacuation of American citizens and some but not all Afghan allies. As someone who has been researching gender, babyֱ��app development, conflict, and security in Afghanistan for two decades, I was also struck by the way the “saving Afghan women” narrative, established by the Bush Administration in 2001, resurfaced. While women suffered physically, babyֱ��appally, and emotionally under the Taliban, the prescriptions for improving women’s lives in Afghanistan through babyֱ��app development and humanitarian aid programs regularly imposed values incongruent with those held by many Afghan communities. The unrelentingly narrow representation of Afghan women as a single category both simplified and curtailed a robust understanding of women’s diverse experiences and articulations of their own needs and desires.

While much of the public criticism of the US evacuation focuses on what women will lose now that the Taliban is back in power, precious little critique has been placed on the failings and falling short associated with US-led interventions over the past 20 years. First, let’s identify the successes. Many Afghan women have benefited from internationally funded projects and programs focused on education, job skills training, and health care. Also, Afghan women’s participation in politics since 2002 was partially due to quotas that included positions for women in both the upper and lower houses of parliament. Women also held political office as provincial governors and district/city mayors, along with being chosen by different presidents as minister or holding cabinet positions. With the fall of the US-backed Afghanistan government, these positions along with those held by Afghan men are gone or radically altered. Therefore, focusing on women and the changes to their lives during the Taliban regime remains an important discussion, but should include extensive criticism of US-led international military, humanitarian aid, and babyֱ��app development assistance.

Read the full article here

Last Year's Engaging Annual Events Theme

By Evelyn Shih

From December 2020 to May 2021, CAS held a yearlong lecture series around the theme of “Sound and Noise in Asia.” Following a two-day symposium held in November, the series highlighted sound/noise practices and aesthetics from East Asian broadcast media such as radio and television; the representation of sound and noise in literature; film sound aesthetics; environmental noise practices; the circulation of recording media such as cassettes; and postcolonial sonic space making. The talks were spread across the regions represented at CAS, with topics ranging from Chinese film to Cambodian rock, Indian literature, and Middle Eastern cultures in diaspora.

Held virtually, the lecture series brought attention to the field of sound studies not only at CU Boulder, but also in the broader Asian studies community. Each speaker brought together different groups of scholars and students for academic discussion. As a part of the University mission for diversity, equity, and inclusion, the series not only aimed for geographic and cultural diversity, but also featured women of color.

Read the full report here

Celebrating Joyce Lebra's Contributions

Joyce Lebra, a professor emerita in the History department, passed away on October 10. Professor Lebra was the first woman in the United States to receive a doctorate in Japanese history. She taught Japanese history at CU Boulder for 29 years. Lebra was recognized for her contributions to academic exchange and mutual understanding between the U.S. and Japan with an imperial commendation from the Japanese government in September. She received the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon. Learn more about her extraordinary life below.

Joyce Lebra: Trailblazing scholar and witness to Japanese history - Japan Times

‘CU legend’ Joyce Lebra honored by Japanese government

An Asian Attachment: Honoring the Life and Work of Joyce Chapman Lebra - YouTube

Keene/Lebra Interview 24 Dec 2012 - YouTube

Edward G. Seidensticker Japan Summer Research Grant Report by Zhujun Ma

Thanks to the financial support from the Edward G. Seidensticker Japan Summer Research Grant, I was able to join the summer Japanese language program Princeton in Ishikawa, which lasted from June 11 to August 6 in 2021. Through its intermediatory course covering the textbooks Nakama 2: Japanese Communication, Culture, Context, and Tobira: Gateway to Advanced Japanese, I received adequate training and practice in grammar in order to enhance my level in reading, writing, listening, and speaking. This enables me to roughly understand academic writings in Japanese and include Japanese scholarship into the research of my thesis, which is mainly focused on the worship of the Goddess of Mount Tai and female agency in late imperial China. Thanks to this program’s preparation and my advisor’s recommendation, I am also lucky to join an informal seminar Japanese for Sinologists in 2021 fall to continue to explore Japanese academic reading and translation. I highly appreciate the Seidensticker Scholarship and Center for Asian Studies’ generous help for me to study more about the Japanese language and culture, which I believe will greatly facilitate my Ph.D. application in 2021 fall and future endeavors in the studies of Chinese religions and Asian studies.

Zhujun Ma is a Dual MA student in Religious Studies and Asian Language and Civilizations. Her research mainly focuses on Chinese religions and gender.

