History in Images, History in Words: In Search of Facts in Documentary Filmmaking
History in Images, History in Words:
In Search of Facts
in Documentary Filmmaking
A lecture by Carma Hinton
Robinson Professor of Visual Culture and Chinese Studies at George Mason University
Monday April 10, 2017 from 4-7 pm
at the Photonics Center (9th fl.), 8 St. Mary’s Street, Boston University
My presentation will focus on the process of documentary filmmaking, especially the many challenges my team and I faced in trying to create engaging filmic narratives that are both factually accurate and encompass multiple perspectives. I will use excerpts from my films as well as out-takes to illustrate the difficulties in determining what information to include and exclude, assess the compromises involved in the choices, and explore the consequences of taking various possible paths. I will also address the different problems that a historian encounters when presenting history in images as opposed to in words: the potential and limitation of each medium and what information each might privilege or obscure. I believe that in this age of “alternative facts” and “parallel universes,” reflections on the challenges in obtaining authenticity and truth and the importance of relentlessly striving to reach this goal, take on particularly urgent meaning.
About the speaker:
Carma Hinton is an art historian and a filmmaker. She received her Ph.D. in Art History from Harvard University and is now Robinson Professor of Visual Culture and Chinese Studies at George Mason University. Together with Richard Gordon, Hinton has directed many documentary films, including Small Happiness, All Under Heaven, To Taste a Hundred Herbs, Abode of Illusion: The Life and Art of Chang Dai-chien, The Gate of Heavenly Peace, and Morning Sun. She has won two Peabody Awards, the American Historical Association’s John E. O’Connor Film Award, the International Critics Prize and the Best Social and Political Documentary at the Banff Television Festival, and a National News & Documentary Emmy, among others. Hinton is currently working on a book about Chinese scrolls depicting the theme of demon quelling. Carma Hinton was born in Beijing. Chinese is her first language and culture.
United States China Strategy, with Prof. Jane Zhu, Rana Miller, and others (Council on Foreign Relations, Global Affairs Expert Webinar, Sept. 18, 2024)
Dear Colleagues,
Our colleague at Suffolk, Prof. Jane Zhu, will be participating in an on-line seminar about China. And we invite you to join in if you can.
The topic is United States China Strategy. It will be Wednesday, 18 September 2024 from 1pm to 2pm EDT. You can sign up at: outreach@cfr.org.
This will be a Global Affairs Expert Webinar. The meeting is sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and it will be on the record. Another China expert participating will be Rana Mitter, S.T. Lee professor of U.S.-Asia relations at Harvard University, who will lead the conversation on U.S. China strategy.
In case you’d like to do background reading, the CFR sends this list of recommended sources:
- Rush Doshi and James M. Lindsay, “America’s China Strategy,” The President’s Inbox, Podcast, Council on Foreign Relations, August 13, 2024.
- Oriana Skylar Mastro, “The Pivot That Wasn’t: Did America Wait Too Long to Counter China?” Review Essay, Foreign Affairs, July/August 2024.
- Jessica Chen Weiss, Rush Doshi, Mike Gallagher, Paul Heer, Matt Pottinger, and James B. Steinberg, “What Does America Want From China? Debating Washington’s Strategy—and the Endgame of Competition,” Response, Foreign Affairs, July/August 2024.
- Emily Kilcrease, “America’s China Strategy Has a Credibility Problem: A Muddled Approach to Economic Sanctions Won’t Deter Beijing,” ForeignAffairs.com, May 7, 2024.
- “Will China Invade Taiwan?” Learning Journey, CFR Education.
This invitation is open to students and educators. Sign up by emailing outreach@cfr.org with your name, title, and academic affiliation. Please sign up and full information will be sent to you by the Council on Foreign Relations.
Ronald Suleski, PhD
Professor and Director, Rosenberg Institute for East Asian Studies
Associate in Research, Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Reischauer Institute for Japanese Studies, Harvard University
Suffolk University, Room 1026 History Department, 73 Tremont Street, Boston, MA 02108
Tel 617-973-5341 Fax 617-723-7255
rsuleski@suffolk.edu www.suffolk.edu/rosenberg
美國薩福克大學羅森伯格東亞研究所
Tristan Brown (MIT) on Fengshui and the State in Qing Dynasty China (Virtual event, September 5, 2024)
The Norman B. Leventhal Map and Education Center at the Boston Public Library invites you to take part in the virtual event:
Fengshui and the State in Qing Dynasty China
with Tristan Brown (MIT)
Thursday, September 5, 2024 at 1 pm ET
Missing Heaven & Earth now that it’s come off the walls? We’ve got one last program for you!
