International Studies Seminar on 25 June (Sunday) at Osaka University

Yone Sugita Announcement
Location
Japan
Subject Fields
American History / Studies, Australian and New Zealand History / Studies, British History / Studies, Humanities, Religious Studies and Theology

Dear Colleagues:

We will hold an international studies seminar on 25 June  (Sunday) at Osaka University, Osaka Japan. We will have three distinguished scholars. Seminar papers are available for participants only. 
Yone Sugita sugita@lang.osaka-u.ac.jp

Best,
Yone Sugita

*********************

International Studies Seminar at Osaka University

Date: 25 June 2017 (Sunday)

Venue: Quartier Multilingue, Center for Education in Liberal Arts and Sciences, Toyonaka Campus, Osaka University

http://www.osaka-u.ac.jp/en/access/index.html#toyonaka (access map: Toyonaka Campus)

http://www.osaka-u.ac.jp/en/access/toyonaka/toyonaka.html l (campus map: 1st floor of #30)

(http://www.celas.osaka-u.ac.jp/facilities/ in Japanese only)

 

Session 1:10:00-11:00

Professor Maggie Ivanova (Lecturer in Drama, Flinders University)

http://www.flinders.edu.au/people/maggie.ivanova

Title:

Dramaturgy of Mobility: Towards Crossover and Fusion in Out of the Ordinary

 

Abstract:

This article examines the implications that the new cultural competencies and literacies associated with participatory and popular cultures might hold for dramaturgy in terms of 

characterisation, creating a sense of space-time, and the artist’s role in society. Our analysis focuses on Alex Vickery-Howe’s new Australian play Out of the Ordinary (2016), situating 

it in the context of his earlier explorations of alternative dramaturgies, Once Upon a Midnight (2008) and Molly’s Shoes (2011). Drawing structurally on the ways crossover and fusion have 

developed new cultural expression and reached new audiences in music and film, we investigate the creative potential comics, manga, anime and related fan cultures might hold for dramaturgy. 

Our goal is to explore the thinking that underlies crossover and fusion as artistic practices requiring a kind of creative bilingualism, in our case, a mastery of the cultural competencies 

and literacies associated with cross- and multi-modal creative expression. We suggest that such creative bilingualism has been a continuing element in culture since the rise of melodrama, 

reminding us that expressive turns towards mystery, magic, intense spiritual experiences, etc. could, in fact, underscore social engagement.

 

Seminar Paper is available (for participants only)

 

Discussants:

TBA

 

 

Session 2: 11:10 – 12:10

Professor Kathi Kern (Director, the Center for the Enhancement of Learning and Teaching, University of Kentucky)

https://history.as.uky.edu/users/kern  

Title:

Winnifred Wygal’s Flock: Same-Sex Desire and Christian Faith in the 1920s

Abstract:

This paper explores the diary of a Winifred Wygal, a YWCA worker in the 1920s. Through the unique lens of this diary, readers are asked to consider the role that religious faith played in 

validating same-sex love in the 1920s. Protestant theology—particularly the notion of God’s capacious love—emboldened Wygal to stand firmly outside the mainstream of American society, both 

in her rejection of American racism and in her embrace of same-sex love.

 

Seminar Paper is available (for participants only)

 

Discussants:

Professor Gavin Campbell (Professor, Doshisha University)

https://doshisha.academia.edu/GavinJamesCampbell

Professor Robert Ó’Móchain (Associate Professor, Ritsumeikan University)

http://research-db.ritsumei.ac.jp/Profiles/112/0011170/prof_e.html

 

 

Lunch Workshop (12:10-13:00)

Professor Maggie Ivanova

Professor Kathi Kern

Professor Philip Harling (Professor of History & Gaines Professor of the Humanities, the University of Kentucky)

http://www.uky.edu/academy/phil-harling

 

 

Session 3: 13:00 – 14:00

Professor Philip Harling

Title:

Opium, “Victorian Values,” and the Anglo-Chinese Wars, 1839-1860

Abstract:

              Today, just about anybody who has ever heard of the Anglo-Chinese wars of the mid-nineteenth century understands that they were chiefly about opium. The East India Company and 

then the British Raj produced an enormous quantity of it to meet the seemingly insatiable Chinese demand. Indeed, opium was the only British imperial import for which Chinese demand was 

enough to help offset the trade imbalance caused by the even less satiable British demand for Chinese tea.  It was also a vital source of revenue for the Government of India. In 1839, as 

part of its effort to more strictly enforce its longstanding anti-opium laws, the Chinese imperial government confiscated from British merchants and destroyed over 20,000 chests of opium. 

This action triggered a British military campaign that ended in a humiliating defeat for the Qing Empire. Opium smuggling grew apace, and after the Second Opium War it was effectively 

legalized.  Given these facts, it’s not surprising that in Chinese official history the Opium Wars are treated as a conspiracy to bring the country to its knees through drugs and violence. 

It is no less surprising that to most western historians today, they are a particularly breathtaking example of Victorian hypocrisy.

              How, at the time, did Britons justify what now seems so unjustifiable?  Few British commentators denied that opium was one cause of the Chinese conflicts. But even fewer 

thought it was immoral to foist opium on China in violation of Chinese law. Fewer still felt there was inadequate provocation to merit British military action against the Qing Empire. My 

overarching argument is that Britons leant heavily on stadial logic in explaining the Chinese conflicts to themselves. First of all, they contended, the Qing mandarins needed to be forced 

to negotiate with the British as equals rather than tributaries, chiefly because Britain had long since surpassed them in civilizational terms, however reluctant the mandarins were to 

acknowledge it. Secondly, they needed to be forced to open more of their ports to Western traders for the sake of their own civilizational advancement; the restrictive Canton system was a 

hallmark of Chinese stagnation in the dawning era of global Free Trade. Finally, Chinese subjects no less than their rulers needed to be made to learn the self-restraint that was a hallmark 

of truly progressive societies; legalizing opium would help them to do so, just as Britons had become more sober despite – perhaps in part even because of – the free and legal sale of hard 

liquor. Thus the Opium Wars provide some especially vivid examples of the flexibility of stadial logic – the kind of logic the mid-Victorians instinctively reached for in justifying 

imperial violence to themselves.

 

Seminar Paper is available (for participants only)

 

Discussants:

Professor Gavin Campbell (Professor, Doshisha University)

 

Professor Thomas French (Associate Professor, Ritsumeikan University)

https://ritsumei.academia.edu/ThomasFrench

Contact Information

Yone Sugita

sugita@lang.osaka-u.ac.jp,

yone@sugita.us

Osaka University, Osaka Japan

Contact Email
sugita@lang.osaka-u.ac.jp