2024 Program Information

DAY 1, April 13th 2024 

Levis Faculty Center Room 208 & 210 

All time is in US Central Time

*Presenters with * will be joining our in person session online. 


8:15 AM-8:25 AM Welcome Remarks 

Remarks by Haiyi Li, co-organizer of the symposium 


8:30 AM-10:15 AM Panel 1: Gender & Sexuality (in person) 

Moderator: Haiyi Li. University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.

Discussant: Shuo Zhang. University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.

Anuj Sah. Emory University. “The ‘Turk’ Beloved: A Homoerotic Metaphor across a Transregional Persianate World”.

Siyun Pan. University of British Columbia. “Intermedial + Interconnected Queerness: A Case Study on Translated Danmei Fiction”.

*Shuzhe Wang. Duke Kunshan University. “Heteronormativity in Korean Boy Love Comics: A Study of Chinese Women’s Gender Discourse”. 


10:15 AM-11:45 AM Panel 2: Printing & Publishing: (in person) 

Moderator: Xiaoyan Ren. University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.

Discussant: Prof. Xin Yu. University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

*Ya-Chiao Li. University of Oregon. “The Foreign Material, Wealth and Metallic Eye—Political hierarchy and projection of the colored-eye kingdoms in The Eunuch Sanbao’s Journeys in the Western Seas”.

Xinran Ge. Zhejiang University. “The Kansei Edition of the Tsuma Kagami: From the Monasterial Society to the Secular World”.

*Jin, Liu. Xi’an Academy of Fine Arts. “Exchange and interaction of religious arts in ancient east Asia——from the YuShu BaoJing”.

Xinyi Fu. University of Wisconsin–Madison. “Encoding Love: Intersecting Qing and Postal System in Wu Bing’s Qing You Ji”.


12:00 AM-1:30 PM LUNCH RECEPTION

Remarks by Professor Kai-Wing Chow, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.


2:00 PM-3:45 PM Panel 3: Empire, colonialism, & borderland: (in person) 

Moderator: Luming Xu. University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.

Discussant: Prof. Dan Shao. University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.

Reanne Zheng. University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. “Colonial Aspirations in the Pacific: Transimperial Influence from Hong Kong to San Francisco”.

Xavier Ante. University of Chicago. “Making the World Your Forest: The Globalization of Timber Markets in Republican China”. 

*Zhou Zhou. Rice University. “Constructing a “Chinese” Crime: Transnational Policing of Online Scams between China and Cambodia”.

*Neal Liu. University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. “Semiotic Un/Becoming of Taiwanese/Americans: How Taiwanese/Americans Un/Become as Transnational Citizens through Semiotic Practices”? 

Junwei Lu. University of Glasgow. “Marvellous Encounter: Searching for American Impact in Taiwanese Newsreels (1950-1970).” 


3:45 PM-5:15 PM Panel 4: Medicine, diaspora &global capitalism: (in person) 

Moderator: Yuwei Jiang. University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.

Discussant: Brian Hsieh. University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.

Xiayu Summer Chen. University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. “Trends in Studying the Mental health of Chinese Rural Old People: The Past and the Future”.

Yuanxie Shi. University of Chicago. “Collectivizing Putting-Out Lace in Socialist China”.

Marie Jensen. University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. “Reflective Nostalgia in East Germany and East Asia: An Analysis of In Times of Fading Light and The Astonishing Color of After”.

*Sojung Kim. Johns Hopkins University. “Disorder of Politics and Disorder of Kinship: Everyday Life of North Korean Migrant Women in South Korea”.


6:00 PM-7:30 PM Keynote Speech 

“Transcending Boundaries: The State of Interconnections in Studies of Global Asia”

 by Professors Naomi Paik and Ikuko Asaka 


DAY 2, April 14th 2024 

All presentations are online

8:00 AM-9:20 AM Panel 5: Creating Asia through culture: discourses, identity & Metaphor: (Online) 

Moderator: My-Xuan Hillengas. University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.

Discussant: Ruoyi Bian. University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.

Hardy Stewart. University of California, Berkeley. Ocean Subjects: Examination Culture and Periphery Poetics of Qing Taiwan (1684–1895).

Shiying Xiao. University of Oregon. Map As a Study Tool: Research on the Joseon Map “World Under Heaven”.

Han Chen. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Silence: From Rupture in Bei Dai’s Poetry to The Absence of Power.

Fan Yang. Sun Yat-sen University. Voices of Heritage: Policy Adaptation and Ethnic Identity among the Indigenous Orang Asli in Peninsular Malaysia.


9:30 AM-11:15AM Panel 6: Religion, practice & subjectivity (Online) 

Moderator: Yuhan Zhang. University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.

Discussant: Prof. Christopher Callahan. University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.

Dayna Bailey. The George Washington University. To Hell and Back:  The Impact of Devotion on Modern Taiwanese Folk Religious Practices.

Teo Ruskov. University of Chicago. Commentarial Narrative and the Buddhist Subject.

Lu Huang. Temple University. Mt. Jizu: The creation and development of a Buddhist sacred site in Dali.

Shengyue Zhu. University of California, Berkeley. Buddhist Images in Nihon Ryoiki 日本霊異記.

Lewis Ebert. University of Oxford. Mongol Empire, Yuan dynasty, and religious tolerance.


11:15 AM-2:00 PM LUNCH BREAK 


2:00 PM-3:45PM Panel 7: Interconnection, borders, & modernity: (Online) 

Moderator: David Wallace. University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.

Discussant: Prof. Gian-Piero Persiani. University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.

Jinsub Song. University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. “Does AI Have Buddha-Nature Too?”: Exploring the Huayan Perspective on AI Subjectivity.

Caitlyn Marentette. University of Michigan. Alternative Futurities of South Asian Studies: Interconnections of Past and Present through Modern Literature.

Devika Singh Shekhawat. Cornell University. Shrimp Aquaculture, Ecological Decline and the Spectre of the Anuprabeskari.

Matthew Shorten. Williams College. Coalescing Aural and Visual Experience in the Floating World: Suzuki Harunobu’s Synthesis of Nature and Music and Transformation of Materiality.


4:00 PM-5:45PM Panel 8: Gender, inequality & power: (Online) 

Moderator: Ruonan Wang. University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.

Discussant: Xinge Zhang. University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.

Hongyun Yu. Stanford University. Legal Education as Empowerment: Choices of Females in Chinese Law Schools.

Dr. Seiko OCHI. Meijo University. Gender Roles in Poetry Part(Mingci, 銘辭) on Northern Wei Tombstones Using Text Mining Analysis.

Weiting Du. University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. From American Psycho to “西格玛男人 (Sigma Males)” : a case study of misogyny in Internet meme culture.

Hesong Yang. University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. Employment Cyclicality, Gender Segregation, and Hiring over the Business Cycle in Japan.

Xinming Liao. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The “Field” in Between Life and Death: The Inter-affective Universe in The Field of Life and Death from an Ecofeminist Perspective.


Please also check out our special presentations!

This event/project was supported in part by grant funding from the U.S. Department of Education’s Title VI grant program. The content of this event does not necessarily represent the policy of the U.S. Department of Education, and you should not assume endorsement by the Federal Government.