CAS Faculty Affiliate Atreyee Bhattacharya's
Article in Nature Magazine

Using information contained in the eighteenth to twentieth century British administrative documents, preserved in the National Archives of India (NAI), we present a 218-year (1729–1947 AD) record of sociobabyֱ��app disruptions and human impacts (famines) associated with ‘rain failures’ that affected the semi-arid regions (SARs) of southern India. By mapping the southern Indian famine record onto long-term spatiotemporal measures of regional rainfall variability, we demonstrate that the SARs of southern India repeatedly experienced famines when annual rainfall reduced by ~ one standard deviation (1 SD), or more, from long-term averages. In other words, ‘rain failures’ listed in the colonial documents as causes of extreme sociobabyֱ��app disruptions, food shortages and human distress (famines) in the southern Indian SARs were fluctuations in precipitation well within the normal range of regional rainfall variability and not extreme rainfall deficits (≥ 3 SD). Our study demonstrates that extreme climate events were not necessary conditions for extreme sociobabyֱ��app disruptions and human impacts rendered by the colonial era famines in peninsular India. Based on our findings, we suggest that climate change risk assessment should consider the potential impacts of more frequent low-level anomalies (e.g. 1 SD) in drought prone semi-arid regions.

Read the full article here

Atreyee Bhattacharya is a paleoclimatologist who studies the nature, causes and sociobabyֱ��app impacts of climate variability in semi-arid climate hotspots of the global south. Atreyee currently hold a research babyֱ��app appointment at the University of babyֱ��app, Boulder

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Spotlight August 2021

Anonymous — Mon, 30 Aug 2021 22:01:29 +0000

Spotlight August 2021 Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 08/30/2021 - 16:01

Looking to the Future of CAS,
Near and Far

As a new academic year begins, I am deeply honored and excited to be taking on the role of babyֱ��app director of the Center for Asian Studies. A few months ago, many of us thought the COVID-19 pandemic was winding down. And then over the summer, India and Indonesia became new global hot spots, and as I write this, the US is also in the midst of a Delta variant surge. In the last few weeks, it has become clear that the virus is not yet done with the world. Nevertheless, with our campus community well vaccinated, the CAS office is open and staff including me are working onsite once again.

Read Rachel's full article here.

CAS introduces our new Tibet and Himalayan Studies Program

The University of babyֱ��app Boulder is one of the top research programs in the country in Tibet and Himalayan Studies, but undergraduate students have been unable to pursue a directed course of study in that field—but scholars are working to change that.

On Sept. 28, 2020, the department received an Undergraduate International Studies and Foreign Languages (UISFL) grant from the U.S. Department of Education for the next two years. The grant supports efforts in the Center for Asian Studies to create a new certificate program in Tibetan and Himalayan Studies. With the expansion of the curriculum, a new instructor position opened, which led new Asian Studies instructor Tenzin Tsepak to the University of babyֱ��app Boulder.

Announcing 2021-22 Event Theme

We’re excited to share our theme for this academic year and look forward to working with colleagues across campus to discover all that we can do with it!

The CAS theme for the 2021-22 academic year is “Intermountain Asia”. With this theme we seek to recognize the many Asianists who work in the Rocky Mountain Front Range and neighboring areas, along with the importance of building a community of Asianists within this region. We also draw attention to the myriad connections between our corner of the world and Asia. Through this theme, we hope to better connect with our fellow Asianists nearby, and to cultivate a vision of Asian Studies that does not limit “Asia” to a distant place or an object of inquiry far removed from our everyday lives here in babyֱ��app and the Rocky Mountain region more broadly. During the 2021-22 academic year, we will feature events that speak to these themes, drawing on the wealth of Asian Studies expertise throughout our intermountain region.

CAS Welcomes New Instructors!

Lauren Collins will be joining us for the 2021-22 academic year as a temporary instructor to teach ASIA 2000 Gateway to Asian Studies, ASIA 4200 Politics of Memory and Heritage in Asia, and ASIA 4500 Urban Asia: Tradition, Modernity, Challenges in the fall and additional classes in the spring. Lauren received her PhD in 2019 from the University of Denver and joins us from the University of Montana, where she has been teaching in the Davidson Honors College.

