BUCSA Launches Website on Asia at the World’s Fairs
The Center for the Study of Asia (BUCSA), an affiliated regional center of the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, recently launched a website and digital humanities project entitled “Asia at the World’s Fairs: An Online Exhibition of Cultural Exchange.”
The online exhibition, created by Boston University faculty and students, focuses on the presence at the early international fairs held in major cities across Europe and America of Asian cultures and the stimulus they gave to transcultural interactions in areas as diverse as performing arts, architecture, painting, sculpture, print, and food.
Beginning with these early international exhibitions held in the 19th century, world’s fairs quickly became a key platform upon which peoples and cultures of Asia were presented to the world. Through these expositions. Asia’s rich, vibrant, and diverse histories and cultures were unveiled to the public, providing many fairgoers their first encounter with Asia that helped to shape their understanding of the world.
The BUCSA digital humanities project explores the exhibits on Asian dance and architecture at world’s fairs. This online exhibition is an ongoing project with additional themes and exhibits to be added in the coming months.
Without seeking to minimize the often unequal political and economic backdrop of the various early fairs, the focus on cultural themes in the exhibition intends to demonstrate the power and culture to engage with and at least in certain aspects, overcome power asymmetry.
Curators of the project include Professor of Chinese and Comparative Literature and former BUCSA Director Catherine Yeh; Website Designer and BU alumni Janet Liu; Associate Professor of Japanese Art and Architecture Alice Y. Tseng; BUCSA Associate Director Robert Murowchick; BUCSA Assistant Director Wen-hao Tien; Curatorial Assistant and BU alumni Xiaoyi Peng; Curatorial Assistant and BU alumni Yanxin Lu; and Research Assistant and BU Alumni Yiran Weng.
The Center for the Study of Asia promotes comprehensive, interdisciplinary, and cross-national understanding of Asia through coordination of teaching missions, research support, community-building among faculty and students, and broad outreach beyond the university. It strives to be an intellectual hub for new ideas and cutting edge research in the humanities and social sciences.