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21. Perfect Spy: The Arc of Pham Xuan An’s Life from War to Peace

Author:
Larry Berman and Lien-Hang T. Nguyen
Publication Date:
04-2023
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
Abstract:
What goes on in the heart of a spy? Can a spy truly have friends? What makes a spy tick? How does a spy decide between loyalty to a secret mission and loyalty to friends and colleagues? During the war, Pham Xuan An was the dean of Vietnamese journalists, employed by Time magazine as a full-fledged correspondent. None of his colleagues knew that An was really Vietnamese communist agent X6, whose training began years before the arrival of American combat troops and ended on April 30, 1975. For over twenty years Pham Xuan An lived his cover, deceiving everyone about his real identity while providing indispensable intelligence to Hanoi. After the war, Pham Xuan An was promoted to the rank of Major General and given the title People’s Army Hero. Yet, Pham Xuan An also became a symbol for reconciliation between former enemies.
Topic:
War, History, Peace, and Espionage
Political Geography:
Asia and Vietnam

22. Government Courtesans in the Northern Military Areas -- A Lecture with Hyun Suk Park

Author:
Hyun Suk Park and Jungwon Kim
Publication Date:
04-2023
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
Abstract:
A 45-50-minute talk followed by Q and A. Professor Hyun Suk Park will discuss the courtesan culture of Chosŏn Korea by reflecting upon the intersections between state power, gender politics, and literary culture through travel writings and literary works.
Topic:
Politics, History, Culture, State, Literature, Power, Gender, and Military
Political Geography:
Asia and Korea

23. Conceptualization and Operationalization of Ambiguous Loss Among Left Behind Children in Rural China

Author:
Xiaojin Chen and Yao Lu
Publication Date:
04-2023
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
Abstract:
This lecture explores the effects of rural-to-urban migration on children’s development, including child abuse, victimization, and mental health problems.
Topic:
Development, Migration, Children, Mental Health, Urban, Rural, Abuse, and Victimization
Political Geography:
China and Asia

24. In the Forest of the Blind: The Eurasian Journey of Faxian's Record of Buddhist Kingdoms

Author:
Matthew W. King and Gray Tuttle
Publication Date:
04-2023
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
Abstract:
Speaker's Bio: Matthew King is an Associate Professor of Buddhist Studies and Director of Asian Studies at the University of California, Riverside. He is also a visiting scholar at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute for 2022-2023. His research examines the social history of knowledge in Buddhist scholastic networks extending across the Tibeto-Mongolian frontiers of the late Qing empire and its revolutionary ruins. Much of his published work has focused on encounters between Buddhist scholasticism, science, humanism, and state socialism in the 19th and early 20th centuries. He is also broadly engaged with methodological revision in the study of religion and Buddhist Studies, and in revisionist theoretical projects associated with the critical Asian humanities. King's first book Ocean of Milk, Ocean of Blood: A Mongolian Monk in the Ruins of the Qing Empire (Columbia University Press, 2019), was awarded the American Academy of Religion Excellence in the Study of Religion: Textual Studies book award, the Central Eurasian Studies Society's 2020 Best Book in History and Humanities, and the International Convention of Asia Scholars Book Prize (Specialist Publication).
Topic:
Religion, History, and Buddhism
Political Geography:
Eurasia and Asia

25. Daring to Struggle: China's Global Ambitions Under Xi Jinping

Author:
Bates Gill and Elizabeth Wishnick
Publication Date:
04-2023
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
Abstract:
Daring to Struggle focuses on six increasingly important interests for today's China—legitimacy, sovereignty, wealth, power, leadership and ideas—and details how the determined pursuit of them at home and abroad profoundly shapes its foreign relationships, contributing to a more contested strategic environment in the Indo-Pacific region and beyond.
Topic:
Sovereignty, Leadership, Legitimacy, Xi Jinping, Strategic Interests, Power, and Wealth
Political Geography:
China and Asia