Thanks to a grant from the US Department of Education, CAS has been able to create a new Instructor of Tibet and Himalayan Studies position which will be filled by Tenzin Tsepak this fall. Tsepak comes to us from Indiana University, where he has just completed his PhD in Central Eurasian Studies. Tsepak will be teaching ASIA 1700 Introduction to Tibetan Civilization; ASIA 4300 Open Topics in Asian Studies – Encounters: Tibet, the Himalayas and the West; TBTN 1110 Colloquial Tibetan I; and TBTN 1210 Modern Literary Tibetan I. Check out these great new courses!

Akhmad Taufik has arrived from Samarinda, East Kalimantan, Indonesia as our new Fulbright Language Teaching Assistant for 2021-22t. Taufik is an English teacher in Indonesia and is also interested in sharing Indonesian cuisine, fashion, dance, and handcrafts with his students and the CU/Boulder community during his term. We look forward to working with him to further expand the Indonesian language and culture offerings at CU while he is here. Interested students can enroll in INDO 1110 Beginning Indonesian I or INDO 2110 Intermediate Indonesian I to work with Taufik this fall.

CAS hosts A Tale of Two Asias: Living In and Beyond the Nuclear Age

Supported with a grant from the Albert Smith Nuclear Age Fund, the Center for Asian Studies is hosting a series of three focused workshops exploring this “Tale of two Asias.” We will explore Japanese and Chinese modes of living in the nuclear age through a technopolitical lens, including considerations of the impacts of energy infrastructures on everyday life, social movements and cultural engagements with nuclear energy development, and the political implications of infrastructural risk and vulnerability. Collectively, these workshops will ask: What are the technopolitical dimensions of efforts to both survive in and move beyond the nuclear age in Asia? What do we learn from paying particular attention to the Japanese and Chinese contexts of these efforts?

The Second Workshop,

China’s Nuclear Belt & Road Socio-technical perspectives on China’s export nuclear infrastructures

will be held in April 2022 at CU Boulder.

CAS Wraps Up Third China Made Workshop

In May 2021, scholars from around the world – Australia, Canada, Cambodia, Estonia, Germany, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, the United Kingdom, and the United States – met in a four-day workshop hosted by the National University of Singapore, the University of babyֱ��app Boulder and University of Toronto to consider how the Chinese experiment in infrastructure development in Southeast Asia is lived. The workshop papers which examined cases from West Papua to Yunnan Province confirmed the centrality of infrastructure to the “China Model of Development,” and that a key to understanding this drive is an analysis of its emergence from, and effects within, China’s domestic economy.

Read a summary of the workshop here.

Third China Made Workshop - "Betcha Nickel: Manifold Routes to the Metropolitan in Indonesia," keynote address from AbdouMaliq Simone

Latest babyֱ��app Journal of
Asian Studies Published!

We are pleased to announce the publication of the Spring 2021 issue of the babyֱ��app Journal of Asian Studies. This issue contains papers written by students in the ASIA 4830 Senior Seminar class, an excerpt from an honors thesis in International Affairs, as well as a special section featuring two policy-oriented papers from the IAFS 4500 Culture and Conflict in South Asia course. These papers cover a wide range of issues and cultures, including “Sexuality and Gender Expression in Male K-Pop Groups: Queering Hwarang Culture, Contemporary Korean Masculinity, and Fandom Desires” by Reilly Gabel, “Painting Identity on the Peninsula: A Century-Long Search for ‘Korean’ Art” by Anne Feller, “Institutional Barriers and Temporary Shanghai Migrants” by Renee Gagne, “Investing in Equitable Development in Post-Conflict Sri Lanka” by Thomas Raney, and “Emissions Trading in India: A Policy for Combatting Toxic Air and Global Warming” by Colton Zadkovic.

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Spotlight April 2021

Anonymous — Fri, 30 Apr 2021 21:46:23 +0000

Spotlight April 2021 Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 04/30/2021 - 15:46

CAS in the Spotlight highlights news about what we have been working on and upcoming events. Look for a new volume two or three times each semester!

Three Kinds of Courage and the Importance of Telling the Xinjiang Story Over and Over

By Darren Byler

Over the past several years discussions of the “reeducation camp” system that targets hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs and other peoples in Northwest China in the name of counter-terrorism has slowly gathered mainstream media attention. I remember giving a talk to the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China in Beijing almost exactly three years ago and explaining how the unfolding mass internment campaign was attacking Muslim social life. Based on their questions, the dozens of international journalists in the audience appeared to be learning about the situation for the first time. I was surprised, because important stories from Joshua Chin and Megha Rajagopalan had already been published months before, laying out much of the systems that were being implemented. But back then, even in Beijing, the Uyghur region of Xinjiang felt far away.

