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Roundtable Series & Workshops

 

2005 - 2006

 

Critical Asian Studies 2005-2006 Roundtable Series:
Gender & Violence/Gendered Violence

  • October 24, 2005
    “Mobilising A Female Will to Violence: Uses of the Feminine in Hindu Right Discourses”
    Facilitator: Tanika Sarkar, Professor of Modern History at the Centre for Historical Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru Univerity in New Delhi, India & Rockefeller Fellow for Critical Asian Studies

    The round table discussion will look at two highly contradictory locations of women within the politics of the Hindu Right in contemporary India: discourses on Hindu gender relations and about the newfound political activism of Hindu right-wing women, on the one hand, and the account of the Muslim woman and her physicality, on the other. Dr. Sarkar explores both to track the resources for violence that are generated in and through rightwing ways of talking about Hindu and Muslim women. After her concluding remarks on how these notions are circulated and get naturalised as commonsense, she will open the floor for a group discussion.

    Readings:
    • Bock, Gisela. 1993. “Equality and difference in National Socialist racism,” in Scott, Joan Wallach (ed.), Feminism and History, Oxford & NY: Oxford University Press, pp.267-290
    • Koonz, Claudia. 1977. “Mothers in the Fatherland: Women in Nazi Germany,” in Bridenthal, R. & C. Koonz (eds.), Becoming Visible: Women in European History, New York: Houghton Miffin, pp.445-473
    • Blee, K. 1991. Women of the Klan: Racism and Gender in the 1920s, Berkeley: University of California Press, pp.11-41 (Ch.1: “Organizing 100% American Women”)
    • Sarkar, Tankia. 1993. “Women’s agency within Authoritarian Communalism: The Rastrasevika Samiti and Ramjanmabhoomi,” in Pandey, G. (ed.), Hindus and Others: The Question of Identity in India Today, New Delhi: Viking India, pp.24-45

  • November 28, 2005
    Facilitator:  Chie Ikeya, 2005-2006 Rockefeller Fellow, Project for Critical Asian Studies
    “The Modern Girl and Her Dangerous Liaisons: Gender, Ethnicity and Violence in the ‘Non-Violent’ Nationalist Movement in Colonial Burma”

    This roundtable will look at two key targets of the violent “anti-Indian” riots in 1930s colonial Burma, both of which concerned the modern Burmese girl, namely: her sexual relations with “foreign” (that is, “Indian”) men and her appropriation of Western fashion in defiance of the on-going anti-colonial boycott campaign. It will explore the connections among the conjugal and sartorial practices of Burmese women and the nationalist appeal for a rejection of colonial temptations that drew on Gandhi’s “ahimsaic” anti-colonial struggle.  Why did Indian-Burmese unions and Burmese women’s fashion come to embody anxieties about modernization and sexuality? The roundtable will conclude with a discussion of insights that the historical case of the modern, miscegenating girl in 1930s Burma might offer in thinking about the current non-violent democratic struggle in Burma led by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, focusing in particular on Suu Kyi’s renunciation of her sexuality and her uncompromising insistence on economic sanctions that underlie her claim to moral and political incorruptibility.

    Readings:
    • Ikeya, Chie. 2005. "Gender, History and Modernity: Representing Women in Twentieth Century Colonial Burma,” Doctoral Dissertation, Cornell University, chapters 5-6
    • 1939. “Iterim Report of the Riot Inquiry Committee,” Rangoon, Burma: Supt., Govt. Printing and Stationary Office
    • de Alwis, Malathi. 1999. “’Respectability,’’Modernity’ and the Policing of ‘Culture’ in Colonial Ceylon,” in Burton, A. (ed.) Gender, Sexuality and Colonial Modernities, London & New York: Routledge (Routledge Research in Gender and History), pp.177-192
    • Lwyn, Tinzar. 1994. “Stories of Gender and Ethnicity: Discourses of colonialism and resistance in Burma.” The Australian Journal of Anthropology, v.5, no.1&2, pp.60-85

  • April 26, 2006
    Facilitator:Hwa Shin Lee, 2005-2006 Rockefeller Fellow, Project for Critical Asian Studies
    “An Ethics of Facing: Unsettling Others, Interrupted Subjects”  

    This roundtable organizes discussion around the politically constructed identity of Korean Comfort Women as victimized subject and otherized victim. While the redress movement has principally focused on struggles for the recognition of a historical subject, agent, or actor both domestically and internationally, subsequent questions ensued: How plural is the subjectivity of Comfort Women? Or how singular is their collectivity? How to effectively confront with, and demand justice of, the Japanese psyche that shows little capacity for bearing witness to suffering across borders or holding themselves ethically responsible for it, but is stricken with victim consciousness?     

