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Musical Afternoon April 12: Encounters of Traditional Chinese and Western Music
RAS History Club
Register
When: April 12, 2025, 4:00 PM - 6:00 PM
Where：L1-A02, Building 13, 888 Dongan Road
Shanghai, China Metro lines 7/12 Middle Longhua Road (龙华中路站) Exit 5
东安路888号尚海湾13幢一楼L1-A02室（靠近尚敦家具旁）
Join DKU Professor Max Amici for a talk on his string quartet Encounters, inspired by the Chinese folk melody Lanhuahua (兰花花) from Shaanxi Province’s Xintianyou style. Professor Amici will discuss the challenges and techniques of integrating this traditional tune into a modern Western composition, focusing on the use of chromatic counterpoint.
No prior experience with music is necessary to enjoy the talk, which will be illustrated with many musical excerpts.
This talk is a must for anyone interested in understanding a creative, artistic process that crosses Western and Chinese cultures.
SPEAKERS
Maximiliano Amici – Maximiliano Amici earned his Ph.D. in music composition at Duke University in 2021. Focusing his research on the exploration of new artistic and theoretical paths for contemporary composition, he strives to contribute to bringing new music to larger audiences. His music is published by DoNeMus and has been recorded by the Italian Symphony Orchestra, The Ciompi Quartet, and Imani Winds, among others. He began teaching at Duke Kunshan University in 2021, where he is currently an Assistant Professor of Music and Composition.
RAS Art Focus March 16 – China’s Arts and Aesthetics of the Past: Art, Display and Performance in Prehistoric China
When
Mar 16, 2025
(3:00 PM - 5:00 PM) (GMT+8)
Curated and moderated by RAS Art Focus Convener and Art Historian Julie Chun, we continue our studies in the 2024-2025 series China’s Arts and Aesthetics of the Past as we delve into the material culture of the recent and distant history to assess how objects ranging from imperial patronage to utilitarian handicrafts have shaped China’s aesthetics through the ages.
Material records of art and display are a sure sign of human presence. This lecture by Ed Allen, Postdoctoral Researcher of Chinese Archeology at Fudan University, will take us back 30000 years, to China’s earliest known excavated adornments. We will follow this through the emergence of settled agriculture in the Chinese heartland, the rise of complex societies across China and emergence of the traditional Chinese state. We will examine how art, display and society variously intertwined across these separate phases. The lecture will serve as an introduction to the riches of archaeology in China and how archaeology can impact how we think about art and display even in the Instagram Era.
SPEAKERS
Ed Allen – Postdoctoral Researcher at Chinese Archeology at Fudan University
Register here.
Join Us for an Engaging Talk with Paolo Visigalli
Location: 长乐路325号，近陕西南路 325 Changle Rd, Near Shaanxi South Rd，Shanghai, China
To register, please scan the QR code below.
Marco Polo and the Heresy of Evil: Meeting Yuan dynasty Fuzhou’s secretive religious group
Around 1290 CE, the famed Venetian merchant and adventurer Marco Polo was visiting the Southern Chinese province of Fujian. Only recentlyconquered by the Mongol army and a hotbed of frequent rebellion, this province’s countryside was infested with tigers and unidentified foxlike rodents, while its coastal cities, bustling hubs on the Maritime Silk Road, were among the most cosmopolitan places on earth. In one such city, Fuzhou, Marco and his uncle Maffio ran into what they emotionally identified as fellow Christians. But the Polos were almost certainly wrong. This mysterious religious group were most likely Manichaeans, the easternmost offshoot of a world religion founded by Mani, the third-century mystic from Sasanian Mesopotamia, the self-styled Apostle of Light.
This talk will closely examine this fascinating and unique episode describing the Polos’ encounter with the Fuzhou “Christians”. We will first consider it in relation to Marco’s book’s complex textual history. We will then explore how recent spectacular discoveries of textual and artistic Manichaean artefacts in Fujian shed new light on some salient aspects of Marco’s account. We will finally speculate about Marco’s reaction had he known the religious group he helped gain institutional support from the Mongol Court were not fellow Christians but distantly related coreligionists of the Cathars, Medieval Europe’s Heresy of Evil.
Speaker’s Bio:
LIAssociate Professor at Shanghai Normal University
Paolo Visigalli is Associate Professor at Shanghai Normal University (SHNU), Department of World History. His main area of research is Indian and Chinese Buddhism, with a burgeoning interest in Chinese Manichaeism. He holds a PhD in South Asian Studies from the University of Cambridge. Prior to joining SHNU within the framework of Thousand Talents Plan, he was a Postdoc at the University of Munich and the Max Plack Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, and taught Sanskrit and South Asian history at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.
*** Members of the DKU community are invited to attend at a discounted rate of 60 RMB including one drink.
Come explore history and engage in thought-provoking discussions!
RAS HISTORY CLUB JAN 18: ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE SELF IN FRANCOPHONE LITERATURE
Asian and North African francophone literatures share not only a common language but are both fertile grounds where writers explore the experiences of the self, families, and society at large. In these literatures, writing functions as an archaeological device to make sense of the obstructive social processes that make life excessively demanding and complex. This orientation positions Asian and North African francophone narratives as some the most significant archives of the individual’s journey in and out of the private or public sphere in the modern era.
This talk will introduce novels written by Aki Shimazaki, Tahar Ben Jelloun, Linda Lê, Mohammad Berrada, Kim Thuy, Abdallah Laroui, Marguerite Duras and Pham Duy Khiem, and will invite us into these two literary and cultural traditions, bringing North Africa and Asian societies and literatures into close conversation with each other.
Location
Garden Books
长乐路325号，近陕西南路
325 Changle Rd, Near Shaanxi South Rd
Shanghai, China
About the speaker
Adrien Pouille is an Assistant Professor of African Literature at Duke Kunshan University. He holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Indiana University Bloomington, and has taught at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, Wabash College, and Indiana University Bloomington. He is the author of Human Journeys and the Quest for Knowledge in African Writing, published in 2021, and contributed to the Saafi-Saafi & English/French Dictionary (2016), among other publications.
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: Vigne, 1221-1 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/
