Stony Brook University—Manhattan
387 Park Avenue South (Entrance at 27^th Street) 3^rd floor
Friday October 14, 2016
5:30-7:00 pm
Reception to follow
*Open to the public, no registration required*

Based on her latest publication, Radicalism in the Wilderness: International Contemporaneity and 1960s Art in Japan (MIT Press, April 2016), Dr. Reiko Tomii will outline two basic concepts “wilderness” and “contemporaneity” as key methodological frameworks to construct local and global art histories. First and foremost an artist’s strategy, “wilderness” was inventively and imaginatively exploited by three protagonists of her study, Matsuzawa Yutaka, a pioneer conceptualist in central Japan; The Play, a Happeners’ collective in Osaka; and GUN, a politically aware group in Niigata. “Contemporaneity,” a geo-historical concept derived from the Japanese notion of kokusaiteki dōjisei (international contemporaneity), offers an art-historian’s strategy for world art history of postwar practices, for which she has proposed such theoretical and methodological terms as “connection,” “resonance,” and “similar yet dissimilar” among others. She will demonstrate their application by focusing on the stone-based works of Mono-ha and conceptualism around 1970.

Dr. Reiko Tomii is an independent art historian and curator, who investigates post-1945 Japanese art in global and local contexts. She is co-director of PoNJA-GenKon (www.ponja-genkon.net), a listserv group of specialists interested in contemporary Japanese art, which she co-founded in 2003. Among her prolific publications, the latest is Radicalism in the Wilderness: International Contemporaneity and 1960s Art in Japan, was published by The MIT Press in Spring 2016.

“Wilderness as Method, Contemporaneity as Method” is organized by the Department of Art at Stony Brook University. Organizer: Prof. Sohl Lee,[email protected].

From NY-based manga-ka/artist Rica Takashima’s post:

http://takashimarica.blogspot.com/2016/10/kiku-art-of-japanese-gerden-2016.html

I am excied to tell you I will be part in
Kiku Matsuri  at New York Botanical Garden on October 15, 16.
This is Mum flower festival.
You can explore Japanese Culture like, Taiko drumming, Haiku poem, etc,
and ofcourse Peekaboo-sculptures!

This is a brand new Kiku Peekaboo-sculpture.
I created this special one for NYBG.

Beside this, Bonsai, Kokeshi, Yukata, Oiran, Hatobue, Hakata, and Hakama Peekaboo-sculptures will be there.
Enjoy autumn day with seeing maple tree, mum exhibition and Japanese Culture at New York Botanical garden.
I will be there all day long at the garden.
Please say Hi when you swing by.
Looking forward to seeing you!

Thursday, October 6th, 6 PM, 403 Kent Hall, Columbia University

Two Unforgivens: Clint Eastwood, Lee Sang-Il, and the Transpacific Western
Takashi Fujitani (Dr. David Chu Professor and Director in Asia Pacific Studies, Professor of History, University of Toronto)
Dear Friends and Colleagues,

Please join us tomorrow for Professor Takashi Fujitani’s presentation entitled “Two Unforgivens: Clint Eastwood, Lee Sang-Il, and the Transpacific Western.”

Two Unforgivens: Clint Eastwood, Lee Sang-Il, and the Transpacific Western
Thursday 6 October, 6 PM
Kent Hall, Room 403, Columbia University
No registration required.

In this presentation Prof. Fujitani reads Clint Eastwood’s critically acclaimed Unforgiven (1992) against Lee Sang-il’s “remake” (Yurusarezaru mono, 2013) of the original. While the few Anglophone critics who have reviewed Lee’s version have generally treated it as a competent but fairly unremarkable copy of the original, Fujitani argues that the film, set in Hokkaidō, is in many ways a far more radical and challenging exploration of key themes taken up by Eastwood. These include violence, law, the outlaw, sovereign power, the right to kill, the heteronormative family, and historical accountability. At the same time, Lee takes up several issues that Eastwood simply leaves as background to his story — in particular race, indigeneity, and settler colonialism. While the Western has been a staple genre in Eastwood’s long career leading up to Unforgiven, it is the first and so far only Western made by the much younger Lee. Lee’s first film, Chong (1998, 2001), is in part based upon his own life growing up as an ethnic Korean in Japan. His more well-known films include Hula Girl (2006) andThe Villain (Akunin, 2010).

Takashi Fujitani is Professor of History at the University of Toronto where he is also the Dr. David Chu Professor in Asia-Pacific Studies. His major works include:  Splendid Monarchy (UC Press, 1996);Race for Empire: Koreans as Japanese and Japanese as Americans in WWII (UC Press, 2011) and Perilous Memories: The Asia Pacific War(s) (co-edited, Duke U. Press, 2001). He is also editor of the series Asia Pacific Modern (UC Press). He has held numerous grants and fellowships, including from the John S. Guggenheim Foundation, American Council of Learned Societies, Stanford Humanities Center, and Social Science Research Council. He is currently working on three major projects with the tentative titles:  Cold War Clint: Asia and the World of an American Icon; Whose ‘Good War’?: The Asia Pacific War(s); The Sovereign Remains: Essays on the Japanese Monarchy and Questions of Sovereignty.
All events are free and open to the public.

Sponsored by the Orient Finance Co. Endowment for the Donald Keene Center of Japanese Culture at Columbia University.

