Renren Yang, assistant professor, The University of British Columbia
What makes Chinese animation special? What are the major stakes of forging a Chinese style of animation? This talk traces the concept of the "Chinese school of animation" to a series of groundbreaking fine art (meishu) animated films produced by Shanghai Animation Film Studio during the socialist era (1950s-1960s), with a focus on the ink-and-wash genre. By comparing Feeling from Mountain and Water (shanshui qing, 1988) and Fog Hill of Five Elements (wushan wuxing, 2020), this talk aims to not only demonstrate how traditional landscape painting informs our reading of ink-and-wash animated films, but also historicize the stylistic and technical innovations of the ink-and-wash animation from the socialist to the post-socialist period.
Bio: Dr. Renren Yang is assistant professor of modern Chinese popular culture in the department of Asian studies at the University of British Columbia. He works on twentieth-and-twenty-first century Chinese literature, film, and Internet culture. He has published articles on Chinese time-travel imagination, surveillance cinema, and web novels. This lecture is a part of the Global Virtual Speaker Program series hosted by the MSU Asian Studies Center, and funded through area studies endowments.

This lecture is a part of the Global Virtual Speakers Program sponsored by the MSU Asian Studies Center and funded through its area studies endowments.

Marc Steinberg | CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY

What is the appeal of platforms? How do they
hook us into their use? Why, for instance, is the
chat app turned super app LINE so popular in
Japan, WeChat so widely used in China and in the
diaspora, or iMessage so widely used by iPhone
users? Connection, intimacy, widespread use and
value (what economists call "network effects"), the
access to news and other services – these are all
some of the reasons why platforms are widely
taken up and used. Yet one crucial term missing
from this list of explanations is: convenience.
This talk will analyze the crucial place of
convenience in the platform era. Building on earlier
work on one of the prototypical systems that was an inspiration for iPhones and
Android alike, Japan's i-mode, this talk will examine how convenience was a key
attribute of this early i-mode system. In doing so, it will explore one of i-mode's unlikely
inspirations: Japan's convenience stores.

Marc Steinberg is Associate Professor of Film Studies at Concordia University,
Montreal, and director of The Platform Lab. He is the author Anime's Media Mix:
Franchising Toys and Characters in Japan (University of Minnesota Press, 2012,
translated into Japanese and Italian), The Platform Economy: How Japan Transformed
the Commercial Internet (University of Minnesota Press, 2019), and Media and
Management (University of Minnesota Press, 2021).

Marc Steinberg | CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY

What is the appeal of platforms? How do they
hook us into their use? Why, for instance, is the
chat app turned super app LINE so popular in
Japan, WeChat so widely used in China and in the
diaspora, or iMessage so widely used by iPhone
users? Connection, intimacy, widespread use and
value (what economists call "network effects"), the
access to news and other services – these are all
some of the reasons why platforms are widely
taken up and used. Yet one crucial term missing
from this list of explanations is: convenience.
This talk will analyze the crucial place of
convenience in the platform era. Building on earlier
work on one of the prototypical systems that was an inspiration for iPhones and
Android alike, Japan's i-mode, this talk will examine how convenience was a key
attribute of this early i-mode system. In doing so, it will explore one of i-mode's unlikely
inspirations: Japan's convenience stores.

Marc Steinberg is Associate Professor of Film Studies at Concordia University,
Montreal, and director of The Platform Lab. He is the author Anime's Media Mix:
Franchising Toys and Characters in Japan (University of Minnesota Press, 2012,
translated into Japanese and Italian), The Platform Economy: How Japan Transformed
the Commercial Internet (University of Minnesota Press, 2019), and Media and
Management (University of Minnesota Press, 2021).

Speaker: Dr. Sanjay Zodpey presently works as Vice President – Academics, Public HealthFoundation of India (PHFI), New Delhi and also holds leadership position as Director at Indian Institute of Public Health, Delhi. His background as a physician, epidemiologist, scientist and thought leader on public health uniquely position him to drive the global public health agenda. Prof. Zodpey has been involved in several major national and international research initiatives, which have contributed significantly to the field of public health

He has vast experience of research collaboration with national and international agencies, academic and research institutions and organizations, development partners and governments. His collaborative, context specific and solutions-oriented approach to public health is respected worldwide. His initial research work mainly focused on occupational health, infectious diseases and vaccines. He has been investigator for more than 125 research, program development, technical assistance and capacity development projects.

Moderator: Aniruddh P. Behere
is an Assistant Professor and has joint appointments in the College of Human Medicine's Department of Pediatrics and Human Development and Division of Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine. He currently practices at Helen DeVos Children's hospital and specializes in working with medically complex children and is the medical director of Peds Consult Liaison and Global Health (Psy).

*More details to come 

*More details to come 

Arabic Diwan is a gathering of Arabic students who are in the Arabic program, where they speak the language and learn about the culture in a relaxed environment with our Fulbright teaching assistant. Students from all Arabic language levels are encourages to attend. Also, we extend the invitation to the Arabic speaking students at the English Center. 

Contact Sara Kasem for link: sarah_kasem(at)yahoo.com

For questions or more information, contact the Asian Studies Center at 517-353-1680 or email asiansc(at)msu.edu

Education Under Siege: Attacks on Scholars and Scholarship in Turbulent Times

We are witnessing today what many scholars characterize as the collapse of the post-Cold War liberal order—with serious consequences for Muslims in predominantly Muslim countries as well as for those living in minority communities around the world. The collapse is marked by intensifying violence between state and non-state actors, by deepening social, economic, and environmental crisis, and by the reemergence of autocratic and despotic rule as viable and desirable forms of governance. Political, ethnic, and religious minorities are suspect, and political and economic refugees are viewed as clear and present dangers. In this new world (dis)order, academia is but one of the casualties. This is witnessed by the attack and scapegoating of scholars and their scholarship as threats to national solidarity, economic prosperity, and/or state security.

Such attacks take on different modes of repression and violence depending on the nature of the conflict and the strategies available to those state and non-state actors who see themselves as arbiters of national or communal order. In this context, scholars have suffered intimidation, firings, arrest, exile, and assassination. Schools and institutions of higher education have been defunded, besieged, closed, and violently attacked. Scholarly research and curriculums deemed contrary to the moral fabric of society or to the larger national interest have been denounced, censored, and/or outlawed.

Cosponsors: MSU's James Madison College, College of Arts and Letters, Asian Studies Center, Department of Sociology, College of Education, African Studies Center, Center for Gender in Global Context, and the University of Michigan's Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies