Here in the exact center of the United States, at the west-meets-east "Crossroads of America," we will host a one-day workshop for those who want to learn more about the culture and history of China. This multidisciplinary program will be hosted in collaboration with the Asian Studies Development Program at the East-West Center and with both academic and funding support from the Confucius Institute and Center for Chinese Studies as the University of Hawai'i. The workshop will be held in the elegant and historic Skirvin Hilton in downtown Oklahoma City, centrally located amidst art deco style buildings with restaurants, shopping, and the city's major tourist attractions accessible by trolley or a short walk. The hotel was built over a hundred years ago for the use of oil and cattle barons and the lush decor, beautifully restored in 2007, reflects this heritage. For those who wish to stay on after the workshop is over, the University of Central Oklahoma will host a series of panel discussions on topics related to Asian and Middle Eastern culture, politics and history on the following day, Friday, February 26, in the same location. Anyone who is registered for the Thursday workshop is welcome to attend any of these discussions, as well as the annual meeting of SCSECS, the South Central Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (which will include some Asian topics) that will be taking place on the same floor of the hotel Thursday afternoon through Saturday. To avoid potential conflict with Thursday's programming, SCSECS will offer no presentations on Asian topics on that day. Workshop Registration To register for the Chinese Culture and Society Workshop, please click here for the registration form. You can pay online with your credit card. If you are already registered with (or plan to register with) SCSECS, you will be welcome to attend any workshop panels except the luncheon plenary, which requires a separate fee of $30. The workshop registration form linked to in the paragraph above includes a special link for SCSECS registrants that will permit you to pay for the luncheon only.

Thursday's schedule of events:

8:45 am: Introductions

9:00-10:15 am: Peter Hershock, ASDP, "The Relational Self: Person and Community in Traditional Chinese Thought"

10:15-10:30 am: Break

10:30-11:45 am: Fred Lau, University of Hawai'i, "Traditional Music in Modern China"

12:00-1:15 pm: Keynote address and Chinese Opera Performance: Wu Shuang and Charlie Peng
Lunch for Registered Workshop Participants

1:30-2:30 pm: Stanley Murashige, Chicago Art Institute, "Buddhism in Chinese Art"

2:30-2:45 pm: Break

2:45-3:45 pm: Ban Wang, Stanford University, "Use in Uselessness: How Aesthetics Made Chinese Literature More Political and Moral"

3:45-4:00 pm: Break

4:00-5:00 pm: Cyndy Ning, University of Hawai'i, "Accessing Chinese Language and Culture through Film: A Look at Film Production, Sitcoms, Documentaries, and Contemporary Chinese Cinema"

5:00-5:10 pm: Break

5:00-5:40 pm: Panel Discussion and Close

5:45 pm: Traditional Japanese Taiko drum performance by UCO's Japanese Student Association's Hibiki Drum Ensemble

6:30 pm: Chinese music performance by Monika (Yixuan Han) of the UCO School of Music

6:00-8:00 pm: Reception

Workshop Bonus! Both the Asian Studies and Eighteenth-Century groups are invited to enjoy a plenary luncheon at the Oklahoma City Petroleum Club, located directly across the plaza from the Skirvin Hilton. The luncheon will feature a presentation by Elizabeth Wichmann-Walczak of the University of Hawai'i. Professor Wichmann-Walczak is a leading expert in the United States on Jingjù, or "Beijing opera," which got its start in the reign of Emperor Qianlong (1711-1799), sixth emperor of the Qing Dynasty. As part of the presentation we are planning a live east/west face-off between Beijing-style and western-style opera singers, which is bound to be an unforgettable event. The Petroleum Club itself--a private club for Oklahoma City's oil and gas executives, located at the penthouse of the second-highest building in the city with sweeping views of the capital building and other local landmarks--would be well worth the trip in itself.