Join Tristan Brown, S.C. Fang Chinese Language and Culture Career Development Professor at MIT, to discuss his work on fengshui in Chinese politics and culture. Brown’s tells the story of the important roles—especially legal ones—played by fengshui in Chinese society during China’s last imperial dynasty, the Manchu Qing (1644–1912). This program is part of our summer exhibition Heaven & Earth: The Blue Maps of China.
This is an online-only event. Register for free at this link https://www.leventhalmap.org/event/tristan-brown-on-fengshui-and-the-state-in-qing-dynasty-china/
Wan-an Chiang 蔣萬安 — Global Taipei: Bridging Tradition and Innovation (JFK Jr. Forum, Harvard Kennedy School, Sept. 9, 2024)
The Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics, Bloomberg Center for Cities at Harvard University, and Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University invite you to hear
Global Taipei: Bridging Tradition and Innovation
with Wan-An Chiang 蔣萬安 (Mayor of Taipei)
September 9 @ 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm
JFK Jr. Forum, Harvard Kennedy School, 79 John F. Kennedy St., Cambridge, MA 02138
Speaker: Wan-an Chiang, Mayor, Taipei
Moderator: Anthony Saich, Director, Rajawali Foundation Institute for Asia and Daewoo Professor of International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School
Co-sponsored by the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics, Bloomberg Center for Cities at Harvard University, and Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University
Please register with a valid Harvard email address to attend in-person.
This event will also be livestreamed on YouTube.
Ja Ian Chong — Northeast Asia is for Deterrence and Southeast Asia is (Mostly) for Free-Riding: Understanding Divergent Responses to Maintaining Order (at Harvard, Sept. 9 2024)
Harvard's Program on US-Japan Relations, Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, and Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies invite you to hear
Northeast Asia is for Deterrence and Southeast Asia is (Mostly) for Free-Riding: Understanding Divergent Responses to Maintaining Order
Ja Ian Chong (Associate Professor of Political Science, National University of Singapore)
Moderator: Mark Wu, Henry L. Stimson Professor, Harvard Law School; Director, Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies
Monday, September 9 2024 from 12:00 to 1:00 pm
CGIS Knafel K262
Harvard University, 1737 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
Registration site: https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJEqf-6opz4rGNecwwA132Vq1rTroCFdQ7hv#/registration
The following details come from https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/ja-ian-chong-northeast-asia-is-for-deterrence-and-southeast-asia-is-mostly-for-free-riding-understanding-divergent-responses-to-maintaining-order/
Speaker: Ja Ian Chong, Associate Professor, Political Science, National University of Singapore
Moderator: Mark Wu, Henry L. Stimson Professor, Harvard Law School; Director, Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies
The focus of Ja Ian Chong’s teaching and research is on international relations, especially IR theory, security, Chinese foreign policy, and international relations in the Asia-Pacific. Of particular interest are issues that stand at the nexus of international and domestic politics, such as influences on nationalism and the consequences of major power competition on the domestic politics of third countries. In addition to their academic background, they have experience working in think-tanks both in Singapore and in the United States. The speaker is the author of External Intervention and the Politics of State Formation–China, Indonesia, Thailand, 1893-1952 (Cambridge, 2012), which received the 2013 Best Book Award from the International Security Studies Section of the International Studies Association.
Co-sponsored by the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies.
Also via Zoom.
Register at: https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJEqf-6opz4rGNecwwA132Vq1rTroCFdQ7hv#/registration
The Transformation of Japanese Security Policy: The US-Japan Alliance and the New Geopolitics of the Indo-Pacific (Sept. 9, 2024)
The Consulate-General of Japan in Boston and the Boston University Pardee School Center for the Study of Asia
are pleased to present
Professor JIMBO Ken (Faculty of Policy Management, Keio University)
The Transformation of Japanese Security Policy:
The US-Japan Alliance and the New Geopolitics of the Indo-Pacific
Monday, Sept. 9 2024 from 5:30 to 7:00 pm
121 Bay State Road, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215
Note: this will be a HYBRID event.
Please register at https://bostonu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_0CltP5aj4odRMsS
About the Speaker: (https://ihj.global/en/experts/experts-1498/)
JIMBO Ken is Professor at the Faculty of Policy Management, Keio University. He served as a Special Advisor to the Minister of Defense, 
Japan Ministry of Defense (2020) and a Senior Advisor, The National Security Secretariat (2018-20).
