Tenth Annual Trans-Asia Graduate Student Conference:
Bridging Glocal Asias
University of Wisconsin-Madison April 19-20, 2024
Schedule
Friday, April 19, 2024
Saturday, April 20, 2024
Venue
Rooms: Ingraham Hall 206 and 336 (2nd and 3rd floor)
Address: 1155 Observatory Drive, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Find it on the Campus Map here: https://map.wisc.edu/s/a6r8ys7n
2024 Conference Registration
No registration necessary. All welcome.
For in-person attendees: Please swipe your Wiscard or sign in with your name and email address on the paper form provided at the conference venue.
Questions about the conference should be directed to: tagsconference@rso.wisc.edu or to Tiantian Cai (tcai34@wisc.edu)
The Trans-Asia Graduate Student Association is pleased to announce the Tenth Annual Trans-Asia Graduate Student Conference at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, encompassing Asia-related research. Participants will have the opportunity to present their work, receive constructive feedback from peers and senior researchers, and gain insights into the latest developments in interdisciplinary Asia-related research.
This year’s theme, “Bridging Glocal Asias,” encourages conversations about connections and interconnections, balance and imbalance, micro and macro tendencies and perspectives across and within regions of Asia. “Glocal,” a fusion of “global” and “local,” seeks to delve into the potential intersections between the global and local spheres. It encapsulates the complex interconnectedness and recognition that characterize the interplay between global and local dimensions, seeking a re-examination of the “trans-” from the perspective of the “periphery” across time and space.
We seek research that surpasses established boundaries of disciplines, ideologies, and knowledge, uncovering potential connections, fostering exchanges, and facilitating dialogues. Potential fields include, but are not limited to: literature, linguistics, history, art history, geography, philosophy, economics, anthropology, sociology, education and any other related humanities and social science fields.
Keynote Speakers:
| Chiang, Howard
Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies Lai Ho & Wu Cho-liu Endowed Chair in Taiwan Studies University of California, Santa Barbara |
Walker, Trent
Assistant Professor of Southeast Asian Studies Thai Professor of Theravada Buddhism University of Michigan |
Mode of Conference: Primarily in-person (with the option of online participation)
Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/tagsconference
Conference registration is free. Inquires about the conference should be directed to:
tagsconference@rso.wisc.edu or to Tiantian Cai (tcai34@wisc.edu)
Each presentation is 20-minute followed by a 10-minute question & answer session. The full papers themselves should be about 8-9 pages and should not exceed 10 pages double spaced in 12-point Times New Roman.
Conference Schedule
All times in Central Daylight Time (CDT or UTC-5:00)
Day 1 – Friday, April 19
8:30 – 10:00 AM Panel 1A (De)colonization in Action / Panel 1B Feeling Media: Gendered Production
10:15 – 11:45 AM Panel 2A Imaging the Sinosphere / Panel 2B Displacement in Time and Space
12:00 – 1:30PM Keynote Speaker 1 (Dr. Trent Walker)
1:45 – 3:15 PM Panel 3A Gendered Aesthetics / Panel 3B Making of Science: Modernity, Nationalism and Globalism
3:30 – 5:00 PM Panel 4A Repositioning “Local” / Panel 4B Transcending Boundaries: Production of Knowledge and Travel
5:15 – 6:45 PM Panel 5A Translating Identity: Social Media, Immigration, Mobility / Panel 5B Writing Sacred Texts
Day 2 – Saturday, April 20
9:00 – 9:30 AM breakfast
9:30 – 11:00 AM Panel 6A People and Artifacts in motion / Panel 6B Representing and Embodying Queerness
11:00 – 12:00 PM Lunch break
12:30 – 1:30 PM Roundtable Discussion
1:45 – 3:15 PM Keynote Speaker 2 (Dr. Howard Chiang)
3:30 – 5:00 PM Panel 7A Saying it with(out) words: translanguaging and contextualization / Panel 7B Political Economy: female Labor, capitalism and industrialization
5:15 – 6:45 PM Panel 8A Policy Making: a global perspective / Panel 8B Narrating the politics: fiction, mass media, and art
7:00 PM End-of-conference Celebration Dinner (Ingraham 206)
TAGS Keynote Speaker: Trent Walker
206 Ingraham Hall
April 19, 2024 @ 12:00 pm – 1:30 pm
Meeting ID: 933 3437 6829
Passcode: TAGS
Bitexts in Glocal Perspective:
Towards an Intellectual History of Buddhist Translation in Early Modern Southeast Asia
The translation of South Asian Buddhist texts into Chinese and Tibetan must count among the largest, longest-lasting, and most influential translation projects in the premodern world. Not only did they establish translator teams as key intermediaries in the pan-Asian exchange of ideas, these projects offered an enduring model in East and Central Asia for thinking through issues of linguistic difference, textual authority, and cross-continental connection. When the field of translation studies gropes for premodern sources beyond the West, such examples from China and Tibet loom large. But what about mainland Southeast Asia, where South Asian Buddhist canons were equally influential? Where does the region fit in the global history of translation?
