Previous AMES Colloquia

2021-22 Colloquium Series

Title Presenter

April 26, 4:00pm, Virtual via Zoom: "Translating Film Genres in the Cold War: Transnational Travels of Film and a Post-Colonial Investigation of Early Socialist Chinese Cinema (1949-1966)"

Chuanhui Meng, PhD Candidate, Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Minnesota
March 29, 4:00pm, Virtual via Zoom" "Narrating the Nonhuman Animal: Vernacular Perspectives from South Asia" Sreyashi Ray, PhD Candidate, Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Minnesota
March 15, 4:00pm, Virtual via Zoom: "The Making of Persianate Modernity" Alexander Jabbari, Assistant Professor, University of Oklahoma
February 15, 4:00pm, Virtual via Zoom: "Natal Alienation and Prosthetic Memory: Politics of Difference in Post-9/11 Pakistani Poetry" Muhammad Numan, visiting PhD Research Scholar, University of Minnesota

2019-20 Colloquium Series

Title Presenter
December 4, 1:30pm, Virtual via Zoom:"Monuments to Japanese Ambition: Kitsch, Camp, and Atavism in Three Postwar Towers" Steve Ridgely, University of Wisconsin-Madison
April 10, 1:30pm, Virtual via Zoom: "After Persian: Language and Literary History Between Iran and India" Alexander Jabbari, University of Minnesota 
February 4, 4:00pm, 113 Folwell Hall: "Going to the Pictures: Presencing History Beyond its Archive". Emiko Stock, Hamilton College
January 31, 1:30pm, 108 Folwell Hall: "Censoring Miss Suwanna of Siam: Film Diplomacy, Media Modernity, and Early Thai Cinema". Palita Chunsaengchan, University of Oregon
November 22, 1:30pm, 113 Folwell Hall:"Heterotopias of Critique and Consensus in Indian Standup Comedy". Harshit Rathi, 2019 Rose Travel Fellowship Recipient and PhD Candidate, Department of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature, University of Minnesota
November 8, 1:30pm, 113 Folwell Hall:"Undesirable Chindren in Korea: Institutions, Discourse, and the State". Download an abstract of this presentation here Young Sun Park, Assistant Professor, Saint Mary's University of Minnesota
September 6, 1:30pm, 28 Folwell Hall: "Early Spring in February: Reframing the Problems of Utopia in Chinese Cinema in the 1960s". Mia Yinxing Liu, California College of Arts

2018-19 Colloquium Series

Title Presenter
April 26, 1:30pm, 112 Folwell Hall: "Translation as Fiction and Theory in the Literature of Tawada Yōko". Download an abstract of this presentation here. Brett de Bary, Professor of Asian Studies and Comparative Literature, Cornell University
April 12, 1:30pm, 112 Folwell Hall: "Anicka Yi's Ironic Scheme of Art". Download an abstract of this presentation here. Soyi Kim, 2017 Rose Travel Fellowship Recipiant and PhD Student, Department of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature, University of Minnesota
March 15, 1:30pm, 113 Folwell Hall: "Imagining the Circum-Pacific: Refugees and Migration in South Korean Art as a Transnational Art History". Download an abstract of this presentation here. Hyeongjin Oh, 2018 Rose Travel Fellowship Recipiant and PhD Student, Department of Art History, University of Minnesota
January 25, 1:30pm, 155 Nicholson Hall: "Old Novels, New Media: The Three Kingdoms as Medieval History, Ming-Dynasty Novel, and Contemporary Video Game". Download an abstract of this presentation here. Paize Keulemans, Associate Professor, East Asian Studies, Princeton University
December 7, 1:30pm, 113 Folwell Hall: "Black Comedy Films in Postsocialist China: Society, Culture, and the Cinematic Absurd". Download an abstract of this presentation here. Hui Liu, PhD Candidate, Department of Asian Languages and Literatures, University of Minnesota
November 16, 2:00pm, 113 Folwell Hall: "'In Love, You Can’t Bring on a Substitute': Locating Reality and Shadows in Palimpsestic Asia". Download an abstract of this presentation here. Elizabeth Wijaya, UM President's Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Asian Languages and Literatures, University of Minnesota

