From core principals to the ways Shinto is practiced today, this talk will address shrines for sports, fertility and protection from STDs, appropriatlon by popular culture (such as in anime and advertisements), and new spiriuality movements including the power spot boom. 

Dr. Stephen Covell

Chair of the Department of Comparative Religion and the Mary Meader Professor of Comparative Religion at Western Michgian University. Dr. Covell was the founging director of WMU's Soga Japan Center and has published widely on Buddhism and other Japanese religious topics. 

 

Sponsored by the Center for Integrative Studies in the Arts and humanities, IAH Connecting Pedagogy and Practice Fund, Department of Religious Studies, Asian Studies Center, and MSU Japan Council

China's rapid development and Sino-American relations have a direct impact on the lives of nearly everyone in the United States. CHINA Town Hall is a national conversation about China that provides Americans across the United States and beyond the opportunity to discuss issues in the relationship with leading experts.

Join communities across the county in a national conversation on China. This event will feature an interactive webcast with four speakers, moderated by George Stephanopoulos, and an on-site discussion facilitated by Prof. Aminda Smith, Dept. of History. 

Co-sponsored by the MSU Broad International Business Center, Office of China Programs, Asian Studies Center and International Education Week.

Almost 3 decades after the Soviet Union collapsed, the ecological legacies of its economic, political and agricultural policies and practices still remain visible across its once -vast territory. Among them are unsustainable fishing practices in the Baltic Sea, poaching and unsustainable logging in the Caucasus, and limited-result efforts to restore part of the Aral Sea.

Co—Sponsored by: MSU center for European, Russian, and Eurasian studies And School of Journalism

Arabic language practice and culture presentations.

Webinar lecture by Brahim Chakrani. Brahim Chakrani is an Associate Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Languages.  He obtained his B.A. in English Literature from the University of Cadi Ayyad in Marrakech, Morocco and his M.A. and Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. While completing his graduate work, Dr. Chakrani also obtained a Certificate of Advanced Studies in the program of Second Language Acquisition and Teacher Education (SLATE) at UIUC.  Prior to joining MSU, he taught at UIUC and Parkland College in Champaign and served as supervising Teaching Assistant in the African Language program at UIUC.

Please register in advance at the Language Accommodation: Analyzing the Role of Attitudes in Interdialectal Arabic Encounters registration page. 

 

Sponsored by the Muslim Studies Program

Arabic language practice and culture presentations.

Indian and South Asian language & cultures brings you Chai & Chat. Join them for evenings of festivities, fun, food, and all things Indian and South Asian.
• Chai & Chat | October 19, 2021
• Diwali Celebration | November 4, 2021
• Chai & Chat | November 16, 2021
• Film Screening | November 30, 2021
Sponsored by the Hindi-Urdu Language Program and Asian Studies Center

Kristin Stapleton, Professor,  History, University at Buffalo.
The effects of World War II on Chinese cities were transformative. In addition to horrendous devastation, the war years were marked by significant cultural exchange, the reconfiguration of social hierarchies, and experiments in governance. All of these phenomena shaped the subsequent establishment of the new Communist regime in Chinese cities beginning in 1949. Drawing on a novel set in a wartime provincial capital, Li Jieren's Dance of the Heavenly Devils, this talk explores the transformation of Chinese cities as a result of the war, with particular emphasis on the relationship between the built environment and human social relations.Kristin Stapleton is Professor of History at the University at Buffalo, SUNY. A native of Michigan, she learned Chinese as an undergraduate at the University of Michigan (though her uncle taught statistics at Michigan State for many decades and still lives in East Lansing). She continued her studies at Harvard University, the National Taiwan University, and Sichuan University. She recently completed a five-year term as editor of the journal "Twentieth-Century China" and has long served on the editorial board of the journal "Education About Asia". Her research interests include Chinese and comparative urban administration, the history of Chinese family life, and humor in history. She is the author of "Civilizing Chengdu: Chinese Urban Reform, 1895-1937" (Harvard Asia Center 2000) and "Fact in Fiction: 1920s China and Ba Jin's Family" (Stanford 2016). Her current research concerns Chinese cities during WWII and Sino-Soviet cooperation in designing and managing "socialist cities" in the 1950s. She is a fellow in the Public Intellectuals Program of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations and an avid tennis player.

Jane Hong, Associate Professor of History, Occidental College.
Much is known about how the United States began excluding Asians, but how did these exclusion policies end? Jane Hong argues that the mid-twentieth century repeal of Asian exclusion was part of the price of America's postwar empire in Asia. Drawing on sources in the United States, India, and the Philippines, Hong considers how the imperatives of U.S. empire-building during an era of decolonization created new opportunities for Asians, Asian Americans, and others from both the US and Asia to lobby U.S. Congress for repeal. The demands of building and sustaining America's imperial reach compelled U.S. officials to respond to the antiracist and anticolonial demands of nonwhite peoples—if only in the most symbolic and performative ways.