Taking a cue from the 2024 TAGS conference theme, this talk engages the dynamic interplay of global and local forces witnessed in the dominant technology for translation in early modern mainland Southeast Asia, the Indic-vernacular bitext. Unlike in China or Tibet, in Southeast Asia the vast body of Buddhist scriptures were not translated wholesale into local languages until the twentieth century. For most of the second millennium, especially between the late fifteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Southeast Asian intellectuals instead produced an enormous quantity of bilingual compositions, or bitexts, that combine passages in Sanskrit or Pali with glosses into a local vernacular, be it Burmese, Khmer, Lao, Thai, or a host of lesser-known languages.
Drawing on examples from throughout the region, this talk shows how the influence of these bitexts extended well beyond the Buddhist sphere, shaping the study of grammar, literature, and the sciences across early modern Southeast Asia. Bitexts not only facilitated the study of South Asian thought, but built a platform for Southeast Asians to compose in a fresh, cosmopolitan idiom that afforded the circulation of ideas across a diverse set of vernacular tongues. Taking a glocal perspective on these modes of reading, writing, and performance allows us to appreciate how Southeast Asian intellectuals made a distinct and enduring contribution to the history of translation.
Trent Walker works on Buddhism, literature, and music in Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. His research spans the medieval period to the present, focusing on handwritten materials—bark-paper documents, palm-leaf manuscripts, and stone inscriptions—and their performative realization in speech, chant, and song. He has long worked with Thai, Khmer, Lanna, Lao, Pali, and Sanskrit sources, and more recently with those in Tai Khün, Tai Lue, Shan, and Vietnamese. In the field of Khmer literature, he authored Until Nirvana’s Time: Buddhist Songs from Cambodia (Shambhala Publications, 2022) and co-edited a major anthology, Out of the Shadows of Angkor: Cambodian Poetry, Prose, and Performance through the Ages (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2022). Recent publications include articles on Thai literary history, Lao and Shan exegesis, Theravada nuns, Pali-vernacular homiletics, Khmer epigraphy, and Vietnamese Buddhist translation.
TAGS Keynote Speaker: Howard Chiang
206 Ingraham Hall
April 20, 2024 @ 1:45 – 3:15 pm
Meeting ID: 945 2535 8647
Passcode: TAGS
Transtopia and the Narrative Thresholds of History
This lecture discusses the programmatic contours and major interventions of a new keyword, transtopia, to theorize different scales of gender transgression that are not always discernible through the Western notion of transgender. Examples from the Sinophone Pacific, ranging from global sex change to the queer indigenous movement, will be used to reframe the politics of knowledge production in order to narrate and historicize episodes of displaced sovereignty.
Howard Chiang holds the Lai Ho & Wu Cho-liu Endowed Chair in Taiwan Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he is also Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies and Director of the Center forTaiwan Studies. He is the author of two award-winning monographs: After Eunuchs: Science, Medicine, and the Transformation of Sex in Modern China (Columbia University Press, 2018) and Transtopia in the Sinophone Pacific (Columbia University Press, 2021). Between 2019 and 2022, he served as the Founding Chair of the Society of Sinophone Studies. He is currently completing Trans Without Borders (under contract with the University of Michigan Press) and Mind Hunters: Psychoanalysis, Race, and the Politics of Transcultural Science in the Sinophone Pacific (under contract with Columbia University Press).
