Senior Moments is a funny, witty, bold and revealing, the creators of "Senior Moments" document intimate meetings with 10 resilient active elderly folks surviving old age with a vengeance. It cohesively samples a cultural variety of personalities in modern-day Israel and provides an inspiring outlook on what it means to be old this day and age. Directed By: Tamar Kay & Yair Agmon, 2018.
Tamar Kay graduated from the Sam Spiegel Film & Television School in Jerusalem in 2015. "Unchained," an Israeli TV drama (12 episodes, 40 mins each) Tamar created with Yossi Madmoni & David Ofek, will have its premiere in November 2019, at the Israeli KAAN channel. She is a two-time Israeli Academy Award nominee. The Mute's House, which she directed and co-produced was shortlisted for the 2017 Best Short Documentary Academy Award (Oscars) and screened internationally and at MSU, winning numerous awards in prestigious festivals. Tamar edited the TV series, "Arik Einstein: A Standard Love Song", which won the Israeli Emmy for Best Documentary TV Series (2018).
Sponsored by the Serling Institute for Jewish Studies and Modern Israel and Asian Studies Center
Arabic language practice and culture presentations.
Performances by Indonesian students (dance, drama, music), followed by food from Indonesia.
Zoom Registration Link: msu.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_t2o0CuDEQcSVz6veB7W-jw
Speaker: Dr. Ming-Yeh T. Rawnsley, Research Associate, Centre of Taiwan Studies, SOAS, University of London.
As Dina Iordanova (2010: 18–19) has noted, 'There is disparity in the behaviour of countries when it comes to festivals organised with the mandate to promote national cinemas. This disparity is often linked to the availability of resources directed to culture. A country like Taiwan which seeks state recognition, uses film festivals as an important tool in international relations.' This talk surveys film festivals in and about Taiwan to provide the above statement with a clearer context and investigate how Taiwan uses film festivals as a tool of cultural diplomacy to screen the island's soft power.
Co-Sponsored by the Asian Studies Center Global Virtual Speaker Program through the Joseph Lee Endowment and Office of China Programs
Professor Paromita Sanyal will present on her latest book 'Oral Democracy: Deliberation in Indian Village Assemblies (2018, Cambridge University Press).'Oral Democracy studies citizens' voices in civic and political deliberations in India's village assemblies. These assemblies are grassroots institutions of participatory democracy and the largest deliberative institution in human history.
The presentation will focus on the typology of citizens' performances and state enactments identified across four South Indian states and suggest explanations for the vast statewise differences. It will emphasize that citizens' oral participation in development and governance can be improved by strengthening deliberative spaces through policy, and this can be achieved even in conditions of high inequality and illiteracy. The presentation will introduce the concepts of "oral competence" and "oral democracy" to aid the understanding of deliberative systems in nonwestern and 'developing' countries and show how these concepts might be useful to understand the interactions of marginalized groups with the state even in highly 'developed' countries.
Sponsored by the Department of Anthropology and College of Social Science
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 encouraged to attend. Also, we extend the invitation to the Arabic speaking students at the English Center.
​Chun-Yi Peng, Associate Professor of Chinese at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, CUNY.
This talk explores how language ideologies have emerged for "gangtaiqiang" (港å°è…”) through a combination of indexical and ideological processes in televised media. Gangtaiqiang (Hong Kong-Taiwan accent), a socially recognizable form of mediatized Taiwanese Mandarin, has become a stereotype for many Chinese mainlanders who have little real-life interaction with Taiwanese people. Using both qualitative and quantitative approaches, I examine how Chinese millennials perceive gangtaiqiang by focusing on the following questions: 1) the role of televised media in the formation of language attitudes, and 2) how shifting gender ideologies are performed and embodied such attitudes. I argue that gangtaiqiang should, in fact, be conceptualized as a mediatized variety of Mandarin, rather than the actual speech of people in Hong Kong or Taiwan. My analyses point to an emerging realignment among the Chinese towards gangtaiqiang, a variety traditionally associated with chic, urban television celebrities and young cosmopolitan types. In contrast to Beijing Mandarin, Taiwanese Mandarin is now perceived to be pretentious, babyish, and emasculated, mirroring the power dynamics between Taiwan and China.A sociolinguist by training, Dr. Chun-Yi Peng is an Associate Professor of Chinese at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, CUNY. Dr. Peng's research focuses on changing perceptions of Taiwanese Mandarin and the role of media in such ideological changes. His most recent project uses text-mining techniques to investigate the online discourse about mediatized Taiwanese Mandarin.
Dr. Jennifer Ho, Director of the Center for Humanities & the Arts, Eaton Professor of Humanities and the Arts, and Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. She is also the president of the Association for Asian American Studies.
In her talk "Anti-Asian Racism and Covid-19," Dr. Ho will discuss the rise of anti-Asian racism with the advent of COVID-19. Beyond that, this conversation will engage us with ways in which anti-Asian and anti-Black racism have common roots in white supremacy and what we can all do to be anti-racism allies and educators.
Academy-award winning animated film from Studio Ghibli (Hiyazaki Hayao). A young girl suddenly finds herself trapped in the bathhouse of the gods. Can she rescue her parents and escape to the 'normal' world again?
The Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) Program is an intensive overseas language and cultural immersion program for American undergraduate and graduate students enrolled at U.S. colleges and universities. Students spend eight to ten weeks abroad studying one of 15 critical languages. The program includes intensive language instruction and structured cultural enrichment experiences designed to promote rapid language gains and cultural fluency.
The Critical Language Scholarship Program is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State with funding provided by the U.S. Government and administered by American Councils for International Education.
For more information and to apply visit the Critical Language Scholarship website.
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AIFIS-MSU Conference on Indonesian Studies