His main research fields are in International Security, Japan-US Security Relations, Japanese Foreign and Defense Policy, Multilateral Security in Asia-Pacific, and Regionalism in East Asia. He has been a policy advisor for various Japanese governmental commissions and research groups including for the National Security Secretariat, the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. His policy writings have appeared in NBR, The RAND Corporation, Stimson Center, Pacific Forum CSIS, Japan Times, Nikkei, Yomiuri, Asahi and Sankei Shimbun.
Understanding Indonesia, featuring Robert Blake Jr. (Boston Public Library, Sept. 11, 2024)
WorldBoston, WGBH Forum Network, Boston Public Library, and the Lowell Institute are pleased to invite you to the Boston Public Library for their latest Great Decisions program:
"Understanding Indonesia"
with Robert Blake Jr.
Former U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia
Wednesday, September 11, 2024 from 6-7:30 pm ET
Rabb Hall, Boston Public Library, Copley Square
This program will feature a live audience Q&A, expert insights, and time for networking and discussion with other globally-oriented participants in the Newsfeed Café.
"Indonesia has thrived during this great period of uncertainty for the rest of the world." - Robert Blake Jr.
REGISTER HERE
This program is free and open to the public, but advance registration is required.
The program will be live-streamed to Zoom from 6:00-7:00 PM. To attend virtually, please register here.
Ambassador Blake served for 31 years in the State Department in a wide range of leadership positions. From 2013 to 2016, he served as the U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia, where he focused on building stronger business and educational ties between the U.S. and Indonesia. In this role, he worked with the CEOs of Indonesia’s largest palm oil producers to develop a major sustainable palm oil initiative to reduce Indonesia’s greenhouse gas emissions. He also served as Senior Advisor to Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry to help conclude a Just Energy Transition Partnership with Indonesia in 2022. In 2009, he was nominated by President Obama to be Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia, serving from 2009 to 2013, for which he was awarded the State Department’s Distinguished Service Award. From 2006 to 2009, he served concurrently as U.S. Ambassador to Sri Lanka and the Maldives. Prior to that, he served as Deputy Chief of Mission in India from 2003 to 2006, where he was named the worldwide DCM of the Year by the State Department.
Ambassador Blake held a wide variety of key State Department positions as well, including Executive Assistant to the Under Secretary for Political Affairs from 2001 to 2003, Deputy Executive Secretary for the Department of State from 2000 to 2001, and Senior Desk Officer responsible for economic and political relations with Turkey from 1998 to 2000. He has also served in Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, and Nigeria.
He is currently Chairman of the Board of the U.S.-Indonesia Society, is a member of the board of the Asia Foundation, and serves on the Global Leadership Council of the World Resources Institute and the National Committee of the World Wildlife Fund.
Ambassador Blake holds a BA from Harvard College, and an MA from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC.
|
|
Workshop on Diets and Local Food Systems in Asia (Hybrid event, Asia Research Institute, NUS, Sept. 12-13, 2024)
A lot of current discussion of food systems is often framed within the context of globalisation, with a specific focus on the almost hegemonic power of transnational food complexes. However, recent developments in food systems across the Global South paint a more nuanced picture, that emphasises the multi-scalar nature of these systems.
Workshop on Diets and Local Food Systems in Asia
12 Sept to 13 Sept. 2024 Hybrid Event
Venue : Hybrid (Online via Zoom & AS8 04-04)
10 Kent Ridge Crescent, Singapore 119260
National University of Singapore @ KRC
In this workshop, we bring together scholars based in Singapore and internationally to discuss changes occurring in local food systems throughout Asia through the lens of diets. The workshop features six panels where speakers present their current research and receive feedback, scheduled as follows:
Panel 1 – Different Types of Markets
Panel 2 – Preserving Diets in Industrial Food Systems
Panel 3 – Food Security in Asia
Panel 4 – Local Knowledge and Collaborations
Panel 5 – Local Cuisines in Global Context
Panel 6 – Materiality and Technology in Food Systems
Through this dialogue about the synergy between diets and local food systems, we seek to connect global context and local changes, especially how local/regional actors and locations participate in food production, distribution, and consumption.
Date : 12 Sep 2024 - 13 Sep 2024
Venue : Hybrid (Online via Zoom & AS8 04-04)
10 Kent Ridge Crescent, Singapore 119260
National University of Singapore @ KRC
Contact Person : YEO Ee Lin, Valerie
WORKSHOP CONVENORS
Dr Shumeng Li | Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore
Assoc Prof Jamie S. Davidson | Asia Research Institute & Department of Political Science, National University of Singapore
REGISTRATION
Admission is free. Please register your interest by completing the registration form, and details for online/in-person participation will be sent to you 3 days before the event. Register here https://ari.nus.edu.sg/events/food-systems-in-asia/ (see also https://ari.nus.edu.sg/events/food-systems-in-asia/#form)
Breath, Rhythm and Music for Your Wellbeing, with Prof. Igor Iwanek (Sept. 17, 2024)
Join CFA professor Dr. Igor Iwanek and live musicians in learning the ancient wellbeing practice of Rhythmic Breath Control!