- Panel 1A and 1B
- Panel 2A and 2B
- Panel 3A and 3B
- Panel 4A and 4B
- Panel 5A and 5B
- Panel 6A and 6B
- Roundtable Discussion
- Panel 7A and 7B
- Panel 8A and 8B
Panel 1A (De)colonization in Action
Friday, April 19, 8:30 – 10:00 AM
In-person: Ingraham 336
Zoom Meeting ID: 929 2732 5027
Passcode: TAGS
- The Root of What it Means to Be Human: Aesthetics of Connectivity in the Farmers’ Art Movement, 1920-1929 by Maggie Bryan, University of Oxford
- The Prism of Propaganda: China’s Diplomatic Narrative in the Early Cold War Era by Siyue Liu, University of Turku
- Calcutta’s Baghdadi Jewry and Modernity in Colonial Times: Anglicisation by Sayan Lodh, Presidency University
- Comparative Arboreal: Reading through trees in Apocalypse Now (1979) by Christian Jil Benitez, Chulalongkorn University
Discussant: Hamni Park, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Panel 1B Feeling Media: Gendered Production
Friday, April 19, 8:30 – 10:00 AM
In-person: Ingraham 206
Zoom Meeting ID: 931 6331 2018
Passcode: TAGS
- Heteronormativity in Korean Boys Love Comics: A Study of Chinese Women’s Gender Discourse by Shuzhe Wang, Duke Kunshan University
- A “life-size” China—“People’s China” picture production and others by Bayinna, Fudan University
- “Cartoon is the New Human?”: Art, Visual Culture, and the Metaverse of Spectacles by Katt Hui Wang, The University of Heidelberg
Discussant: Qian Lan, Hong Kong Baptist University (Visiting student at University of Wisconsin-Madison)
Panel 2A Imaging the Sinosphere
Friday, April 19, 10:15 – 11:45 AM
In-person: Ingraham 336
Zoom Meeting ID: 969 1805 2109
Passcode: TAGS
- Transcultural Perspectives on Lü Bu: A Comparative Analysis of Lü Bu’s Perception in Chinese and Japanese Three Kingdoms Culture by Tianyi Xu, Fudan University
- Bridging Asian Confucianism and Global Capitalism: A Case Study of Shibusawa Eiichi’s “The Analects and The Abacus” by Youyun Ye, The University of Tokyo
- Horii Ryōho’s Transnational Vision of Farmer Democracy in Taishō Japan (1912–1926) by Toma-Jin Morikawa-Fouquet, University of Oxford, St. Catherine’s College
- Flowing and Communicative Visual Art: A Dynamic Journey through Diffusion of Human-headed Birds in Zoroastrianism in Ancient Asia by Yu Sun, Durham University
Discussant: Emir Karakaya, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Panel 2B Displacement in Time and Space
Friday, April 19, 10:15 – 11:45 AM
Zoom Meeting ID: 958 6858 2660
Passcode: TAGS
In-person: Ingraham 206
- Globalization vs. Localization: A Study of Ganesh Devy’s Cultural Activism in the Context of Indian Indigenous Communities by Prathama Sarkar, Independent Researcher
- Shipbuilding on the Medieval Malabar Coast: Neither Global nor Local by Hafis C, University of Hyderabad
- Transnational Encounters of Mukbang and Fandom amidst Times of Crisis in Manipur by Sanskriti, Indian Institute of Technology Jodhpur
- Poetry and the construction of cosmopolitan Calcutta in the nineteenth century by Reshma Khatoon, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta
Discussant: Ye Lin, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Panel 3A Gendered Aesthetics
Friday, April 19, 1:45 – 3:15 PM
In-person: Ingraham 336
Zoom Meeting ID: 951 8426 5844
Passcode: TAGS
- Body and Space: The Liminality and Diversity of Japanese Prostitutes in Late Qing Chinese Classical Tales by Qian Lan, Hong Kong Baptist University
- Exploring Maternal Figures in South Korean Cinema: A Comparative Analysis of ‘Mother’ and ‘Poetry’ by Chenyi Huang, Duke University
- Physique of “Health, Strength, and Beauty”:Zhao Zhuguang and the Birth of Chinese Muscular Masculinity, 1931-1952 by Elvin JC Zhu, The Ohio State University
Discussant: Eliot Chen, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Panel 3B Making of Science: Modernity, Nationalism and Globalism
Friday, April 19, 1:45 – 3:15 PM
In-person: Ingraham 206
Zoom Meeting ID: 938 4127 4796
Passcode: TAGS
- From “chouren” to “arithmetician”: Li Shanlan and the subject independence of Chinese mathematics in the time of the Western Affairs Movement by Wenyi Luo, SOAS, University of London
- Outer Science, Inner Yoga: East Meeting West as “The Great Transformation of our Age” by Kyle Dougherty, University of Wisconsin-Madison
- On the Pamir’s Crossroads: A Doctor’s Journey to the Soviet Uzbekistan and a Glocal Imagination of South and Central Asia-s by Nishant Upadhyay, University of Texas at Austin
