Fridays 11:30 - 12:30
Chinese Lunch Table at Goudy Commons
Weekly event hosted by native/experienced Chinese speakers.
Fridays 2 - 4 PM
Cultural Hour
Weekly event in Walton 236 hosted by native/experienced Chinese speakers.
April 3, 2008
Asian Studies Faculty Presentation (3): Belief and Custom: Reflections upon the New Excavation of Xiaohe in Xinjiang, China
Dr. Xijuan Zhou (Willamette University)
3:00 - 4:00 PM
Location: Smullin 117
Refreshments will be provided
The Xiaohe Tombs are a large-scale burial site in Xinjiang Province, Northwest part of China. The site was excavated by Xinjiang archaeologists in 2003-2005. With 167 well preserved graves, and over 1,000 cultural artifacts unearthed there, the Xiaohe site provides amazing information as well as many mysteries about the beliefs and burial customs of the early civilizations in the region. This presentation will mainly focus on some preliminary reflections on this amazing discovery.
April 10, 2008
Asian Studies Faculty Presentation (4): Exorcizing the Ghosts of Kwangju: State and Labor Violence in Post-Authoritarian South Korea
Dr. Jong Bum Kwon (Willamette University)
4:00 PM
Location: Smullin 117
Refreshments will be provided
This talk will examine the social-cultural processes of democratization and neoliberal market formation in post-authoritarian South Korea through the analysis of state and labor violence as a struggle over social memory. This presentation is based on eighteen months of ethnographic research of the “Daewoo Motor Union Struggle against Redundancy Dismissals,” a long and violent standoff between the state and labor that began when 1750 production workers from the Bupyong factory (located in an industrial city west of Seoul) were laid-off (2001). Violence may be understood as a form of social memory: state violence, particularly as it is embodied by riot police and tear gas, conjures memories of military dictatorship; and the ritualized forms of labor violence recall memories of workers heroically battling the authoritarian state. I demonstrate how the state implemented new tactics of policing labor protest after the Asian Financial Crisis (1997) that produced cultural amnesia and enabled the imagining of the state as "new", modern, and democratic. Democratization and neoliberal market formation coincided in Korea, and the management of memories of violence has been crucial to refashioning the state as the guardian of democracy as well as the “free” market.
Dr. Jong Bum Kwon received his doctorate in cultural anthropology at New York University in 2005, and was a University of California President’s Postdoctoral Fellow in Korean Studies at UCLA. He is currently a visiting professor in the anthropology department at Willamette University, Salem, OR. His dissertation, In the Crucible of Restructuration: Making and Unmaking “Workers of Iron” in the Transition to a Neoliberal Democracy in South Korea, examines the cultural politics of neoliberal restructuring and democratization in South Korea through an ethnographic study of laid-off Daewoo Motor workers’ participation in as well as resistance to the labor movement. It analyzes workers’ struggle over meanings of work and masculinity; state violence and performances of democracy; organized labor’s crisis of identity; and the reconfiguration of class identity and politics in the emergent culture(s) of neoliberal capitalism.
April 15, 2008
China and the US: Current Situation and Problems in Economic Trade
Dr. Haixin Yao (Professor of Economics, Liaoning University, China)
4:00 PM
Location: Eaton 209
Refreshments will be provided
Dr. Yao is Professor of Economics at Liaoning University, China, where he once held positions of Chief of Finance and Associate Dean of College of Business Administration. He was a visiting scholar at Nyenrode University, the Netherlands, and is currently visiting scholar at the College of Business and Economics, California State University, Northridge (CSUN).
Dr. Yao’s publication includes, Influence of Corporate Social Responsibility on Stockholder’s Wealth: An Empirical Study (Journal of Northeastern University,Vol.9, No.4. 2007); Financial Management (The Tsinghua University Press, 2007); A Game-theoretic Analysis of the Results of Enforcing the New P.R.C. Accounting Law (Journal of Liaoning University, 4. 2006); A positive analysis on relationship between Equity structures and operating performance in Liaoning list companies (Economy and Management, 21. 2004); and A game theoretic analysis of economic policy (The Economic Management Press, 2001).
April 17, 2008
Grand Opening of the Centers for Academic Excellence Reception
5:00 PM
Location: Hallie Ford Museum of Art
Please join us for an evening of celebration as President Pelton introduces Willamette University's Centers for Academic Excellence: the Center for Ancient Studies and Archaeology (directed by Lane McGuaghy), the Center for Asian Studies (directed by Juwen Zhang), the Center for the Study of Religion, Law and Democracy (directed by Steve Green), and the Center for Sustainable Communities (directed by Joe Bowersox). These four centers join the preexisting Public Policy and Research Center (directed by Fred Thompson). The directors will give an overview of each of the Centers and be available to answer questions. The Centers are designed to promote cross-disciplinary interaction as well as provide increased opportunities for faculty development, research and scholarship, and provide undergraduates and graduates with opportunities to develop specialized projects in a variety of academic fields. Each center also hosts conferences, colloquia and symposia as well as bring visiting scholars, speakers and practitioners to our campus community. Campus administrators and faculty feel the creation of these centers, rare for a small independent university with a liberal arts focus, will establish Willamette as a place of distinction.
|Previous Events|