1. “Digital Humanities and Japanese Studies: Getting Started and Familiar.”
Zoom Meeting with historian Paula R. Curtis (History, UCLA) on March 2, 2022 at 7pm-8:30pm.
Recording of Webinar:
Click for link to the recording of this event and for details about the guest speaker.
Respondent: James Gerien-Chen (UF Department of History)
Moderator: Matthieu Felt (LLC-Japanese)
Now more than ever students and faculty are asked to be proficient in the latest digital tools and technologies while considering how these materials may be useful to their teaching and research. Dr. Curtis will discuss her own beginnings in digital humanities exploration as a premodern historian of Japan and digital skeptic to highlight how students and mentors alike can think through the benefits and drawbacks of employing digital methods in their work. She will then survey the current state of the field in Digital Japanese Studies, highlighting recent projects, challenges, and community resources.
2. “Authenticity, Succession, Self-Actualization:
The Multiple Meanings of Training in Hong Kong Martial Arts Cinema.”
Leopard Style
Webinar with Man-Fung Yip (University of Oklahoma), Chair and Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies at the University of Oklahoma on March 23, 2022 at 7:00-8:30 pm.
Recording of Webinar:
Click for the link to the recording of this event and for details about the guest speaker.
Moderator: Stephan Kory (LLC-Chinese)
Considering its significance in the world of martial arts, it is hardly surprising that training has been a major motif in martial arts films. This is particularly true with the Shaolin kung fu films and action comedies that gained popularity in Hong Kong cinema of the mid- and late 1970s. Yet it is worth noting that the concept of training is pertinent not only at a textual level but also from an extra-textual perspective. Thus, even though training did not figure extensively within the films of Bruce Lee, it was actively invoked by critics and viewers alike and became an indispensable part in the mythologies surrounding the star’s powerful body/martial arts and his resolute drive to success. Professor Yip’s goal in this presentation is to explore this training motif and shed light on the diverse meanings associated with it. Specifically, he focuses on the period of the late 1960s and 1970s—a period when a new crop of Hong Kong martial arts films pioneered by Shaw Brothers and later Golden Harvest came to prominence and dominated the local as well as regional market on its way to having a global-cultural cinematic presence—and frames his discussion around three broad concepts: authenticity, succession, and self-actualization.
3. “What We know about the History of Pets – and What We Don’t.”
Picture by Glen McBeth for BBC History Magazine
Webinar with Professor Philip Howell (Historical Geography, Cambridge University) on March 31, 6:00-7:30 pm.
Join us via this Automatic Zoom Meeting Registration Link:
https://ufl.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJwqc-uvpjsoE9wD7r7pvFJGqB5s_qvsVm0y
Respondent: Terry Harpold (UF English Department)
Moderator: Sarra Tlili (LLC-Arabic)
The history of pets has long been a topic for social and cultural historians, but it has become particularly important for our understanding of societies’ relations with the natural world and with nonhuman animals. In this talk, Professor Howell explores the recent development of ‘animal history’, and what it says about domesticated or ‘companion’ animals. On the one hand, companion animals can be found in almost all societies, going back to ancient times. On the other, pets and petkeeping look like recent developments, a product of modern western societies. Professor Howell considers what we know of this history, and why it is significant, drawing on his own work on dogs in Victorian Britain. But he also emphasizes what we do not know, and how far away we are from a truly ‘global’ history of pets.
Click for details about the guest speaker and event.
4. “Labor, Love, and Homecoming: Towards a Trans-Asian and Global-Cultural Sisterhood.”
A Symposium with Professor Zhen Zhang (Director, Asian Film & Media Studies, New York University), in conjunction with the Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art exhibit “She/Her/Hers: Women in the Arts of China” from March 1-24.
Thursday, April 14 at 6:00-9:00pm in the Harn Museum : Screening of Jasmine Ching-Hui Lee’s film “Money and Honey” (2012), with Introduction by Zhen Zhang and post-screening discussion with the director (online).
Friday, April 15 at 12:00-1:45pm (Library East, Smathers 100): Presentation by guest speaker Zhen Zhang titled “Women make Waves in Sinophone Cinemas”:
Drawing from her current book project, ‘Women Make Waves in Sinophone Cinemas’, this talk situates Taiwan documentary filmmaker Jasmine Ching-hui Lee’s critically and popularly acclaimed ‘Money and Honey’ (2012) about her friendship and filmmaking praxis with several female Philippine workers in a Taipei nursing home and their homeland, within the context of her extended “women and homeland” documentary series. A strong instance of the “sentimental” strand in Taiwan’s new documentary, the decade-long trans-Asian project harnesses the power of melodramatic impulses for changing public attitudes, influencing government policies on immigrant labor.
The talk will be followed by an interdisciplinary panel discussion of the symposium theme and Q&A with the audience including Professors Will Hasty (LLC-German); Aida Hozic (Political Science), Barbara Mennel (Rothman Chair and Director of the Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere), Churchill Roberts (Media Production, Management, and Technology), and Welson Tremura (Associate Director of the Center for Arts, Migration and Entrepreneurship).
Moderator: Ying Xiao (LLC-Chinese)
SONGS Livestream Link for Remote Participants: https://mediasite.video.ufl.edu/Mediasite/Play/f51edab0bb77474eaa8fee9d3d73a5b51d
This symposium is cosponsored by UF’s Center for Gender, Sexualities, and Women’s Studies Research and the University of Florida International Center.