Please visit our website, www.keenecenter.org, for the latest information on our events.

Upcoming Events for Fall 2016
[All events take place at Columbia University. The following information is subject to change.]

October

TOMORROW!
Takashi Fujitani (Dr. David Chu Professor and Director in Asia Pacific Studies, Professor of History, University of Toronto)
Two Unforgivens: Clint Eastwood, Lee Sang-Il, and the Transpacific Western
Thursday 6 October, 6 PM, 403 Kent Hall, Columbia University

Japanese-Language Proficiency Test: Taking the JLPT in the United States

TOMORROW: Thursday, September 22nd, 6 PM, 403 Kent Hall, Columbia University

Disembodiment of an Everyday Object and Changing Regional Identity: Pushing against the Center in Southern Okinawa
Amanda Mayer Stinchecum (Independent scholar)
Dear Friends and Colleagues,

Tomorrow evening, Dr. Amanda Mayer Stinchecum will give her presentation entitled “Disembodiment of an Everyday Object and Changing Regional Identity: Pushing against the Center in Southern Okinawa.” Dr. Stinchecum specializes in the history and material culture of Okinawa Prefecture’s Yaeyama islands. Please join us and help kick off another exciting season at the Donald Keene Center.

Disembodiment of an Everyday Object and Changing Regional Identity: Pushing against the Center in Southern Okinawa
Thursday 22 September, 6 PM
Kent Hall, Room 403, Columbia University
No registration required.

A narrow, indigo-dyed cotton sash is decorated with clusters of four and five white rectangles. Its production has been unique to five islands in Yaeyama, at the southern end of Okinawa Prefecture. Transcending boundaries of usage, class and meaning over the course of 140 years, the sash became a legend. But as it disappeared from everyday use, it became the exclusive province of islanders representing themselves in local performances.

What were once sharper distinctions among the islands have blurred, giving rise to a new, Yaeyama-wide identity, now symbolized by the sash’s abstract motif. Beyond the appeal of its bold design, its significant role as the marker of a new Yaeyama does not adequately explain its ubiquitous presence. I suggest that it also functions as a protective talisman, rooted in a belief, widespread in the Ryukyus, Japan, and elsewhere in Asia, in the spiritual power of cloth. As the Yaeyama islands struggle to affirm their separateness from the prefecture’s political center on Okinawa Island, the sash’s motif has begun to appear on Okinawa as well. The prefecture, too, is struggling to assert itself against Japan’s political pressure and homogenizing influence.

Amanda Mayer Stinchecum is an independent scholar specializing in the history and material culture of the Ryukyu Islands, particularly Okinawa Prefecture’s southernmost island group, Yaeyama. Topics of current research include textiles, clothing and regional museums in the converging contexts of heritage preservation, tourism development, performing arts and shifting identities. She received her PhD in Classical Japanese and Comparative Literature from Columbia, and is a Research Associate at the Reischauer Institute for Japanese Studies, Harvard, and at the Institute for Okinawan Studies, Hōsei University.
All events are free and open to the public.

Sponsored by the Orient Finance Co. Endowment for the Donald Keene Center of Japanese Culture at Columbia University.

Please visit our website, www.keenecenter.org, for the latest information on our events.

Upcoming Events for Fall 2016
[All events take place at Columbia University. The following information is subject to change.]

September

Amanda Mayer Stinchecum (Independent scholar)
Disembodiment of an Everyday Object and Changing Regional Identity: Pushing against the Center in Southern Okinawa
Thursday 22 September, 6 PM, 403 Kent Hall, Columbia University

October

Takashi Fujitani (Dr. David Chu Professor and Director in Asia Pacific Studies, Professor of History, University of Toronto)
Two Unforgivens: Clint Eastwood, Lee Sang-Il, and the Transpacific Western
Thursday 6 October, 6 PM, 403 Kent Hall, Columbia University

Andrea Gevurtz Arai (Affiliate Lecturer, Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington)
The Strange Child: Education and the Psychology of Patriotism in Recessionary Japan
Thursday 13 October, 6 PM, 403 Kent Hall, Columbia University

November

Gennifer Weisenfeld (Professor in the Department of Art, Art History, and Visual Studies, and Dean of the Humanities, Duke University)
Electric Design: Light, Labor, and Leisure in Prewar Japanese Advertising
Thursday 17 November, 6 PM, 403 Kent Hall, Columbia University
December

Paul Anderer (Mack Professor of Humanities, Professor of Japanese Literature, Director of Undergraduate Studies, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Columbia University)
Kurosawa’s Rashomon: A Vanished City, a Lost Brother, and the Voice Inside His Iconic Films(Pegasus Books, October 2016)
Friday 2 December, Starting time TBA, 403 Kent Hall, Columbia University
Co-sponsored by University Seminar on Japanese Culture

Friday, September 23rd Fall 2016 is undergraduate Career Day. 

We are expecting approximately 80 companies across a wide range of industries and we ask that you kindly share this information with yourundergraduate students—positions for ALL MAJORS.  This event is open to all Baruch undergrads and to students who graduated May 2016 (one semester out)

Also, on Thursday, September 22nd (club hours), we are holding a Career Fair Prep workshop in room 3-160. One of our recruiting partners from Target Corporation will be hosting this session and will offer a few tips on how to successfully navigate career fairs to achieve greater results.