The Monkey Bridge: Cultural Transmission and Transformation in Southeast Asia and China

Transcription

1 The Monkey Bridge: Cultural Transmission and Transformation in Southeast Asia and China This workshop focuses on sections of the Ramayana and Journey to the West to understand the dynamics of cultural transmission and the interplay of religion, literature, history, and art in China and Southeast Asia. It explores the power of stories to cross borders and to effect and reflect cultural change. Hanuman s Tail as a Bridge from a Thai Illustration to the Ramayana Introductory Overview and Discussion: Monday, October 28, 2013 Two Day Workshop: November 15 16, 2013 This event is part of a series hosted by Community College of Philadelphia with the support of a National Endowment of the Humanities Bridging Cultures grant and the Asian Studies Development Program, a joint project of the East West Center & the University of Hawai i. Y Location: Center for Business and Industry Building (CBI), Community College of Philadelphia, 18 th and Callowhill Streets, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

2 Monday, October 28, 3:00 4:30 Room: (CBI) C 3 5 Victor Mair, Professor of Chinese Language and Literature, East Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Pennsylvania, will give an overview of the controversy over the connection of the Ramayana and Journey to the West, and what teachers can accomplish in juxtaposing these two world masterpieces. He will provide a framework for exploring the transmission and transformation of religious and literary narratives as they cross political/cultural/linguistic boundaries. Two Day Workshop Schedule: Friday, November 15, 9:00 12:30 a.m. Room C2 28 CBI Building 8:30 9:00 Coffee and Tea and some pastries 9:00 Welcome and Introductions 9:10 10:10 Dr. Boreth Ly, Assistant Professor in Art History, University of California, Santa Cruz. Introduction to the Sita Rama Hanuman stories in Southeast Asian History and Art 10:10 11:15 Analysis and Discussion, and Q & A with faculty workshop participants. 11:15 11:30 Coffee Break 11:30 12:30 Professor Boreth Ly, Lecture: The Ramayana s religious and artistic legacy in Cambodia, Including Angkor Wat. 12:45 1:45 Lunch at the Rose Tattoo Restaurant, 1847 Callowhill Street, Philadelphia. (Lunch is provided for the first 25 Pre Registered Faculty Workshop Participants.) 2:00 3:15 Dr. Justin McDaniel, Associate Professor, Religious Studies, University of Pennsylvania, Lecture and Q & A: "Searching for Hinduism in Southeast Asia." Professor McDaniel will offer approaches to teaching the religious meaning and contexts for the Ramayana as it spread in Southeast Asia. He will provide ideas for faculty to introduce students to basic communalities in Hindu and Buddhist beliefs while recognizing complex, changing, and diversifying religious traditions. 3:15 4:00 Dr. Peter Hershock, Asian Studies Develop Program Co Chair, East West Center, Hawaii, will focus on cultural factors in China that led to distinct forms of Buddhism that help students understand Journey to the West. 4:00 4:15 Break 4:15 5:00 Justin McDaniel, Peter Hershock, Boreth Ly. Crossing Borders Discussion: Of Avatars and Bodhisattvas in Southeast Asia and China

3 Saturday, November 16, 9:00 12:00 a.m. CBI Building Room C :00 10:30 Dr. Paize Keulemans, Assistant Professor of East Asian Studies, Princeton University, Introduction to the Chinese Monkey King Sun Wukong from Interdisciplinary Perspectives 10:30 10:45 Break 10:45 12:00 Paize Keulemans and Boreth Ly. Comparing/contrasting Hanuman and Sun Wukong including discussion with faculty participants. 12:15 1:15 Lunch at the King of Tandoor Restaurant, (1824 Callowhill Street) (Lunch is provided for the first 25 Pre Registered Faculty Workshop Participants.) Saturday 1:30 3:00 p.m. Professor Paize Keulemans Teaching Journey to the West: Texts and Contexts An introduction to the Tang Dynasty Monk Xuanzang who traveled to India and the 1592 one hundred chapter Chinese novel; issues of translation and abridgements. 3:00 3:45 Discussion: How can faculty use the Ramayana Journey to the West Comparisons in a variety of college courses? Participant faculty will share ideas on questions such as: How and why do we teach the conflicts have students explore academic debates? How is religion conveyed and transformed through story telling? What is the role of art and architecture in transmitting beliefs, attitudes and values? What are the historical factors that encourage receptivity or resistance to crossing borders? How do courses recognize oral traditions, performance, dance and film as well as analyze and appreciate literary texts? 3:45 4:00 Wrap up

