EALC Newsletter 2017-2018
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East Asian Languages & Civilizations News and Updates From Academic Year 2017 - 2018 From the Chair Friends and Colleagues: In This Issue We are so happy to be sending the inaugural newsletter of the Department of East Asian Language and Civilizations. As the more than 3 Faculty Profiles seventy faculty and alumni who were at the EALC lunch during the annual meeting of the Association of Asian Studies in Washington, D.C., now know, 10 Faculty Bookshelf we are a very different department from the one many of you remember. 12 Associated Faculty In 2002, eight faculty members boldly and ambitiously became Penn’s first Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations. We are a small 15 Student Prizes department with a huge vision: we seek to offer undergraduates the stongest, most diverse, and most rigorous education available in the East Asian 16 Chinese Language Program Humanities in North America; we seek to train Ph. D. students who become 18 Japanese Language Program the intellectual leaders in the East Asian Humanities in future generations; and we have crafted a vibrant masters program in which students with career 20 Korean Language Program ambitions from entry into Ph. D. programs to employment in the public or private sector, government service, and education are poised to accomplish 22 Van Pelt Library those goals. 24 Graduate Student Highlights Striving to prepare students for careers that span this century, we have reconfigured ourselves in four streams: China, Korea, Japan, and Inner 26 Body and Cosmos Asia. Every major and every graduate students trains in at least two of these areas, undergraduates and MA students through course requirements and Ph. 28 Naked Text D. students through teaching fellow assignments. We have maintained the 29 Heresy in Pre-Modern China language requirements that were in place when you were here: a minimum of three years of an East Asian language for our undergraduates and three 30 Bodies and Borders languages in addition to English for our Ph. D. students, with the new option of three of those being East Asian languages. We pride ourselves in main- taining extremely high standards for the second East Asian language for graduate students. We now offer summer graduate programs in Japanese 2018 for Sinologists and Mongolian. For the last two summers we have hosted Published by the Department of East Startalk to train high school Chinese teachers, and we have had NEH summer Asian Languages & Civilizations seminars to introduce Mongolia to educators two of the last three summers. If you are interested in employing an EALC undergraduate or University of Pennsylvania offering one of our students a research experience during the summer, if 255 S. 36th Street you want to fund a student at any level to study language, visit archives, or do Philadelphia, PA 19104 fieldwork in East Asia, let us know. Stay in touch: tell your former classmates Phone: 215-898-7466 who might not be on our alumni list to contact us. We will let you know in [email protected] advance of the next newsletter so you can share your news. We look forward to seeing you in Beijing, Tokyo, Seoul, Ulaanbaatar, or right here on the 8th Cover photo by Debby Huang, floor of Williams Hall. Our doors are always open. EALC PhD Candidate, taken in Yanshi City, Henan Province, China. Newsletter designed by Jane Reznik, Best regards, Graduate Coordinator, and edited by Dr. Linda Chance. With thanks to Linda Greene, Department Administrator, Diane Moderski, Undergraduate Coordinator, and John Nancy S. Steinhardt Mullan (CAS ‘20), Student Worker. Chair and Professor of East Asian Languages & Civilizations University of Pennsylvania Visit us online at www.sas.upenn.edu/ealc 2 - Table of Contents Faculty Profiles —Christopher P. Atwood— character transcription system, and —Linda H. Chance— so on. Christopher Atwood’s second year Although Linda Chance specializes at Penn was fruitful for research, Atwood did a lot of traveling this in Japanese medieval non-narrative teaching, and service. With a little fall, presenting parts of the big prose and its later reception, each better understanding of the univer- project at venues in Ulaanbaatar, year she becomes more involved sity, he is enjoying the cycle of Birmingham (UK), Seattle, Beijing, in the study of material culture. seasons on campus (cycle is the key Tokyo, and Jerusalem. He also Last summer she traveled to Japan word–that means winter actually began what looks like his next to view kimono pattern books ends at some point, and for a while philological project, on an undated (hiinagatabon) in various collec- that looked doubtful). Building a Mongolian manuscript that turns tions in the hopes of situating a new Mongolian program at Penn out to be a 14th-century transla- volume purchased by the Kislak is a long-term