RAS News & Events – Duke Kunshan University Humanities Research Center

October 28, 2024October 28, 2024

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.

October 16, 2024October 17, 2024

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/