- Making the “Central Meteorological Observatory of Chinese-Japanese Ocean”: Scientific Nationalism, Knowledge Production, and the Qingdao Observatory by Xiaoping Xue, Tsinghua University
Discussant: John Tobin, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Panel 4A Repositioning “Local”
Friday, April 19, 3:30 – 5:00 PM
In-person: Ingraham 336
Zoom Meeting ID: 938 4127 4796
Passcode: TAGS
- The Death of Lienying: A Cross-Textual Analysis of Social Event Control and Performance in Early 20th Century Shanghai within the Context of the Shanghai Concession by Ya-Rong Xu, East China Normal University
- Navigating Self-Determination: The May Fourth Movement in a Global Decolonization Context by Qi Pan, Tufts University
- Li brocade, as temporal media on Hainan island by Yan Yan, Hong Kong Polytechnique University
Discussant: Arijit Banerjee, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Panel 4B Transcending Boundaries: Production of Knowledge and Travel
Friday, April 19, 3:30 – 5:00 PM
In-person: Ingraham 206
Zoom Meeting ID: 930 6802 3916
Passcode: TAGS
- Provincial Compilers — Nationalism, Localism, and the Trouble of Translation by Lanna Gao, Harvard University
- Circulation of Ideas: The Kingly Way and Confucianism in Manchukuo by Hongqiao Li, The George Washington University
- Meeting in the Sky: The Journey of Foreign Astrology in China around the First Millennium by Tianying Gong, New York University
Discussant: Yirui Ma, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Panel 5A Translating Identity: Social Media, Immigration, Mobility
Friday, April 19, 5:15 – 6:45 PM
In-person: Ingraham 336
Zoom Meeting ID: 961 9864 8005
Passcode: TAGS
- The Tongqi Discourse: Victimhood, Translation and Contentious Identity Politics in Chinese Digital Sphere by Kenan Gu, Duke University
- Who are We? Youth, Mobilization and Social Change in Modern China by Cheng Lingzhou, Zhejiang University
- Bridging Taiwan Strait Online? Cross-Strait Users-to-Users Exchanges on Chinese Social Media, RED (小红书): Delivery of Emotion, Unpolitical Image of China, and Suspended Identity by Bojian Chen, Seoul National University
- Integration and Alienation: Cross-Cultural Adaptation of Chinese Immigrants in Iceland by Xin Chen, University of Iceland
Discussant: Qiuyue Lu, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Panel 5B Writing Sacred Texts
In-person: Ingraham 206
Friday, April 19, 5:15 – 6:45 PM
Zoom Meeting ID: 954 3648 8664
Passcode: TAGS
- Decoding the Triad: Unveiling the Significance of the Three Sub-commentaries of the Samantapāsādikā by Rev Madipola Wimalajothi Thero, The University of Hong Kong
- Religious Texts and Artistic Exchanges between Ancient China and Korea–Taking the Yushu Baojing as an Object of Inquiry by Jin Liu, Xi’an Academy of Fine Arts
- Ruling from Scriptures: Liang and Qin States’ Creation of Intellectual Buddhist Statecraft from the Fourth to Fifth century by Yuxuan Tay, University of California, Los Angeles
Discussant: Tiantian Cai, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Panel 6A People and Artifacts in motion
Saturday, April 20, 9:30 – 11:00 AM
In-person: Ingraham 336
Zoom Meeting ID: 953 1317 4588
Passcode: TAGS
- Monumentalizing Space of the Mongol Empire: Material Culture of Jiaoyi (Folding Chair) and Ritual Sculptures of the Mongols from 13th to 14th centuries by Naren Gao, University of Pittsburgh
- Shiva in a Buddhist Temple: The Transmission and Reception of Hindu Art in 13th -15th Century Quanzhou, China by Hao (Wendy) Wu, Harvard University
- The People Missed by Time: A Historical Anthropological Survey on a Ming Loyalist Community in Contemporary South Korea by Zhaoshen Wang, University of Wisconsin-Madison
- Fish Skin Garments: Sewing Up a Fashion on the Empire’s Ethnic Borderland by Yin Cai, University of Chicago
Discussant: Dehlia Mitchell-Gray, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Panel 6B Representing and Embodying Queerness
Saturday, April 20, 9:30 – 11:00 AM
In-person: Ingraham 206
Zoom Meeting ID: 958 7066 4779
Passcode: TAGS
- House of Enigma, Asian queer world-making through performance – Documentary Screening and Artist presentation by Ying Dai, University of Wisconsin-Madison