2017–18 Colloquium Series

Title Presenter
April 27, 1:30pm, 112 Folwell Hall: “Vulnerability and Justice beyond the Human: An Interdisciplinary Approach from South Asia”. Download an abstract of this presentation here. Sayan Buattacharya (GWSS), Sreyashi Ray (ALL), and Elja Roy (Comm TC), University of Minnesota
April 20, 10:30am, 113 Folwell Hall: "Animating the Posthuman Body: Biopolitics, Futurity, and the Zombie in Project Itoh". Download an abstract of this presentation here. Baryon Posadas, Assistant Professor, Department of Asian Languages and Literatures, University of Minnesota
April 13, 1:30pm, 112 Folwell Hall: "Gone with Rosho: What Female Gidayu Musicians in Modern Japan Could Have Brought to 'Literature'". Download an abstract of this presentation here. Maki Isaka, Professor, Department of Asian Languages and Literatures, University of Minnesota
March 23, 1:30pm, 112 Folwell Hall: "Beyond the Land of Palestine: Deserts, Shores, Seas". Download an abstract of this presentation here. Joseph Farag, Assistant Professor, Department of Asian Languages and Literatures, University of Minnesota
February 14, 4:00pm, 435 Blegen Hall: Film Screening - "Demons in Paradise (2017)" Filmmaker Jud Ratnam and V.V. Ganeshananthan, Professor, Department of English, University of Minnesota
December 8, 1:30pm, 112 Folwell Hall: "Snail Watchers’: Corpses, Creatures and Vulnerability in Xoru Dhemali, Bor Dhemali". Download an abstract of this presentation here. Amit R. Baishya, Assistant Professor, Department of English, University of Oklahoma
December 1, 1:30pm, 112 Folwell Hall: "Feminist Montage: The South Korean Feminist Online Community Megalian and its Fractured Mirroring of the New Woman Phenomenon". Download an abstract of this presentation here. Soyi Kim, 2017 Rose Travel Fellowship Recipiant and PhD Student, Department of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature, University of Minnesota
November 21, 1:00pm, 108 Folwell Hall: "De-Naturalizing the Anthropocene: Landscape, Animals, and Place in Post-3/11 Nuclear Disaster Documentaries". Download an abstract of this presentation here. Hideaki Fujiki, Professor of Cinema Studies and Director of Japan-in-Asia Cultural Research Center, Nagoya University
November 17, 1:30pm, 135 Nicholson: "Hollywood Made in China". Download an abstract of this presentation here. Aynne Kokas, fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars and Assistant Professor of Media Studies, University of Virginia
November 3, 1:30pm, 112 Folwell Hall: "Simplicities: A Colonial Archive (Al-Farabi, Aristotle, Benjamin, Paul)'. Download an abstract of this presentation here. Jeffrey Sacks, Associate Professor and Chair, Department of Comparative Literature and Languages, University of California, Riverside
October 6, 3:30pm, 112 Folwell Hall: "Fear and Fiction: A Bilingual Reading with Fujino Kaori". Fujino Kaori, Fiction Author (w/ Prof. Kendra Strand and Prof. Kendall Heitzman, University of Iowa)
October 6, 1:30pm, 112 Folwell Hall: "Translating Contemporary Chinese Poetry: Readings and a Conversation with Christopher Lupke and Jennifer Feeley". Download an abstract of this presentation here. Christpoher Lupke, Professor, Department of East Asian Studies, University of Alberta and Jennifer Feeley, Freelance Translator
September 22, 1:30pm, 113 Folwell Hall: "Allegiance Performed: Waṭanīya Poetry on the Stage of the Shāʻir al-Milyūn Competition". Download an abstract of this presentation here. Dr. Katrien Vanpee, Director of Arabic Language Instruction, Department of Asian Languages and Literatures, University of Minnesota