I remember telling the journalists who had gathered in the extraterritorial space of the embassy where the event was held that it was really up to them to bear witness to what was happening in Xinjiang. If they didn’t tell the story, no one would.

Read full article here

Asian Reflections on Trauma and Healing

The Center for Asian Studies has developed this forum for recognizing and learning from the ways peoples in different parts of Asia have responded to traumatic events and crises. We are thinking, in particular, of events relating to racial and ethnic violence, discrimination, and prejudice within Asian societies. We are especially interested in learning more about how Asian societies heal, reconcile, and cultivate resilience as they move beyond such events. How are events remembered or memorialized in public? In private? In literature, poetry, music, song, and other cultural expressions? How are victims celebrated and mourned?

We are primarily interested in sharing examples of translations, images, recordings, or narrative accounts, rather than scholarly analyses of these things. We will continue to update this ongoing blog featuring these submissions as they come in and will eventually feature them in an upcoming e-newsletter. We are also interested in the possibility of holding an event that features readings, viewings, and/or reflections by babyֱ��app on these materials.

We view these posts as our particular contribution – as Asianists – to recognizing the trauma that our community has suffered and providing what we hope might be helpful perspectives from Asia.

Find page here

A Decade of Fukushima: Scholars discuss the implications of the Fukushima disaster for how we live in the nuclear age

By Tim Oakes

On March 18^th and 19^th, the Center for Asian Studies hosted an international group of scholars for the workshop A Decade of Fukushima: Socio-Technical Perspectives on Surviving the Nuclear Age in Japan. Professor Hirokazu Miyazaki of Northwestern University launched the workshop on Thursday evening with his keynote address “Nuclear Compensation: Hope, Responsibility, and Collaboration around Fukushima.” On Friday, workshop presentations were delivered by Professors Ryo Morimoto (Princeton University), Hiroko Kumaki (Dartmouth College), Noriko Manabe (Temple University), and Sulfikar Amir (Nanyang Technology University). Discussion comments were provided by CU Boulder babyֱ��app Kate Goldfarb, Tim Oakes, Donna Goldstein, Miriam Kingsberg Kadia, and CAS postdoctoral fellow Darren Byler. A recording of the workshop can be found here.

Full article here

The Political Crisis in Myanmar: Panel Discussion with Emerging Myanmar Scholars

On February 24th, CAS partnered with Aruna Global South to co-host the panel discussion “The Political Crisis in Myanmar: Nuanced Perspectives on the Nation’s Past, Present, and Future.” The panel featured four emerging scholars with with indigenous and heritage ties to Myanmar: Than Toe Aung (MA student, Central European University), Ashley Aye Aye Dun (PhD student, Brown University), Jangai Jap (PhD student, George Washington University), and Htet Thiha Zaw (PhD student, University of Michigan). The panel was organized by CU Boulder PhD student Chu May Pang, and co-moderated with CAS Director Tim Oakes.

The Ends of Kinship: Connecting Himalayan Lives between Nepal and New York

Professor Sienna Craig, Dr. Pasang Yangjee Sherpa, Professor Carole McGranahan

On Thursday, February 18, THI/CAS hosted a book event for Professor Sienna Craig (Dartmouth College, anthropology)'s new book The Ends of Kinship: Connecting Himalayan Lives between Nepal and New York (University of Washington Press, 2020). Approximately 60-70 people attended this online event with Professor Craig, Dr. Pasang Yangjee Sherpa, and CU Professor Carole McGranahan.

We want to congratulate this year's graduating class! They finished their degrees under difficulty circumstances, and we want to celebrate their achievements!
Here is a sample of the theses from this year's graduates:

Ann Feller: Painting Identity on the Peninsula: A Century-Long Search for ‘Korean’ Art

Makinna Miller: How do money laundering practices in Chinese state-owned banks compare to money laundering in privately owned banks in Europe and North America?

Amy Yuka Vogenthaler: Atomic Bomb Nationalism: The Construction of the Japanese Postwar Identity Through the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum

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E-News

Spotlight April 2024

Fluid Asia Through Two Blockages: Labor Unfreedom and Geothermal Justice

CAS Has a New Home!