    The primary concern lies in shedding a different light on the otherness of Korean Comfort Women and addressing it with a Levinasian twist. Questions to be asked are: How to register the Other? What would happen, if we came face to face with the Other? What difference can an ethics of facing make to our present experience of encountering the Other? How can it transform the horizon of our understanding of many other sufferings with nationality, which affect different yet similar, similar yet different, whether Auschwitz, Nanking, or Hiroshima?

    Readings:
    • Levinas, E. 1998. “Useless Suffering,” in Entre Nous: On thinking-of-the-Other, New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 91-101
    • Levinas, E. & P. Nemo. 1995. “The Face,” in Ethics and Infinity, Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, pp.85-101
    • Dussel, Enrique. 1999. “’Sensibility’ and ‘Otherness’ in Emmanuel Levinas,” Philosophy Today, v.43, no.2, pp.126-133
    • Field, Norma. 1997. “War and Apology: Japan, Asia, the Fiftieth, and After,” positions: east asia cultures critique, v. 5, no.1, pp.1-49

 

 

2004 - 2005

 

  • September  22, 2004   
    “Elections in Asia & U.S. Elections: Implications for Asia"                 
    Two panels of University of Washington experts will present their views on elections.  The first will discuss implications of recent and upcoming elections in Asia.  The second will look at the significance of the upcoming US presidential elections for Asian nations.

    Panelists: Fadjar Thufail (Rockefeller Fellow, Project for Critical Asian Studies), with David Bachman, Virginia Van Dyke, Robert Pekkanen, Don Hellmann, Clark Sorensen, Christoph Giebel (Jackson School; Project for Critical Asian Studies Advisory Board)
  • January 25, 2005
    Roundtable on Critical Asian Studies
    The Project for Critical Asian Studies has a history now of nearly 10 years.  What sorts of work can we continue building locally and in the world?  A discussion with Claudia Pozzana and Alessandro Russo, former Rockefeller Critical Asian Studies fellows currently visiting from the University of Bologna, helps us ask a new round of questions:  How are our colleagues creating Critical Asian Studies in their own scholarly work?  What theoretical resources can we draw on?  What political and scholarly resources have value in our times?

    Panelists:  Claudia Pozzana (University of Bologna); Alessandro Russo (University of Bologna); Laurie J. Sears (History, UW); Vicente Rafael (History, UW); Christoph Giebel (Int'l Studies, UW); Priti Ramamurthy (Women Studies, UW); Scott Swaner (Asian Languages and Literature, UW); Sasha Welland (Post-doc, Women Studies & Anthropology); Madeleine Yue Dong (Int'l Studies  & History, UW); and Tani E. Barlow (History & Women Studies, UW).

 

Project for Critical Asian Studies Roundtable Series:
The Work of Area Studies in an Age of Pre-emptive War

  • February 22, 2005
    The Work of Area Studies in an Age of Pre-emptive War, Part One
    • Danny Hoffman, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, UW
      "Building the Barracks: Local Warriors and Global Militaries"
      Dr. Hoffman's research focuses on militia movements and mercenary operations in contemporary West Africa.
    • Arzoo Osanloo, Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Law, Societies and
      Justice Program, UW
      "Righting Wrongs: Liberal Strategies for Pre-empting War in Iran and Beyond"
      Dr. Osanloo is writing a book on women's everyday discourses of rights in Iran's Islamic Republic.
  • March 29, 2005
    The Work of Area Studies in an Age of Pre-emptive War, Part Two: America's Wars in Viet Nam, Central America, and Iraq
    The Second in a Series of Roundtables organized by the Project for Critical Asian Studies:
    Each of the following panelists will make a 15-minute presentation on these themes:
    • Christoph Giebel, Associate Professor of International Studies & History, UW 
    • Angelina Godoy, Assistant Professor of International Studies & Law, Societies and Justice, UW
    • Resat Kasaba, Professor of International Studies, UW    
  • May 31, 2005
    The Work of Area Studies in an Age of Pre-emptive War, Part Three: Re-thinking Southeast Asia Area Studies
    Chaired by Professor Celia Lowe (Anthropology), this roundtable will consist presentations by graduate students participating in her seminar/course this quarter on Southeast Asia Area Studies.  Each of three panelists will make a 15-minute presentation.