College of East Asian Studies, Wesleyan University

On January 8, Professor Aalgaard stopped by the Kyoto Consortium for Japanese Studies to check in on Wesleyan students embarking on an intensive study-abroad semester of Japanese language study. A wide range of study abroad opportunities are available through CEAS—contact us for more information. And good luck, students!!

In this talk, Suvi will share the back story of love letters between her Chinese grandfather and her Finnish grandmother during the 1950s, a time of political transformation and hope. The letters, stored in the family basement, are an artifact of history and of intimate ethnography that tell the story of a professional couple who came together despite the borders that might have held them apart. The letters uncover their migration history from Europe to China in the mid 1950s, keeping the couple connected in times of separation. They also reveal the euphoria of the political moment when an imagined socialist future seemed within grasp.

The status of the Tale of Genji as the pinnacle of literary art in Japan has never been in doubt. But by the Meiji period, when nationalism was on the rise, and Japanese novelists were busy learning from Western writers, Lady Murasaki's tale, with its elaborate and difficult language, its 795 poems, and its intimidating length, had come to seem obscure and remote to many Japanese. Japan needed a national masterpiece to be proud of on the global stage. But the fact that the Genji was written by a woman made it difficult for some male writers and intellectuals to embrace her fully as Japan's answer to Cervantes, Shakespeare and Goethe. It was only really in the twentieth century, after the appearance of Arthur Waley's exquisite translation into English, that the Genji came to be read and translated widely into modern Japanese. One great exception, however, was the young haiku poet Masaoka Shiki, who read Lady Murasaki's work devotedly and lavishly praised it in an essay in 1895. In this talk, I trace the stages of Shiki's engagement with the Tale of Genji as a key source for his sense of what the Japanese literary tradition had to offer modern writers, and how reading the classics can enrich our lives.

https://www.koreasociety.org/policy-and-corporate-programs/item/1993-seeds-of-mobilization-the-authoritarian-roots-of-south-korea-s-democracy

Seeds of Mobilization: The Authoritarian Roots of South Korea's Democracy Join us for a discussion with Dr. Joan E. Cho, Associate Professor of East Asian Studies at Wesleyan University on her 2024 book Seeds of Mobilization...