Events

Annual Lecture Series

Speaker Information

Carol Anderson
Professor in the Department of Religion at Kalamazoo College. Dr. Anderson specializes in the history of religions with foci in Buddhism as well as the religions of South Asia. She is the author of Pain and Its Ending: The Four Noble Truths in the Theravada Buddhist Canon (Curzon Press, 1999), and has published several other articles on Buddhism and Hinduism in the nineteenth century. She also teaches in the Women's Studies program, and is currently editing a volume entitled Teaching Women and/in Religion Courses.

Karen Hill Anton
Originally from New York City, Ms. Karen Hill Anton is a writer who has lived in Japan with her husband and children since 1975. In Japan, she has written regular columns for several newspapers, served as director of the Intercultural Communication Center at Temple University of Japan, and has frequently been invited to share her expertise on intercultural issues both in the US and Japan, Ms. Anton will speak about her personal experiences, living, raising a family, and working between two cultures.

Howard Yuen Fung Choy
Howard Y. F. Choy is a Ph.D. candidate in comparative literature at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He holds a M.A. in East Asian languages and literature from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and taught at Stanford University. The assistant author of the forthcoming Illustrated Encyclopedia of Confucianism with Rodney L. Taylor, he has published articles, reviews, and translations in several major scholarly journals, including positions and T'ang Studies. His dissertation on the rewriting of history in contemporary Chinese fiction won the China Times Young Scholar Award.

Marc Keane
Dr. Keane, graduate of Cornell University's Department of Landscape Architecture and currently a visiting scholar at Cornell University, is a leading expert in Japanese landscape gardens and their aesthetics. He has lived in Kyoto since 1985, first as a research fellow of Kyoto University, and now as a landscape architect and writer. He works for the Department of Environmental Design at the Kyoto University of Arts and Design and as a research fellow at the Research Center for Japanese Garden Art. His most recent book is The Art of Setting Stones: And Other Writings from the Japanese Garden.

Theodore Life
The founder of Global Film Network, Inc. and Executive Producer/Director for Doubles, and After America: After Japan, Mr. Regge Life produced his first work in Japan, Struggle and Success: The African American Experience in Japan, in 1992. Mr. Life was honored by the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame and chosen a Sony Innovator in 1991. He holds a Bachelor's degree from Tufts University, a Master of Fine Arts degree from New York University School of Arts. Mr. Life will show clips from his documentaries and discuss his experiences as a filmmaker across cultures.

Margaret Lock
A leading scholar of medical sociology. Dr. Margaret Lock is the Professor in the Department of Social Studies of Medicine and the Department of Anthropology at McGill University. Much of her research has been conducted in Japan; her particular interest is the relationship among culture, technoscience, health and illness. She has done research into the revival of the traditional medical system in Japan, and into life cycle transitions, including adolescence, the elderly, and female mid life. Professor Lock recently published a book entitled Twice Dead: Organ Transplants and the Reinvention of Death, a comparative study on the concept of brain death in Japan and North America that examines how culture and politics have influenced its recognition and had a major impact on the organ transplant enterprise (University of California Press, 2001). She is currently undertaking a study on the implications of the new genetics for population health. In particular, she is focusing on the way in which the new genetics is transforming medical knowledge about Alzheimer's disease, the transfer of this new knowledge to the public domain, and its impact on public attitudes and responses to this disease.

David Mura
David Mura has taught at the University of Minnesota, St. Olaf College, the Loft, and the University of Oregon. Professor Mura is an award winning poet, creative nonfiction writer, critic, playwright and performance artist. Over the past few years he has come to be recognized as a new voice in American literature and in the recent boom in Asian American literature. His awards include two NEA fellowships and the Lila Wallace Readers Digest Writers' Award and he has been featured in the Bill Moyers PBS series, The Language of Life. In his work, Mura examines the intricacies of cross-cultural communication and multicultural identities. One prominent theme centers on the internment of Japanese Americans during World II and the effect of this experience on various generations of Japanese Americans. At the same time his work addresses more generally various issues of race, particularly in the realm of sexuality and in the area of relations between African Americans and Asian Americans. The first half of Professor Mura's talk will address these questions from an autobiographical perspective. It is a frank and honest examination of Professor Mura's own struggles with the questions of identity and race. In the second half of his talk, Professor Mura will give a more general overview of the issue of race and address some of the ways we might begin to solve this quagmire which continues to plague our country and our culture.

