The Many Lives of Shirley Yamaguchi: A Journey Through Identity

Join Us for an Engaging Talk on the Fascinating Life of Shirley Yamaguchi (Li Hsiang-Lan 李香兰) led by Richard M. Davis, Senior Lecturer in Cultural Studies at Duke Kunshan University.

Event Details:
Date: Saturday, November 9
Time: 4:00 PM – 6:00 PM (GMT+8)

Location: Sketchyard Cafe, Dong’an Road 888, Haoshang Bay Building 13, F1, Shanghai, China

 Event Description:
Explore the extraordinary life of Yoshiko Yamaguchi (1920-2014), also known as Shirley Yamaguchi and Li Hsiang-Lan 李香兰. Born in China to Japanese parents, Yamaguchi was a singer, actress, journalist, and politician whose career spanned China, Japan, and Hollywood. Her life was marked by complex identities and international controversy, including an arrest in 1945 on charges of treason—later dismissed when her true nationality was revealed.

Join Senior Lecturer Richard M. Davis from Duke Kunshan University as he delves into Yamaguchi’s captivating life story, from her dual identity to her cinematic contributions and her marriage to Japanese American sculptor Isamu Noguchi. This talk will include insightful film clips showcasing her diverse roles.

Don’t miss this unique opportunity to learn about a woman who navigated multiple identities and left an indelible mark on cinema and history.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER:

RICHARD M. DAVIS

Senior Lecturer in Cultural Studies at DKU

Richard M. Davis is a film and media scholar who works on cinematic crossings between Japan, East Asia, and the United States. He is Senior Lecturer in Cultural Studies and Director of Signature Work at Duke Kunshan University. He received his PhD from the University of Chicago’s Joint Degree in East Asian Cinema program, and previously held positions at Singapore Management University and Tsinghua University. His in-progress monograph, One Hundred Million Voices Singing, describes the collisions between aesthetics, ideology, and pleasure in musical films produced in Imperial Japan during the so-called Fifteen Years’ War (1931-1945). Material from this project has been published in Ex-Position, The Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema, and the Handbook of Japanese Cinema: The 1930s and the Advent of Sound (forthcoming). Additional research and teaching interests include international film history, East Asian modernities, animation, game studies, sound studies, and film theory.

* Members of the DKU community receive a discounted admission.

Should We Care About The Future?

Should We Care about the Future? Vasubandhu on Selfless Agency and the Pursuit of Happiness.

Location: Vigne1221-1 Changle Lu , Shanghai, China

Time: October 26th, 4:00-6:00 pm

Professor Oren Hanner will give a lecture in Shanghai on October 26 sponsored by HRC and the Royal Asiatic Society. Members of the DKU community can register at a discounted rate using a valid @dukekushan.edu.cn email address.

Buddhist philosophy is well known for its rejection of an enduring self that exists beyond the various mental and physical components that make up a person. This rejection, however, raises a host of difficulties—both philosophical and practical. For example, if this is the case, how and why should Buddhists careabout their future happiness? If there is no enduring self that persists from past to present to future, should we worry about whether the outcomes of our actions produce happiness for ourselves in the future?

In this talk, Professor Oren Hanner of Duke Kunshan University introduces the Buddhist critique of the self that underlies this problem. The talk then discusses the way in which the Indian thinker Vasubandhu (c. 4th-5th century CE), one of the founders of the Yogācāra school of Buddhist philosophy, explains the possibility of agency in the absence of a persisting self and his solution to the problem of our motivation to act for our own future happiness, given that the Buddhist path prescribes non-attachment to the self and letting go of desire.

Speaker’s Bio:

Oren Hanner’s research focuses on the history of Buddhist philosophy inIndia, ethics, philosophy of action, and cross-cultural philosophy. His recent writing dealt with questions related to the meaning of life, joint moral agency, and justice, as they can be understood from a Buddhist perspective.

Oren is the editor of Buddhism and Scepticism: Historical, Philosophical, and Comparative Perspectives (Projekt Verlag, 2020) and has published articles in various journals, including Sophia, Comparative Philosophy, Philosophy East and West, and Mindfulness. From 2019 to 2023, he was the book review editor of the Journal of Buddhist Ethics.

Oren holds a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and communication from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, an M.A. in philosophy from Tel-Aviv University, and a Ph.D. in Buddhist Studies from the University of Hamburg.

Register now:  https://ras-china.glueup.cn/event/ras-philosophy-club-oct-26-should-we-care-about-the-future-45311/

Exclusive Pre-Release Screening -The Dependence of the Old House

Exclusive Pre-Release Screening -The Dependence of the Old House

Date: October 22nd
Time: 7:30 PM
Location: IB 1008

Event Details:
Join us for an exclusive pre-release screening of The Dependence of the Old House, a captivating film that explores the intricate relationships between people and their surroundings. After the screening, stay for an engaging Q&A session with the director, Shi Anping, who will share insights into the filmmaking process, the inspiration behind the story, and the challenges faced during production.

This is a fantastic opportunity to connect with fellow film enthusiasts and gain a deeper understanding of the artistic vision behind the film.

Don’t miss out on this unique experience! 

