Religion+Science, with Yitzhak Lewis and Marcus Werner

The Religion+ research group of the Humanities Research Center at Duke Kunshan University is pleased to announce its Tuesday Night Conversation Series, Religion+X.
Join the first conversation on January 10, 2022.Religion+Science, with Yitzhak Lewis and Marcus Werner
Date/Time:
January 10, 6:30-8pm
Location: DKU Water Pavilion

*Snacks and drinks provided! Join us!

Continue reading “Religion+Science, with Yitzhak Lewis and Marcus Werner”

HRC Care Lab Presents: “Compassionate Matters” with Peter Li

Compassion Matters
Humans and Nonhuman Individuals in Today’s World
(动物处境与人类的偏见:年轻人能做什么?)

The recording of the talk is now available:

Date/Time: Dec 15, 2022, 9am China time
Location: Zoom ID 975 3620 3156
Speaker: Peter Li, Associate Professor of E. Asian Politics, Animal Law and Policy at the University of Houston-Downtown

Abstract
This presentation is about the need for humans to be sensitive and responsive to the dignity, feelings and well-being of nonhuman animals. I hope to shed light on the following points to stress the need for our compassion to extended to nonhuman individuals. Continue reading “HRC Care Lab Presents: “Compassionate Matters” with Peter Li”

Congratulations, Gürol Baba and Jay Winter on their recent publication!

Gürol Baba, Jay Winter, “The Wilsonian Moment at Lausanne, 1922–1923”, Journal of Modern European History, 2022, Vol. 20(4) 536–553

Using Turkish, British, French, and Australian archival records, this article examined the background and diplomatic strategies of the Turkish delegation at the Treaty of Lausanne and its selective understanding of self-determination, excluding non-Turkic and non-Muslim people in Anatolia from the ‘self’ that has the right to determine its national existence. It also explored the reasons why the Allies acknowledged this exclusion in the Treaty of Lausanne of 1923. The article borrowed from Erez Manela’s interpretation of the ‘Wilsonian moment’ to frame these diplomatic and political developments and to show how and why the democratic intent of Wilson’s idea of self-determination vanished in the framing of the Peace Treaty of Lausanne in 1923. Continue reading “Congratulations, Gürol Baba and Jay Winter on their recent publication!”

Religion+ Group Announces Tuesday Night Conversation Series

The Religion+ research group at Duke Kunshan University is pleased to announce its Tuesday Night Conversation Series, Religion+X

The series will take place every Tuesday from 6:30pm-8pm and feature DKU religious studies professors James Miller, Tommaso Tesei and Ben Van Overmeire in informal conversation with other DKU professors on a wide range of topics. Snacks and drinks will be provided, and students are warmly invited to join in the conversation with the professors.  Events are planned to be in person, but may be moved online in accordance with Covid policies.

Planned location: Water Pavilion on DKU campus

The provisional line-up is as follows. Continue reading “Religion+ Group Announces Tuesday Night Conversation Series”

Congratulations to Selina Lai-Henderson on her new publication!

Congratulations to Selina Lai-Henderson’s new publication! “Langston Hughes and the Shanghai Jazz Scene.” Langston Hughes in Context, ed. Vera Kutzinski and Anthony Reed. Cambridge University Press, 2022.

Here’s the link to the book.

Biography

Selina Lai-Henderson

Selina Lai-Henderson is an Assistant Professor of American Literature and History at Duke Kunshan University. Her research and teaching are at the heart of transnational American Studies and literary history. Her major intellectual theme revolves around locating works of American literature in twentieth-century China and in translation. She is the author of Mark Twain in China (Stanford UP, 2015), and have published in PMLA (forthcoming, 2023) and MELUS, among other places. She is currently Chair of the International Committee at the American Studies Association, and co-directs Freedom Lab at the Humanities Research Center at DKU. She is on the Editorial Board of Global Nineteenth Century Studies, and I am a Senior Associate Managing Editor of the Journal of Transnational American Studies.

Student Report on ‘Reinterpreting China’s Second World War’ by Professor Rana Mitter

Reported by Mateja Bokan, Class of 2025.

This lecture was part of Statelessness Conference that tells the story of statelessness in Asia and the Pacific during the Second World War.

‘Reinterpreting China’s Second World War’ by Professor Rana Mitter of Oxford University focused on the question of the refugee and how they fit into the narrative of wartime China. Professor started by explaining how there are significant differences in discussion of the what the term statelessness might be within the Chinese context, especially as most understanding of the term comes from a European perspective. Further, he also explained that the vast majority of people who fled war in China during the 1930s and 1940s had many problems, but they were saying they were fed particular information of the Republic of China as means of a larger operation at the time. as such, the experience of refugees During that. It was harder to record and is thus more stimulating to explore compared to the history of refugees in the past decade or early 2000s.

Continue reading “Student Report on ‘Reinterpreting China’s Second World War’ by Professor Rana Mitter”

Student Report: Statelessness Conference Overview

Reported by Mateja Bokan, Class of 2025

Co-sponsored by the Humanities Research Center and the Arts and Humanities Division at Duke Kunshan University, the Statelessness Conference took place on December 1st and 2nd in person and online in Barcelona. This project aims to tell the story of statelessness in Asia and the Pacific during the Second World War by building upon Hannah Arendt’s classic account of the plight of the stateless. Throughout the two days, the focus was to review chapters of the book expected to be published by 2024, as the conclusion to this research project. Continue reading “Student Report: Statelessness Conference Overview”

Student Report on Meredith Oyen’s “The international politics of refugee settlement in Shanghai”

Reported by Chloe Alimurong, Class of 2025

The international politics of refugee settlement in Shanghai by Meredith Oyen: Associate professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC)

This lecture is part of Statelessness Conference that tells the story of statelessness in Asia and the Pacific during the Second World War.

In her paper (currently under development) on Statelessness in China and The International Politics of Refugee Settlement in Shanghai, UMBC’s Associate Professor Meredith Oyen described how China navigates the situation regarding different populations of stateless persons after WWII. The international port of Shanghai brought in a mass influx of refugees in 1938. From then, local organizations formed in order to aid these populations, especially Jewish refugees. Oyen studied how China responded to the different mix of refugee situations. Continue reading “Student Report on Meredith Oyen’s “The international politics of refugee settlement in Shanghai””

Student Report on Juvenile Abolitionism

Reported by Cody Schmidt, Class of 2025

This talk is part of HRC’s Freedom Lab with Professor Jesse Olsavsky, a series of events and lectures exploring the relationship between freedom and un-freedom in the modern world. Freedom Lab focuses on topics such as abolitionism, feminism, colonialism, and more.

Michaël Roy, professor of American Studies at Université Paris Nanterre, joined Duke Kunshan’s Jesse Olsavsky, professor of History, to discuss the key role children played in the abolitionist movement. Professor Roy is currently working on a book on the topic of children and abolitionism, with this lecture serving as an introduction to his first draft. Referred to as “juvenile abolitionism,” Roy focuses on the rationale of this phenomenon in the first chapter of his book. Continue reading “Student Report on Juvenile Abolitionism”