Taiwan today finds itself in an increasingly unstable geostrategic environment. As Sino-American tensions soar and an increasingly powerful and assertive PRC flexes its growing military might, the situation in the Taiwan Strait today is arguably the tensest it has been since the 1950s. In recent speeches, Xi Jinping has repeatedly asserted that “resolving the Taiwan […]
Newspaper headlines describe a China that is uniformly bleak: a slowing economy, tensions with the West, and a surveillance state that seems to have crushed all opposing voices. But in his new book Sparks: China’s Underground Historians and Their Battle for the Future (2023), Ian Johnson presents a more nuanced picture of Xi Jinping’s China, […]
The Philippines is the only Christian nation in Asia. This claim is often found in media commentaries about Filipinos and their spectacular religiosity. This talk introduces the concept of “theological nationalism” to refer to teh discursive claims made by religious groups about the Christian identity of the Philippines. They do so by invoking religious resources, […]
About the Speaker: Helena Arose serves as the Director of Programs at the Antiquities Coalition. In this role, she closely collaborates with representatives from the U.S. and international governments, law enforcement agencies, international partners, academics, and other key stakeholder groups to develop and implement programs to fight the illicit trade in ancient art and antiquities. […]
When a sacred lake bursts into toxic flames, and the temple at its shore is charred, the resident goddess flees. Where can She go? This talk highlights the paradox between Hinduism’s view of water as female, sacred and sentient, and the endemic pollution of water resources and climate-driven drought in contemporary India, and considers the […]
How do we read an idea when it appears in the literary form of a novel, poem, or translation, rather than in the expository form of philosophy per se? Brian Hurley’s 2022 book Confluence and Conflict: Reading Transwar Japanese Literature and Thought thinks through this question by tracing the connections between the realms of literature […]
The Japan Foundation New York and the University of Iowa’s Center for Asian and Pacific Studies join local co-sponsors BU Center for the Humanities, the Program in Women’s Gender, and Sexuality Studies, the Department of World Languages and Literature, Center for Teaching and Learning and BU Center for the Study of Asia. Kaori Fujino (Author) […]