4 Victor Mair, Professor of Chinese Language and Literature, East Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Pennsylvania, Picture from Community College of Philadelphia Transcripts. June 1, 2009, taken at the Asian Studies Development Program Annual Conference held at CCP. Professor Mair specializes on Buddhist popular literature as well as the vernacular tradition of Chinese fiction and the performing arts. Among his chief works in these fields are Tun huang Popular Narratives (1983), Painting and Performance: Chinese Picture Recitation and Its Indian Genesis (1988), and T'ang Transformation Texts: A Study of the Buddhist Contribution to the Rise of Vernacular Fiction and Drama in China (1989). Throughout the 1990s, Professor Mair organized an interdisciplinary research project on the Bronze Age and Iron Age mummies of Eastern Central Asia. His efforts resulted in three documentaries for television (Scientific American, NOVA, and Discovery channel), a major international conference, numerous articles, and the book The Tarim Mummies: Ancient China and the Mystery of the Earliest Peoples from the West (2000). Professor Mair is the founder and editor of Sino Platonic Papers and General Editor of the ABC Chinese Dictionary Series at the University of Hawaii Press; the editor of The Columbia Anthology of Traditional Chinese Literature (1994);the author of The Columbia History of Chinese Literature (2001); and co editor of Hawai'i Reader in Traditional Chinese Culture (2005).

5 Featured Workshop Speakers November 15 and 16, 2013 Boreth Ly, Assistant Professor, History of Art and Visual Culture, University of California at Santa Cruz. (B.A., Art History, Bates College; Ph.D., Art History, University of California, Berkeley). Dr. Ly s research has involved Hindu and Buddhist arts of Cambodia, and how these ancient cultures are reflected in the rituals and performing arts of contemporary Cambodia and the neighboring nations of Thailand, Laos, Burma, and Vietnam. He explores how scholars and academia shape how we look at ancient arts and cultures, and how we look at the past shaped by concepts invented by colonial and nationalist periods. Ly s second area of research concerns how contemporary artists of Southeast Asia and its diaspora address issues of memory and trauma in the post Vietnam American War period. He believes strongly that artists and writers, as public intellectuals, are agents of social change and political activism. With Nora A. Taylor, Boreth Ly co edited Modern and Contemporary Southeast Asian Art: An Anthology (2012). His articles include Buddhist Walking Meditations and Contemporary Art of Southeast Asia, and "Of Trans(National) Subjects and Translation: The Art and Body Language of Sopheap Pich," and a chapter in Film in Contemporary Southeast Asia: Cultural Interpretation and Social Intervention (2012). In the last year he has been an invited speaker at the New York Asia Society, at Stanford University; in London on Buddha Kappa: Kingship, Politics and Art in Mainland Southeast Asia ; and at Berkeley on Seeing Sitas Under and In the Khmer Rouge (Imagi)nations".