project, but one that tion of Chinese apocalyptic texts Center for Special Collections, Rare has many enjoyable side benefits. from the fourteenth century. The Books and Manuscripts in relation translation turns out to predate to other exemplars in this genre by centuries any known Chinese that relies on literary motifs. She version of these texts and also presented on our book as a kind attests to Mongolian links to of literature without words at the Chinese apocalyptic religion during European Association for Japanese the Yuan dynasty that would other- Studies meeting in Lisbon, and wise have been lost to history. He later as an invited speaker for “At gave a talk about this at Harvard the Roots of Visual Japan: Word- in December that should lead to a image dynamics in early-modern new edition and study of the text. Japan,” a conference organized Professor Chris Atwood with Dotno Pount (EALC by early modernist Laura Moretti doctoral student), on the Lauder Intercultural Venture in In teaching, he’s enjoyed working at Cambridge University (UK). Mongolia, March 3, 2018. with Penn grad and undergrad Professor Moretti has led a series He spent most of his research students, as well as visiting of summer workshops at Penn time, particularly during spring scholars. Taking over the big Intro through which we entice others, leave, working through and revising to Chinese Civ lecture course including our own graduate and his big edition of the Shengwu (EALC 1) for the fall was a real undergraduate students, with the qinzheng lu 聖武親征錄 or the challenge, but a valuable opportu- joys of paleography. Campaigns of Chinggis Khan. He’s nity for professional growth. And been working on it more or less seeing Penn students dominate steadily for almost two decades the floor at the Mongolian studies now, but there seems to be light conference in D.C. in January was at the end of the tunnel (to use a a great moment. There’s actually fraught metaphor). It’s a big work, much more going on about one that Paul Pelliot was unable Mongolia at Penn than one might to complete, and a number of think, including a ger (yurt) at the articles Atwood published during School of Design. When he and the year began as spin offs from they can make the time, he is still From left to right: Mark Bookman (EALC PhD Candi- it: a study on the textual history of meeting new colleagues outside date), Professor Linda Chance and three of her past the Shuofu 說郛 anthology in which the department. As Grad Chair he students: Dr. Frank Clements, Dr. Jeremy Sather, and Dr. Beth Carter, and Professor Ayako Kano the Campaigns was preserved, a has been learning how things get reconstruction of the “Indictment done at Penn; he’s looking forward Spring brought the first semester Narratives,” which was one of to getting to know better the great for Chance to co-teach a course the Campaigns’ now-lost sources, new PhD and MA students joining with Julie Nelson Davis of Art an article on the medieval Turkic the department this coming fall. History. “The History of the and Mongolian dialectal variations Book in East Asia” featured visible in the Campaigns’ Chinese- hands-on work making paper Faculty Profiles - 3 and trying Japanese bookbinding, and sexuality, medicine, religion, in Song Medicine” will appear along with weekly use of items Confucian exegesis, literary prac- in Asian Medicine. It examines from the Kislak Center’s collec- tices and political culture of the medical discussions about manless tions. We were honored to give Song elite. women, or women without sexual the students time with Soren contact with men, from ancient Edgren, legendary scholar of to Song China—and whether, and the material Chinese book, of how, such women were consid- Princeton University. Penn’s own ered a medical problem. Through PhDs Timothy Clifford (EALC) destabilizing the (hetero)sex– and Erin Schoneveld (ARTH) desire–procreation continuum seen were among guest lecturers in the in a number of historical sources course, which also heard about and modern scholarship, it presents books from Ayako Kano, Hyun a more complex picture of the Jae Yoo, Visiting Scholar at the medical developments in question James Joo-Jin Kim Program, who during the Song. The second guided us through treasures in Her current book project, Manless article, “Before Sexual and Normal: storage at the Penn Museum, and Sexualities: Medicine, Exorcism, and Shifting Categories of Sexual Frank Chance. Japanese Librarian Female Celibacy in Middle Period Anomalies from Ancient to Yuan Molly Des Jardin and Japanese China, looks into the usually unsys- China,” will appear in Asia Major. Library Specialist Michael Williams tematic and often contradictory This article is also the beginning of introduced us to items highlighted attempts to conceptualize women’s her second book project. in the Library’s blog “Unique at bodies, desires, and inexplicable Penn.” experiences.