26. Photography and Tibet with Clare Harris

Author:
Clare Harris and Lauran Hartley
Publication Date:
02-2023
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
Abstract:
From the earliest attempts to capture Tibet with the camera in the mid-nineteenth century, photographs have been used to create visual narratives about the country and its people and to perform in politicised debates about them. Initially, outsiders from both East and West dominated the practice of enlisting photography to construct representations of Tibet ranging from the positive to the malign. However, by the early twentieth century, Tibetans themselves began to take up the camera and to deploy it in ways that deviate from those externally produced stereotypes. In this talk, Clare Harris, explores some of the modes in which photographs have been instrumentalised by insiders and outsiders and critically evaluates the history of Tibet photography. The talk will be an overview of some of the arguments presented in her book, ‘Photography and Tibet’, and illustrated with many of the rare images she has unearthed in archives and elsewhere over the course of more than twenty years of research on the subject.
Topic:
Politics, Aesthetics, Photography, and Agency
Political Geography:
Asia and Tibet

27. The Seventh Dalai Lama's Residence in Kham with Yudru Tsomu

Author:
Yudru Tsomu and Gray Tuttle
Publication Date:
02-2023
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
Abstract:
The Seventh Dalai Lama’s residence at Gartar Monastery (Mgar thar dgon, མགར་ཐར་དགོན། ), beginning in 1730, greatly affected the relationship between the Kham region and the Tibetan government as well as the Qing court’s control over Kham. The Dalai Lama’s interactions with various indigenous leaders, local monasteries, monks and lay people increased the influence of the Geluk school in Kham, and also inspired their support for the Dalai Lama. Measures adopted by the Qing court to protect the Dalai Lama, such as stationing troops and inspecting check-points, also strengthened Qing control of Kham. After the Dalai Lama left for Tibet in 1735, Gartar Monastery continued to serve as a religious and cultural center of northern Kham, having the function of “civilizing” and “enlightening” the neighboring regions that were far away from the political center. Successive abbots of Gartar Monastery—all the way up to 1920—came from Drepung Monastery in Lhasa; they and the monks of Gartar influenced, interfered and controlled the local affairs of Gartar and other regions in Kham. In particular, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Gartar Monastery, together with the Tibetan commissioner in Nyarong, was able to assist the Tibetan government’s efforts to extend its sphere of influence in Kham.
Topic:
Government, Religion, History, Buddhism, and Dalai Lama
Political Geography:
Asia and Tibet

28. Rejuvenating Communism: Youth Organizations and Elite Renewal in Post-Mao China

Author:
Jérôme Doyon and Andrew J. Nathan
Publication Date:
03-2023
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
Abstract:
Working for the administration remains one of the most coveted career paths for young Chinese. Rejuvenating Communism: Youth Organizations and Elite Renewal in Post-Mao China seeks to understand what motivates young and educated Chinese to commit to a long-term career in the party-state and how this question is central to the Chinese regime’s ability to maintain its cohesion and survive. Jérôme Doyon draws upon extensive fieldwork and statistical analysis in order to illuminate the undogmatic commitment recruitment techniques and other methods the state has taken to develop a diffuse allegiance to the party-state in the post-Mao era. He then analyzes recruitment and political professionalization in the Communist Party’s youth organizations and shows how experiences in the Chinese Communist Youth League transform recruits and feed their political commitment as they are gradually inducted into the world of officials. As the first in-depth study of the Communist Youth League’s role in recruitment, this book challenges the assumption that merit is the main criteria for advancement within the party-state, an argument with deep implications for understanding Chinese politics today.
Topic:
Communism, Politics, History, Youth, and Elites
Political Geography:
China and Asia

29. Teaching Tibetan Buddhism in the Western Academy with Jan Willis

Author:
Jan Willis
Publication Date:
03-2023
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
Abstract:
Through personal and practical anecdotes from her own life and teaching, Dr. Jan Willis describes in this talk how, over the course of fifty years, she both learned and taught Tibetan Buddhism in undergraduate academic settings in the West. Looking at the obstacles and challenges of teaching an “esoteric” religious tradition, the talk is as much about pedagogy as about Tibetan Buddhism.
Topic:
Religion, Pedagogy, Buddhism, and Tradition
Political Geography:
Asia and Tibet

30. Japan's New Security Strategy and the Changing Geopolitics in the Indo-Pacific

Author:
Sheila Smith and Gerald Curtis
Publication Date:
03-2023
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
Abstract:
Major changes that have occurred in the global political economy and in international politics in recent years have had a profound impact on nations all around the world. This is nowhere more evident than in the countries in the Indo-Pacific region and especially Japan. This conversation addresses Japan's evolving foreign policy and its impact in the Indo-Pacific.
Topic:
Security, Foreign Policy, Political Economy, Geopolitics, and Regional Politics
Political Geography:
Japan, Asia, and Indo-Pacific