2016–17 Colloquium Series

Title Presenter
“Modernity and Laughter: Transgressive Bodies in Comedy Films in 1950s and 60s South Korea” Soo Hyun Lee, PhD Candidate, Department of Asian Languages and Literatures, University of Minnesota
"Literary Bilingualism: Writing Stories in the Language of the Other in a Sino-Anglophone Context, 1930s-1970s" Chen Wang, PhD Candidate, Department of Asian Languages and Literatures, University of Minnesota
"Washington Irving's Mystical Orientalism" Dr. Mohammad Sharafuddin, Visiting Professor, Department of Asian Languages and Literatures, University of Minnesota
"World Market, Mobile Camera: The Industrial Rhetoric of the Chinese National Product Films" Hongwei Thorn Chen, PhD candidate, Department of Cultural Studies & Comparative Literature, University of Minnesota
"A New Understanding of Saemaul Undong: Now Hear Our Voice" Dr. Youngmi Kim, Associate Professor, Department of Korean History, Kookmin University
"Cinema as Exception: Railroad, Tobacco, Coal-Mining and a Contingent History of Early Korean Cinema" Sejung Ahn, PhD Candidate, Department of Asian Languages and Literatures, University of Minnesota
"Kimichi Battle:North Korea's Figth for Legitimacy in Our Fragrance" Dr. Immanuel Kim, Assistant Professor, Department of Asian and Asian American Studies, Binghamton University, SUNY
"Perforated Images in Indonesia: A Case Study of the Tricks and Politics of Crosscultural Filmmaking, Art and Research" Dag Yngvesson, PhD candidate, Department of Cultural Studies & Comparative Literature, University of Minnesota

2015–16 Colloquium Series

Title Presenter
"Magic Lantern Shows and Early Screenings in Colonial Taiwan" Laura Jo-Han Wen, PhD candidate in the Department of East Asian Languages and Literature. University of Wisconsin–Madison
“Genre Worlds”
Michelle Cho, Assistant Professor, East Asian Studies & World Cinemas, McGill University
"From Science to Literature and Adabi to Nechuri: Examining the Natural and Denaturalization in Ismat Chughtai" Emily Durham, PhD Candidate in the Department of Asian Languages and Literatures, University of Minnesota
“Spectral Cosmopolitics in Early Twentieth Century Bangla Horror Story”
Suvadip Sinha, Assistant Professor, Department of Asian Languages and Literatures, University of Minnesota
“Desperately Seeking Nana Hsu: A Story with Three Beginnings”
Joseph R. Allen, Professor, Department of Asian Languages and Literatures, University of Minnesota
“Poetry, Vyavaharam, and the Language of Political Literature”
Sravanthi Kollu, PhD Candidate, Department of Asian Languages and Literatures, University of Minnesota

2014–15 Colloquium Series

Title Presenter
“Urban Love, Celluloid Illusion: An Analysis of Bombay Middle Cinema of 1970s” Suvadip Sinha, Assistant Professor, Department of Asian Languages and Literatures, University of Minnesota
“Approaching Kigyo/Sangyo Eiga: Contextualizing Japanese Industrial Films”
Farah Frayeh Yazawa, PhD Candidate, Department of Asian Languages and Literatures, University of Minnesota
“A Literature for Everybody?: Precursors to Telugu Marxist Discussions on Language”
Sravanthi Kollu, PhD Candidate, Department of Asian Languages and Literatures, University of Minnesota
“Silencing the Dead: Kinoshita Keisuke's 'Yotsuya kaidan' and Occupation Censorship in Japanese Cinema”
Mike Crandol, PhD Candidate, Department of Asian Languages and Literatures, University of Minnesota
“Shadows of The Student of Prague: Psychoanalysis and Visual Modernization in Japanese Doppelganger Fictions”
Baryon Posadas, Assistant Professor, Department of Asian Languages and Literatures, University of Minnesota
“Colonial Sublime: Ethics, Aesthetics and Political Economy in Early Korean Film Culture, 1897-1948”
Sejung Ahn, PhD Candidate, Department of Asian Languages and Literatures, University of Minnesota
"Imperial Imaginaries of Japanese Science Fiction: On Oshikawa Shunrō's Kaitei Gunkan" Baryon Posadas, Assistant Professor, Department of Asian Languages and Literatures, University of Minnesota
"Nandan, Gender Plasticity, and the Dichotomization of 'Artistic' Femininity versus 'Natural' Masculinity from China's Republican Era to the Early PRC Years (1912-Early 1960's)"
Guanda Wu, PhD Candidate, Department of Asian Languages and Literatures, University of Minnesota
“The Infinite Possibilities of the Past: The Consummation of History and Fiction, and the Renaissance of Korean Sagŭk
Saena Dozier, PhD Candidate, Department of Asian Languages and Literatures, University of Minnesota