 
Speaker Bios:

Peter D. Hershock is Director of the Asian Studies Development Program at the East-West Center in Honolulu, Hawai'i. In addition to designing and implementing faculty development programs aimed at globalizing undergraduate humanities and social science curricula, he explores how Buddhist conceptual resources can be used to address contemporary issues. His books include Liberating Intimacy: Enlightenment and Social Virtuosity in Ch’an Buddhism (1996); Reinventing the Wheel: A Buddhist Response to the Information Age (1999); Chan Buddhism (2005); Buddhism in the Public Sphere: Reorienting Global Interdependence (2006); Changing Education: Leadership, Innovation and Development in a Globalizing Asia Pacific (edited, 2007); Educations and their Purposes: A Conversation among Cultures (edited, 2008); Valuing Diversity: Buddhist Reflection on Realizing a More Equitable Global Future (2012); Public Zen, Personal Zen: A Buddhist Introduction (2014); and Value and Values: Economics and Justice in an Age of Global Interdependence (edited, forthcoming).

Frederick Lau is the chair and professor of Ethnomusicology at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa. Lau received his doctoral degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a performance diploma from the London Guildhall School of Music. He has received numerous research grants from agencies such as the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Scholarly Communication with the PRC, and the German Academic Exchange (D.A.A.D.). His area of research includes Chinese and Western music, particularly on issues related to identity, nationalism, modernization, politics, and globalization. He is author of Music in China (Oxford University Press 2008) and co-editor of Locating East Asia in Western Art Music (Wesleyan University Press 2004) and Vocal Music and Cultural Identity in Contemporary Music: Unlimited Voices in East Asia and the West (Routledge 2012). His articles have been published in journals such as Yearbook for International Council for Traditional Music, Ethnomusicology, Asian Music, British Forum for Ethnomusicology, Journal of Musicol. He is the editor of the new book series "Music and Performing Arts of Asia and the Pacific," University of Hawaii Press. Lau is currently the director of the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of Hawai'i, president of the Society for Asian Music and former president of Music of East Asia Study Group and Association for Chinese Music Research.

Stanley Murashige’s research and teaching interests range from the philosophy of Chinese painting and calligraphy, to Buddhist Art, to the aesthetics of architecture and garden design in China and Japan, and to contemporary art in China. Currently, he is completing an article on 11th century Chinese landscape painting for a volume, Looking at Asian Art, intended as a sourcebook for undergraduates. He has contributed an essay, “Philosophy and the Arts in China” to The Encyclopedia of Chinese Philosophy, edited by Antonio S. Cua, and his article, “Rhythm, Order, Change and Nature in Guo Xi’s Early Spring,” was published in Monumenta Serica. He continues work on a sixth-century text on Chinese painting, Xie He’s Liufa, or Six Methods for Painting, and the early Chinese theory and practice of image-making.

Ban Wang is the William Haas Professor in Chinese Studies and Professor of Comparative Literature. He is also the Yangtze River Chair Professor at East China Normal University. In addition to his research on Chinese and comparative literature, he has written on English and French literatures, psychoanalysis, international politics, and cinema. He received his Ph.D. in comparative literature from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1993. He has been a research fellow with the National Endowment for the Humanities and at the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton University. Prior to coming to Stanford, he taught at Beijing Foreign Studies University, SUNY-Stony Brook, Harvard University, and Rutgers University. His publications include Trauma and Cinema: Cross-cultural Explorations; Illuminations from the Past: Trauma, Memory and History in Modern China; and The Sublime Figure of History: Aesthetics and Politics in 20th Century China. His current project is tentatively entitled, China in the World: Geopolitics, Aesthetics, and Cosmopolitan Dreams.

Cyndy Ning is Associate Director of the University of Hawaii’s Center for Chinese Studies, US director of its Confucius Institute, and author of the innovative textbooks Encounters: Chinese Language & Culture Books 1-4 (Yale University Press, 2011, 2012 and forthcoming; co-published beginning in 2013 by the China International Publishing Group), Exploring in Chinese (Yale, 2008) and Communicating in Chinese (Yale, 1993). She teaches regular and experimental first- through fourth-year Chinese language courses, a Chinese film course, and an interdisciplinary course on China at the University of Hawai‘i. She has been president and executive director of the US-based Chinese Language Teachers Association (CLTA). She was also president of the Chinese Language Education Association of Hawaii, as well as of the Hawaii Association of Language Teachers. Since 2008 she has been director and principal investigator for the STARTALK Chinese summer teacher training workshop and student camp funded by the US Department of Defense.