31. History and Development of the Library of Congress Tibetan Collection with Susan Meinheit

Author:
Susan Meinheit
Publication Date:
04-2023
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
Abstract:
With a career spanning 47 years at the Library of Congress, Susan Meinheit has had a pioneering role in the development, management, and conservation of the Library of Congress' vast Tibetan collection, one of the largest in the world. From her first LC position as a library clerk, it was through her area and language expertise -- combined with sheer determination -- that she essentially carved out her role as steward and champion of LC's long-neglected early TIbetan holdings which were based on the collections of three major scholars of Tibet and southwest China and acquired by LC in the early 1900s. Meinheit will talk about the early history of the collection; the growth of the collection through the PL-480 Books program with India, and achievements in bringing wider visibility of the Tibetan holdings through major cataloging and digitization initiatives.
Topic:
History, Digitization, Library of Congress, and Archives
Political Geography:
Mongolia, Asia, and Tibet

32. Crossing Rivers by Yakhide-Boat and Horsehead-Ferry: Waterways in Pre-1959 Tibet with Diana Lange

Author:
Diane Lange
Publication Date:
04-2023
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
Abstract:
Professor Diana. Lange will speak on the significance of waterways for infrastructure, economy and socio-cultural life in pre-1959 Tibet. She focuses on ferry and transport services in the Tibetan corvée tax system, including the nature of taxation on a specific Tibetan village – the fishing village of Jun in Chushur County in Central Tibet. Her research is based on extensive fieldwork in this fishing village conducted during several trips to the area between 2003 and 2012. She also analyzes how fishermen in Southern and Central Tibet adapted to the geographical, ecological and cultural conditions of their environment.
Topic:
History, Infrastructure, Economy, and Rivers
Political Geography:
Asia and Tibet

33. A Dialogue with Chairman of the Taiwan People's Party, Dr. Ko Wen-je

Author:
Wen-je Ko and Andrew J. Nathan
Publication Date:
03-2023
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
Abstract:
Ko Wen-je is chairperson of the Taiwan People’s Party and a possible candidate in the 2024 Taiwan presidential election. He was mayor of Taipei from 2014 to 2022. Before entering politics, Dr. Ko was a leading transplant surgeon at National Taiwan University College of Medicine.
Topic:
Politics and Elections
Political Geography:
Taiwan and Asia

34. Imperfect Partners: The United States and Southeast Asia

Author:
Scot Marciel and Ann Marie Murphy
Publication Date:
05-2023
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
Abstract:
This event will discuss U.S.-Southeast Asian relations with Ambassador Scot Marciel, the former United States Ambassador to Indonesia and Myanmar. The talk will be based on his new book which will be released on March 15, 2023 entitled Imperfect Partners: the United States and Southeast Asia. Imperfect Partners is a unique hybrid – part memoir, part foreign policy study of U.S. relations with Southeast Asia, a critically important region that has become the central arena in the global U.S.-China competition. From the People Power revolt in the Philippines to the opening of diplomatic relations with Vietnam, from building a partnership with newly democratic Indonesia to responding to genocide in Myanmar and coups in Thailand, Scot Marciel was present and involved. His direct involvement and deep knowledge of the region, along with his extensive policymaking work in Washington, allows him to bring to life the complexities and realities of key events and U.S. responses, along with rare insights into U.S. foreign policy decision-making and the work of American diplomats in the field.
Topic:
International Relations, Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, and Competition
Political Geography:
China, Indonesia, Asia, North America, Southeast Asia, Myanmar, and United States of America

35. Understanding Qing Officialdom Through Big Data

Author:
Cameron Campbell and Junyan Jiang
Publication Date:
05-2023
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
Abstract:
Cameron Campbell is Chair Professor in the Division of Social Science at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). Before joining HKUST in 2013, he was Professor in the Department of Sociology at UCLA and an affiliate of the California Centre for Population Research (CCPR) at UCLA. His research focuses on demography, stratification and inequality in historical China and in comparative perspective. With other members of the Lee-Campbell group, he studies official, educational, and professional elites in China from the middle of the 18th century to the present. He also leads the study of the Qing civil service from the middle of the 18th century to the beginning of the 20th century by construction and analysis of a database of office holders called the China Government Employee Database-Qing (CGED-Q). He is involved in two other major projects with the Lee-Campbell Group that involve the creation and analysis of large, longitudinal, individual-level databases from archival records: a study of the social origins and careers of university students, professionals, and other elites in the first half of the twentieth century and a study of rural society in mainland China from 1949 to the mid-1960s using village-level microdata. His papers have appeared in such journals as American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review, Demography, Population Studies, and Demographic Research. I was a Guggenheim Fellow in 2004 and a Changjiang Scholar at Central China Normal University from 2017 to 2020. For 2022-23, I will be a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.
Topic:
History and Civil Services
Political Geography:
China and Asia