- Intermedial + Interconnected Queerness: A Case Study on Translated Danmei Fiction by Siyun Pan, The University of British Columbia
- Itaewon as Stage: Spatial Limitations and Transgressions of the Seoul Drag Parade by Caitlyn Chung, University of Southern California
Discussant: Adrian Beyer, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Roundtable Discussion
Saturday, April 20, 12:30 – 1:30 PM
Ingraham 336
Panel 7A Saying it with(out) words: translanguaging and contextualization
Saturday, April 20, 3:30 – 5:00 PM
In-person: Ingraham 336
Zoom Meeting ID: 951 8914 7790
Passcode: TAGS
- Second Language Speakers’ Translanguaging Practices at the Chinese Conversation Tables by Yaqian Zhao, University of Wisconsin-Madison
- Language Use in China’s Healthcare Setting: Complaints and Complaint Responses in Patient-Physician E-dialogues on the Platform “Hao-Daifu” ‘Accepted Doctors’ by Shuyang Ye, University of Wisconsin-Madison
- Genre, Reading and Fictionality: Flowers in the Mirror and its Paratexts by Yaxuan Zhu, University of Michigan
- The Sense and Sensibility of the Orient: Bing Xin’s Translation of The Prophet and Pan-Asianism in Early Twentieth-century China by Leanne Lai, Leiden University
Discussant: Xinyi Fu, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Panel 7B Political Economy: female Labor, capitalism and industrialization
Saturday, April 20, 3:30 – 5:00 PM
In-person: Ingraham 206
Zoom Meeting ID: 964 9239 5284
Passcode: TAGS
- Withdrawal of MFA: A Boon or Curse for the Women Labor Force in India? by Aratrika Roychowdhury, Jadavpur University
- Contentious Politics of Anti-Dam Activism in Africa: Analyzing the Nexus Between Chinese-Backed Infrastructure Development and Conflict Dynamics by Abdou Rahim Lema, University of Montreal
- Who is to Blame and How to Justify: Glocal Responsibility Distribution in Daqing, the Ultimate Model City of China’s Socialist Industrialization by Yuhao Ding, University of Wisconsin-Madison
- The Maritime Silk Road in the Gulf of Guinea: A case study of the Port of Kribi by Ndounfon Rafiatou, Kribi Highway Management Sarl
Discussant: Qiu Yue, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Panel 8A Policy Making: a global perspective
Saturday, April 20, 5:15 – 6:45 PM
In-person: Ingraham 336
Zoom Meeting ID: 923 5155 3179
Passcode: TAGS
- Facilitating “Glocalism” between India and South Korea: A Pan-Asian Perspective of India’s Culinary Diplomacy by Aditi Basu, Independent Researcher
- Liberal Egalitarian Perspective on Inclusive Education in Myanmar: An Examination of Policy, Access, and Development Aspects by Min Paing Moe, Syracuse University
- Unveiling Westernization: Critical Discourse Analysis of Internationalization in Asian Higher Education Research by Daining Xing, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Discussant: Yuji Xu, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Panel 8B Narrating the politics: fiction, mass media, and art
Saturday, April 20, 5:15 – 6:45 PM
In-person: Ingraham 206
Zoom Meeting ID: 928 0660 9125
Passcode: TAGS
- Ideology in Post-War Vietnamese Literature: Y Ban’s “Hoya” and Nguyễn Huy Thiệp’s “The General Retires” by Trần Trang, Fulbright University Vietnam
- Liang Baibo’s Multifaceted Avant-Garde: The Intersection of the Left Wing, Modern Urban, and Wartime Perspectives by Shiting Lin, Beijing Normal University (Visiting student at University of Wisconsin-Madison)
- From Revolutionary Compromise to Imperial Interlude: Pan-Asianism and the Sakdalista Movement in the Philippines, 1930-1945 by Zhengzai Pei, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Discussant: John Merryfield, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Conference Organizers
Executive Committee
Tiantian Cai, Chair/Primary Contact, Ph.D. student, Department of Asian Languages and Cultures
Qiuyue Lu, Financial Specialist/Second Contact, Ph.D. student, Department of Asian Languages and Cultures
Adrian Beyer, Marketing Specialist/Graphic Designer, Ph.D. student, Department of Asian Languages and Cultures
Members (alphabetically, incomplete)
Kyle Dougherty (M.A. student, Dept. of Asian Languages and Cultures)
Zimo Kong (Ph.D. student, Dept. of Asian Languages and Cultures)
Dehlia Mitchell-Gray (Ph.D. student, Dept. of Art History)
Raiden Montero (M.A. student, Dept. of Asian Languages and Cultures)
Maria Tsoy (Ph.D. candidate, Dept. of Asian Languages and Cultures)