Climate Emergency and the Future of Democracy

Date: Monday, April 15th

Time: 5:00PM CST

Location: Zoom – 922 1935 5842 

On Monday, April 15th, Professor Robyn Eckersley will have a seminar on Climate Emergency and the Future of Democracy. This seminar tracks the rise of climate emergency claim making as a global discourse, and takes stock of the criticisms from those who argue that the emergency frame should be abandoned because it will necessarily undermine democracy. Against these critics, Professor Eckersley offers an alternative and more sympathetic democratic critique of the grammar of climate emergency claim making, and then poses and critically explores two questions that have been ignored by the critics: what might happen to liberal democracy if the climate emergency movement fails in its demands upon the state? Could the climate emergency movement be a potential saviour of democracy because it seeks to build legitimacy for measures that would safeguard the fundamental socio-ecological conditions for the survival of democratic states?

Robyn Eckersley is Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor in Political Science in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne, and a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. She has published widely in the fields of environmental political theory and International Relations, with a particular focus on ecological democracy, the greening of states, and the ethics, politics and governance of climate change. She received a Distinguished Scholar Award (Environmental Studies Section) at the International Studies Association Annual Convention in Toronto 2019.

 

 

Student Report on “Chinese Female-Only Script: Unveiling the Stories and Influence of 女书 (Nvshu)”

Reported by Yixin Gu, Class of 2027

The event was jointly sponsored by the HRC Gender Studies Initiative and the CSCC Meanings, Identities and Communities Cluster.

On March 20, 2024, guest speaker Xiuyuan You was invited to the campus to conduct a lecture and workshop on the Chinese national intangible cultural heritage– Nvshu. Ms. You is the Jiangsu Nvshu Cultural Ambassador, Dean of Wuxi Nvshu Academy, and Associate Researcher of the Chinese Nvshu Research Center at Wuhan University.

Continue reading “Student Report on “Chinese Female-Only Script: Unveiling the Stories and Influence of 女书 (Nvshu)””

Student Report on “Unpacking Civil Warfare: The First Indochina War, 1945-1954”

Reported by Zhenan Xie, class of 2026

During the mini-term session, on March 11st, the DKU Humanities Research Center invited Professor Edward Miller as the guest speaker of an insightful discussion focusing on his research topic about the first Indochina war. The lecture invited and guided nearly 40 participants to examine the ignored facts of this war usually defined as decolonization or part of the Global Cold War, revealing its essence as a civil war instead. Prof. Miller also used this case to help participants learn about the conclusional features existed in civil warfare.

Prof. Miller first introduced and summarized a few commons often applicable to sovereignty in civil wars, featuring divisible, fragmented, and layered. It was also pointed out that the behavior of claiming legitimacy often played significant role shaping such circumstance of sovereignty in civil wars as multi-level conflicts, including Civil wars: multi-level conflicts consisting of conflicts between warring parties, warring parties and civilian populations, and within local populations and communities. Then Prof. Miller led participants to go through the life experience of Colonel Jean Leroy, founder of UMDC, who was born in and excluded by Ben Tre Province. The story of Leroy helped prove that these existed phenomenon of Vietnamese-led army under command of French imperial governance, proving Prof. Miller’s view about The First Indochina War as a civil warfare. By this lecture an insightful topic was proposed that different understandings might be applied to a same historical event or period, depending on the aspects focused on and interpretations implemented from different perspectives. While exploring and unveiling the untold stories behind common view can help historians and the public have a more complete cognition of history.

The second stage of Q&A session involved enthusiastic participation by both students and professors in attendance. Various questions about the class topic and suggestions regarding the research content were put forward and Prof. Miller answered each of them in detail with extensive supplement of presentation to help participants better understand this complex chapter of history.

We’d like to express our sincere appreciation to Prof. Miller’s impressive presentation and engagement by every participant in attendance. With the loosened COVID policy, this lecture would be an exciting start of continuous activities held in person coming up in 2024. This discussion and insights shared in it is believed to contribute to laying the foundation of a series of lectures. We look forward to holding more activities on humanities research and engaging more students and faculties in the future.

Unpacking Civil Warfare: The First Indochina War, 1945-1954

Join us for an eye-opening discussion with Edward Miller as he unveils the untold stories behind Vietnam’s turbulent history. Discover how the conflicts from the 1940s to the 1970s were more than just wars of decolonization or part of the Global Cold War—they were brutal civil wars. Explore the intriguing intersection of colonial violence and civil warfare in Bến Tre, Vietnam, and gain a deeper understanding of this complex chapter in history.

Event Details:

  • Date: March 11, Monday
  • Time: 5 – 6 pm
  • Venue:IB 1047

Abstract: The wars that convulsed Vietnam and the rest of Indochina from the 1940s to the 1970s have long been narrated either as wars of decolonization or as components of the Global Cold War.   Recently, however, some Vietnam Studies scholars have pointed out that these conflicts were also bloody civil wars in which Vietnamese and other Indochinese groups inflicted enormous violence on each other. What, exactly, does it mean to treat these complex conflicts as civil wars? In this talk, Edward Miller explores the intersection of colonial violence and civil warfare in one part of Vietnam: the province of Bến Tre in the Mekong Delta.

Don’t miss out on this enlightening event! Join us and broaden your perspective on Vietnam’s past.