Teaching Taiwan an Experiential Learning Essay

Waging Peace Project Essay Contest Winner Announced

Indonesian Student Exchange Program Launches

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Spotlight October 2023

Rachel Rinaldo Returns After Fulbright

Celebrating a Decade of Undergraduate Research: Introducing the 10th Issue of CJAS

Upcoming Event: Green politics in the Lower Mekong Subregion

Upcoming Event: Fallout: Asian networks of nuclearity

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Spotlight May 2023

Graduate Student Awards:

Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowships

Undergraduate Awards:

Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant

Tibetan and Himalayan Studies Professional Development Grant

Cultures and Languages Across the Curriculum Course Development Grant

The Asia Symposium 2023: Environment, Empire, Social Justice

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Spotlight April 2023

(Re)Conceptualizing Climate Justice: The importance of place, scale, and social relations

Ambassador Ted Osius comes to CAS for a talk and book signing

CU Boulder Tibetan Losar 2023 Celebration— A Big Hit

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Spotlight January 2023

Looking Back Fifty Years, America in Vietnam:

Cumulative Reflection on What the Killing of Mahsa Jina Amini Sparked In Iran

CAS Executive Director Danielle Rocheleau Salaz contributes to Cultures and Languages Across the Curriculum in Higher Education: Harnessing the Transformative Potentials of CLAC Across Disciplines

CAS Opportunities for Students and Faculty

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Spotlight October 2022

Two new factsheets on China’s global development model published

Announcing a new certificate in Tibetan and Himalayan Studies at CU Boulder

Announcing a new Southeast Asian Studies track for Asian Studies majors

Finding Beauty in Data: Exploring the Indian Subcontinent Through Climate Research

Virtual Shakuhachi Research Made Possible by Seidensticker Grant

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Spotlight April 2022

China's Nuclear Belt and Road: CAS Brief and Upcoming Event

Even China Cannot Rescue Nuclear Power from its Woes

Of missed targets

What about China’s role in nuclear power elsewhere?

Putting it all together

China’s Nuclear Belt & Road

Center for Asian Studies 2022 Symposium Intermountain Asia and DEI: Asian Studies in babyֱ��app and Beyond

Center for Asian Studies 2022 Symposium Intermountain Asia and DEI: Asian Studies in babyֱ��app and Beyond

British and Irish Studies Room, Norlin Library 5th Floor (CBIS) Friday, April 29, 2022Noon to 4:30 pm

Student Spotlight: Nori Catalano

First Indonesian Potluck Since 2019

CU Boulder Celebrates Tibetan Losar for First Time

Professor Jane Menken Pioneer in Women's Reproductive Rights

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Spotlight November 2021

Center for Asian Studies Event and Fundraiser

Reflections on the Tragedy of Afghanistan

Last Year's Engaging Annual Events Theme

Celebrating Joyce Lebra's Contributions

Edward G. Seidensticker Japan Summer Research Grant Report by Zhujun Ma

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Spotlight August 2021

Looking to the Future of CAS, Near and Far

CAS introduces our new Tibet and Himalayan Studies Program

Announcing 2021-22 Event Theme

CAS Welcomes New Instructors!

CAS hosts A Tale of Two Asias: Living In and Beyond the Nuclear Age

CAS Wraps Up Third China Made Workshop

Latest babyֱ��app Journal of Asian Studies Published!

Off

Spotlight April 2021

Three Kinds of Courage and the Importance of Telling the Xinjiang Story Over and Over

A Decade of Fukushima: Scholars discuss the implications of the Fukushima disaster for how we live in the nuclear age

Off

Teaching Taiwan
an Experiential Learning Essay

Celebrating a Decade of
Undergraduate Research:
Introducing the 10th Issue of CJAS

Upcoming Event:
Green politics in the Lower Mekong Subregion

Upcoming Event:
Fallout: Asian networks of nuclearity

The Asia Symposium 2023:
Environment, Empire, Social Justice

(Re)Conceptualizing Climate Justice:
The importance of place, scale, and social relations

China's Nuclear Belt and Road:
CAS Brief and Upcoming Event

Center for Asian Studies 2022 Symposium
Intermountain Asia and DEI:
Asian Studies in babyֱ��app and Beyond

Center for Asian Studies 2022 Symposium
Intermountain Asia and DEI: Asian Studies in babyֱ��app and Beyond

British and Irish Studies Room, Norlin Library 5^th Floor (CBIS)
Friday, April 29, 2022
Noon to 4:30 pm

Looking to the Future of CAS,
Near and Far

Latest babyֱ��app Journal of
Asian Studies Published!