Susan Napier
Dr. Susan J. Napier, a professor of Japanese Literature and Culture at the University of Texas at Austin, has focused her recent studies on the cultural aspects of anime and manga both in Japan and in the U.S. This coming spring Palgrave Press (part of St. Martin's Press) will publish her book Anime from Akira to Princess Mononoke, a scholarly look at anime as a medium in the '80s and '90s. This fall she taught an undergraduate course on anime at the University of Texas and will be reteaching the same course this spring as a guest lecturer at Harvard University. (Yes, anime has hit the big time. They're studying it at Harvard now.)

Cyndy Ning
Cynthia Ning is associate director of the University of Hawaii¹s Center for Chinese Studies and author of the popular textbooks Communicating in Chinese (Yale, 1993) and Exploring in Chinese (projected publication in 2004). She teaches (in rotation) regular, experimental, and distance first- through fourth-year Chinese language courses, a Chinese film course, and an interdisciplinary course on China at the University of Hawai'i. She is currently developing a workbook for teaching Chinese film and Chinese language through film. She is past-president and currently executive director of the Chinese Language Teachers Association. She holds a PhD in Chinese Literature (with a focus on comedy) from the University of Michigan.

Paisley Rekdal
Of Norwegian and Chinese-American parentage, Ms. Paisley Rekdal is the author of a collection of poems, A Crash of Rhinos, and The Night My Mother Met Bruce Lee, a memoir which addresses many of the cultural paradoxes Ms. Rekdal encounters as a result of her heritage. She is the recipient of a Village Voice Writers on the Verge Award and a Fulbright Scholarship. She teaches in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Wyoming. Ms. Rekdal will read from and discuss her writings.

Tu WeiMing
The West's foremost scholar of Chinese thought and Religion. Professor Tu is known for his eloquent and imaginative presentations and for his ability to interpret the significance of Confucian thought for our era.

Harry Wu
Former political prisoner who spent 19 years in the Chinese Laogai (the Chinese 'Gulag' - forced labour camps). Harry Wu was determined to survive his ordeal, inflicted upon him for exercising his freedom of speech when, as a geology student he criticised the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956. After his release in 1979, he was invited to come to Berkeley. In 1991, he and his wife returned to China to further document - with the help of his small hidden camera - the deplorable conditions in the Laogai. Since then he has devoted his life to making the world aware of the cruel conditions in China's labour camps. He remains committed to pursue the cause of human rights in his native country by denouncing the human rights violations in the Laogai as well as organ sales and other violations. In 1995, he returned again to China, in cognito, with a USA passport, but this time he was arrested by the Chinese authorities and convicted. Only after heavy pressure by human rights groups and some governments was he released.

Liugen Xu
Visiting Professor, Liugen Xu, is currently Vice-president of the China Social Work Association. Retired as Director-General, Department for International Cooperation Office for Indo-Chinese Refugees, Office for Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan Affairs of The Ministry of Civil Affairs, China. Liugen Xu presently is a member of the Executive Council, China Charity Federation, and Council Member of the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits, China Association for Overseas Exchanges, and, China Association for International Understanding. In 2000 he was a Visiting Fellow at Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University.

Beverly Yee
Beverly Yee, MTOM, L.Ac, is a licensed practitioner of ancient Chinese medicine. She is National Board Certified in Traditional Oriental Medicine and a licensed, certified, and registered acupuncturist. She is also a certified Feldenkrais practitioner. She has a BS in Psychology from Northwestern University and a MTOM, Master of Traditional Oriental Medicine, from Pacific College of Oriental Medicine. She was a member of the board of directors of FGNA (Feldenkrais Guild of North America) from 1997 to 2001. Also she was part of the FEFNA (Feldenkrais Education Foundation of North America) board of directors from 1999 to 2001. She is a part of the American Association of Oriental Medicine, Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine Alliance, Michigan Association of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine, Illinois State Acupuncture Association, and the Feldenkrais Guild of North America. She is currently working at a Michigan private practice.

Li Zhai
Dr. Li Zhai is currently associate professor at the Fudan University department of marketing in Shanghai and received her Ph. D. in Management Science from Fudan University. She is also the director of the Cooperation Program between Fudan University and the Norwegian School of Management and has recently been an International Faculty Fellow at MIT's Sloan School of Management. Dr. Zhai's areas of interest include technology management, new product development management, and project management. She has done a great deal of international exchange and consulting work and also teaches a variety of management and entrepreneurship classes; thus, her lectures will focus on entrepreneurship and management in China.