6 Paize Keulemans, (Ph.D. University of Chicago, 2004), is Assistant Professor of East Asian Studies, Princeton University). He began studying Chinese language and culture in 1986 at Leiden University, the Netherlands. Since then, he has studied and taught Chinese language and literature in Nankai University, Cambridge University, National Taiwan University, the University of Chicago, Beijing University, Columbia University, and, most recently, Yale. Keulemans research interests are focused on the interaction between oral and written literature. His forthcoming book, Sound Rising from the Paper: 19th century Martial Arts Fiction and the Chinese Acoustic Imagination, pursues this topic from an acoustic angle, investigating the way a plethora of sound effects (onomatopoeia, dialect accents, vendor calls, etc.) turn the silent pages of printed novels into a lively acoustic spectacle. His second research project, tentatively entitled, Idle Chatter: The Productive Uses of Gossip and Rumor in 17th century Chinese Literature, explores the relationship between oral and written literature from a different point of view, the seemingly endless production of printed hearsay, rumor, and gossip in late Ming and early Qing novels, short stories, and opera. Keulemans specializes in late imperial novels and opera, but his interests also include modern Chinese literature, contemporary Chinese film, Dutch Chinese interactions from the 17th century onwards, and the adaptation of China s great novels for contemporary media such as film, TV, and video games. Justin McDaniel, (B.A. Boston College, M.A. and Ph.D. Harvard University, Department of Sanskrit and Indian Studies) is Associate Professor and Chair of Religious Studies, University f Pennsylvania. Justin McDaniel's research foci include Lao, Thai, Pali and Sanskrit literature, Southeast Asian Buddhism, manuscript studies, and Southeast Asian history. His first book, Gathering Leaves and Lifting Words won the Harry Benda Prize for the best first book in Southeast Asian Studies. His second book, The Lovelorn Ghost and the Magic Monk,won the Kahin Prize for the best book by a senior scholar in Southeast Asian Studies. He has received grants from the NEH, Mellon Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Fulbright Foundation, PACRIM, the SSRC, among others. He is the co editor of the journals: Buddhism Compass and Journal of Lao Studies. He has won teaching and advising awards at Harvard University, Ohio University, the University of California at Riverside, and the Ludwig Prize for Teaching at the University of Pennsylvania. In 2012 he was named a Guggenheim Fellow.

7 Crossing the monkey bridge by hoangthenhiem (trekearth, Mekong River Delta, Vietnam) Workshop Organizers: Fay Beauchamp, Ph.D., Professor of English, Director of the Community College of Philadelphia ASDP Regional Center, and Director, Center for International Understanding, Community College of Philadelphia. Peter Hershock, Ph.D., Co-Director, Asian Studies Development Program, East- West Center, Hawaii, and Director, Thinking Through Cultural Diversity, a NEH Bridging Cultures Project.

8 REGISTRATION FORM To: Faculty who are interested in the NEH/ASDP The Monkey Bridge: Ramayana/Journey to the West Workshops at Community College of Philadelphia From: Fay Beauchamp, Director, Center for International Understanding, Community College of Philadelphia Please use this form to register. CCP is waiving a registration fee, but would like you to make the same commitment. On Friday, those who are pre registered will receive a free lunch at the Rose Tattoo for the first 25 registrants. For Saturday, we are enabled to submit a list of participants for free parking in the CBI Building and lunch at the King of Tandoor Restaurant, again up to 25 participants. Please fill in the form below and return to Fay Beauchamp (fay.beauchamp@gmail.com) by Monday morning October 28. Late registrants will be accepted, because we have room for more than 25, but it would be much appreciated if we could have a solid list of participants by our first workshop day with Prof. Victor Mair. Monday, October 28, 3:00 4:30, CBI Building C 3 5 I am definitely coming to Victor Mair s presentation and discussion Monday, Oct. 28 (Light refreshments will be available.) For Friday, November 15, CBI C2 28 I am coming 9:00 am to 12:30 pm on Friday November 15, and 2:00 to 5:00 pm (I realize coffee, etc. is available at 8:30 am) I am recommending that students attend the 9:10 10:10 lecture with Boreth Ly (I expect _# students to attend) I am recommending that my students attend the 11:30 12:00 lecture with Borth Ly (I expect # students to attend Please reserve a place for me at the Rose Tattoo from 12:45 1:45 Friday Do not reserve a place for me at lunch I need to use that time elsewhere. For Saturday, November 16, CBI C3 19 I am attending 9:00 12:00 and 1:30 4:00 Please reserve a free parking place in the CBI garage Please reserve a place for me at the King of Tandoor Restaurant Please do not reserve a place at lunch because I need to use the time elsewhere. YOUR NAME: Department Preferred College With questions, please contact Fay Beauchamp (fay.beauchamp@gmail.com),