This Fall, join CFA professor Dr. Igor Iwanek and live musicians in learning the practice of Rhythmic Breath Control (RBC). Imagine your body is hardware and your mind is software. How do we keep this machine charged? RBC teaches you to create a power station for your body and mind using breath and musical rhythm. Studies have shown how we breathe relates to how healthy we are, and in this interactive session, we'll learn powerful ancient techniques designed to promote emotional resilience and holistic wellbeing.
Throughout the semester, one hour workshops will be offered most Tuesdays at 5 pm at the Howard Thurman Center for Common Ground
For an idea of what to expect, check out Dr. Iwanek's recent appearance at TedXBU below!
Learning Objectives:
1. Improve cognitive performance and self-management in stressful situations with RBC.
2. Learn to recreate the profound relaxation of deep sleep, on demand.
3. Understand the power of breath to overcome overwhelming thoughts, stabilize the mind and energize the body.
Registration: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/breath-rhythm-and-music-for-your-wellbeing-tickets-1000241137167
Register for any (or all) of the ten sessions that suit your schedule. Open to current BU students, faculty and staff.
Sponsored by Student Wellbeing, College of Fine Arts, BU Arts Initiative, Center for Teaching & Learning, and the Howard Thurman Center for Common Ground.
Modern China Lecture Series featuring Rebecca Nedostup – War Being in Mid Twentieth Century China and Taiwan (Harvard Fairbank Center, Sept. 17 2024)
Harvard's Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies is pleased to invite you to the next Modern China Lecture Series presentation:
War Being in Mid Twentieth Century China and Taiwan
Rebecca Nedostup
(Associate Professor of History, Associate Professor of East Asian Studies, Brown University)
September 17, 2024 from 4:00 – 5:30 pm
CGIS Knafel K262, Harvard University, 1737 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
The following details are taken from https://fairbank.fas.harvard.edu/events/modern-china-lecture-series-featuring-rebecca-nedostup/
Speaker: Rebecca Nedostup, Associate Professor of History, Associate Professor of East Asian Studies, Brown University
Two decades of intense hot and cold war in China and Taiwan between the 1930s and 1950s produced not only significant economic, political, and environmentalchanges, but notable consequences for the epistemological structuring of everyday experience. Using examples of shifting conceptions of physical and cosmological refuge found in Jiangsu, Sichuan, and Taiwan, I suggest some ways in which the scale and conduct of warfare during this period challenged but did not entirely erase extant conceptions of space and time. Although national and geopolitical frameworks threatened to eclipse alternate ways in which people made community among the living and the dead, knowledge and projections of spatial and chronological arrangements were still intimately tied to the social networks that activated them – even as such networks were themselves in flux. The tension between state utilizations of population displacement and the self-conception and self-organization of the displaced themselves would set the stage for the large-scale social experiments and new migration patterns of the late twentieth century.
Rebecca Nedostup is a historian of twentieth-century China and Taiwan at Brown University. She works on displacement and emplacement; the social and political roles of the living and the dead in times of disruption; and the relationship of transitional justice and historical consciousness. Her book Superstitious Regimes: Religion and the Politics of Chinese Modernity looked at the modern categorization of religious practice and its social and political ramifications. Her next book. War Being, is on the making and unmaking of community among people displaced by conflict across China and Taiwan from the 1930s through the 1950s. More broadly, she is interested in ritual studies, critical archive studies, digital ontologies, and historic preservation. She is faculty director of the Choices program, and was previously Visiting Chair of Taiwan Studies at the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS) and Leiden University Institute for Area Studies (LIAS).
Linking East and West: Yue-Sai Kan and her Cross-Cultural Influence (Sept. 16, 2024 at BU’s Tsai Performance Center)
Discover the captivating journey of the woman dubbed "The Most Famous Woman in China" as she shares insights from her remarkable life story. From her humble beginnings as a Chinese refugee to becoming a global media icon, groundbreaking entrepreneur, and impactful philanthropist, Yue-Sai Kan's narrative is not only a personal triumph but also a mirror reflecting the dynamic evolution of China over the decades.
This event is free and open to the public! Register at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/linking-east-and-west-yue-sai-kan-and-her-cross-cultural-influence-tickets-961527252897?aff=oddtdtcreator