36. Narratives of Civic Duty – A Book Talk by Aram Hur

Author:
Aram Hur and Andrew J. Nathan
Publication Date:
04-2023
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
Abstract:
A 45-minute talk followed by Q and A, based on Dr. Hur’s recent book from Cornell UP, Narratives of Civic Duty: How National Stories Shape Democracy in Asia (Studies of the WEAI). Dr. Hur’s book focuses particularly on the Koreas and Taiwan.
Topic:
Democracy, Society, Civic Engagement, and Narrative
Political Geography:
Asia

37. Rethinking "China" and the "Cold War"

Author:
Chien Wen Kung and Eugenia Lean
Publication Date:
04-2023
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
Abstract:
Fears of Southeast Asia’s Chinese as conduits for the People's Republic of China defined the Cold War in Southeast Asia. Yet, ironically, the example of the Philippine Chinese shows that the "China" which intervened the most extensively in any Southeast Asian country after 1949 was the Republic of China (ROC) in Taiwan. Based on the speaker’s book, Diasporic Cold Warriors, this talk explains how one of the smallest overseas Chinese communities in the region became the most ardent diasporic supporters of the ROC in the world from the 1950s to the 1970s. During this period, the Kuomintang-ROC party-state's overseas Chinese networks entrenched themselves in the Philippines with the consent and participation of the Philippine state, giving rise to a dynamic and contingent arrangement of shared, non-territorial sovereignty. Taipei and Manila's intersecting anticommunist projects were, in turn, instrumental to how translocal Chinese forged politically appropriate identities and adapted themselves to the postcolonial Philippines as ethno-ideological subjects.
Topic:
Cold War, History, and Regional Politics
Political Geography:
China, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia

38. Carving Status at Kŭmgangsan – A Book Talk by Maya Stiller

Author:
Maya Stiller and Seong Uk Kim
Publication Date:
03-2023
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
Abstract:
A 50-minute talk followed by Q and A with Maya Stiller, Associate Professor of Korean Art History & Visual Culture in the Art History Department at the University of Kansas, on Dr. Stiller’s recent book, "Carving Status at Kŭmgangsan," winner of the American Historical Association’s 2021 Patricia Buckley Ebrey Prize. Dr. Stiller’s book focuses particularly on elite graffiti in late Chosŏn Korea (17th to 19th centuries).
Topic:
History, Arts, and Graffiti
Political Geography:
Asia and Korea

39. Factual Fiction Versus Autobiography – Marie Myung-Ok Lee on The Evening Hero

Author:
Marie Myung-Ok Lee
Publication Date:
03-2023
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
Abstract:
The alchemical magic of fiction means it can involve not just the stories of people, but places and history can be characters on their own. Fiction can tell us about lives people lived with the same truths as a history book, but a different approach. Humans naturally want story, and also truth. It’s a time honored way to create characters and lives based on people we know. But what is it like to write backwards into things we don’t know, but wish we did? Author Marie Myung-Ok Lee speaks about how her family stories—and also silences--of migration and war, her trip to North Korea, and other research informs the fictional world of "The Evening Hero," a winner of a Columbia Humanities War & Peace Initiative Grant.
Topic:
Migration, War, History, Literature, Narrative, and Fiction
Political Geography:
Asia and North Korea

40. Public Attitudes Towards Social Spending: Evidence from Hong Kong and Singapore

Author:
Alfred M. Wu and Qin Gao
Publication Date:
02-2023
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
Abstract:
This lecture examines the psychosocial impact of rural-to-urban migration on youth in China using a multisystemic resilience framework and discusses potential interventions to promote more sustainable and equitable urbanization. This event is part of the 2022-2023 lecture series on “Urbanization, Well-being, and Public Policy: China from Comparative Perspectives” and is sponsored by the Weatherhead East Asian Institute and cosponsored by Columbia's China Center for Social Policy.
Topic:
Migration, Urbanization, Youth, Urban, and Rural
Political Geography:
Asia, Singapore, and Hong Kong