2016 EVENTS

March 9, 2016: Colloquium discussion with Mathew Feely, Columbia Business School, NY: Cooperating to Manage Natural Disasters:  The Joint Japan-U.S. Response to the 2011 Tsunami, Time: 5:00-7:30 pm Location: Stern Great Room

March 29, 2016: Faculty Colloquium discussion with Wei Ren, Assistant Professor of Art and Art History, who will lead a tour and discussion of the Ink,  Silver, Platinum Exhibit.
Time: 5:00-7:30 pm Location: Trout Gallery

April 6, 2016: Public Lecture with Julie Sze, Professor and Director of American Studies, UC Davis.  Author of Fantasy Islands: Chinese Dreams and Ecological Fears in an Age of Climate Crisis. Sze will focus on climate justice/ injustice more generally, with a China / Pacific Rim theme. Time: 7:00-8:00 pm Location: HUB Social Hall East

April 7, 2016: Faculty Colloquium discussion with Julie Sze.  Fantasy Islands: Chinese Dreams and Ecological Fears in an Age of Climate Crisis.
Time: 5:00-7:30 pm Location: Kaufman Hall Greenhouse Atrium and Room 178

2015 EVENTS

November 17 – November 21, 2015: Tibetan Monk Residency: Enlightened Activity: The Green Tara Initiative: Times and  Locations: TBA

September 10, 2015: Public Lecture with Gillen D’Arcy Wood: Tambora 1815: The Eruption that Changed the World Time: 7:00-8:30 pm Location: Stern Great Room

September 9,  2015: Colloquium Discussion with Gillen D’Arcy Wood Times: 5:00-7:00 pm Location: Stern Great Room

April 23, 2015: Colloquium Discussion with Professor Wang Time: 5:00-9:00 pm Location:Kaufman Hall Greenhouse Atrium and Room 178

April 22, 2015: Public lecture with Professor Wang: Science, Technology and Civilization in China’s Yellow River Basin Time: 7:30-9:00 pm Location: Kaufman Hall Greenhouse Atrium and Room 178

March 24, 2015: Colloquium Discussion: Valley & Ridge Goes to China Pedagogy  Time: 5:00-7:00 pm Location: Stern Great Room

2014 EVENTS

September 19, 2014: Colloquium Discussion with Karen Thornber
Time: 3:00-5:00 pm Location: Stern Great Room

April 16, 2014: Colloquium Discussion with Li Donghong
Time: 5:30-8:30 pm Location: Kaufman Hall Greenhouse Atrium

March 19, 2014: Public Lecture with Micah Muscolino: Earth, Water, and Power: The Ecology of War in North China’s Henan Province, 1938-1950
Time: 7:00-9:00 pm Location: Denny Hall, Room 317

March 18, 2014: Colloquium Discussion with Micah Muscolino: A Militarized River: The 1938 Yellow River Flood and its Aftermath
Time: 5:30-8:30 pm Location: Allison Hall Community Room

2013 Events:

November 19, 2013: Colloquium Discussion with Ann Hill, Jeff Niemitz and Matt Steiman: Indigenous Knowledge and the Environment in Yunnan
Time: 5:30-8:30 pm Location: Stern Great Room

September 19, 2013: Public Lecture with Fa-Ti Fan: Science, Earthquakes, and Politics in Mao’s China
Time: 7:00-9:00 pm Location: Denny 317

September 18, 2013: Colloquium Discussion with Fa-Ti Fan (Guest) and Ash Nichols: Natural History in China and the West
Time: 6:30-8:30 pm Location: Koh Room (Waidner-Spahr library)

February 27, 2013: Public Lecture with Andy Moore: Societies, Risks & Natural Hazards
Time: 4:30-5:30 pm Location: Denny 317

February 26, 2013: Colloquium Discussion with Andy Moore:
Time: 5:00-7:30pm Location: Stern Great Room

On April 6-7, 2016, with support of the LIASE grant, the College hosted Julie Sze, Professor of American Studies and Director of the Department of American Studies at UC-Davis. Professor Sze gave a public lecture on environmental justice in China and also spoke with a faculty colloquium about the connections between the 2010 Shanghai Expo and environmentalism in China. The material for Prof. Sze’s discussion was based in research conducted for her 2015 book Fantasy Islands: Chinese Dreams and Ecological Fears in an Age of Climate Crisis. 

A description of Fantasy Islands from the publisher website:

“The rise of China and its status as a leading global factory are altering the way people live and consume. At the same time, the world appears wary of the real costs involved. Fantasy Islands probes Chinese, European, and American eco-desire and eco-technological dreams, and examines the solutions they offer to environmental degradation in this age of global economic change.

Uncovering the stories of sites in China, including the plan for a new eco-city called Dongtan on the island of Chongming, mega-suburbs, and the Shanghai World Expo, Julie Sze explores the flows, fears, and fantasies of Pacific Rim politics that shaped them. She charts how climate change discussions align with US fears of China’s ascendancy and the related demise of the American Century, and she considers the motives of financial and political capital for eco-city and ecological development supported by elite power structures in the UK and China. Fantasy Islands shows how ineffectual these efforts are while challenging us to see what a true eco-city would be.”

Julie Sze delivers public lecture at HUB Social Hall on Wednesday, April 6.

Prof. Ann Hill (Anthropology) introduces Prof. Julie Sze to the LIASE faculty colloquium on Thursday, April 7, 2016

Prof. Julie Sze talks about the Shanghai Expo with LIASE faculty colloquium members on Thursday, April 7, 2016.

LIASE faculty colloquium members listen to Prof. Julie Sze discuss her recent book on eco-cities in China on Thursday, April 7, 2016.

Supported by the Henry Luce Foundation on Asian Studies and the Environment, the exhibition Ink, Silver, Platinum: Floating Worlds and Earthly Matters showcases recent museum acquisitions partly selected by Dickinson students. On March 29, 2016, Dr. Ren Wei, Assistant Professor of Art History at Dickinson, led a tour of the exhibition for the faculty colloquium members. Discussion centered around two contemporary landscape photographs created by Yao Lu (b. 1967) and Toshio Shibata (b. 1949), respectively, and one of several ukiyoe woodblock prints recent donated to the Trout Gallery.

Yao Lu’s 2007 print entitled Viewing the City’s Places of Interest in Springtime digitally manipulates and combines images of construction site rubble with recognizably natural elements found in traditional Chinese landscape paintings such as temple architecture, hills, trees, ponds, and figures. Reflecting the ubiquitous construction waste in China today, the photograph also attempts to create harmony between reality and the imagined, idealized landscape painting tradition in China.

Toshio Shibata’s 2013 print entitled Nikko City, Nagano Prefecture takes a different approach to large-scale landscape photography. Through careful control of the lighting condition and composition, Shibata defamiliarizes common man-made landscapes by flattening the terrain and heightening the structure’s geometric and coloristic patterns with the use of wide-angle lenses.

The discussion ended with Utagawa Hiroshige’s woodblock print Twilight Snow on the Asuka Mountain from the series Eight Views of Environs of Edo, dated to 1837-38. The print depicts a serene winter snow scene at Asuka Mountain, a famous place known for its cherry blossoms. The Eight Views theme, by alluding to the well-known poetic experience of the Eight Views of Xiaoxiang in Song Dynasty China, suggests some cultivation on the viewer’s part, thereby elevating the status of print to a learned art form.

On March 9, Matt Feely, Adjunct Assistant Professor at Columbia Business School, spoke with students and members of the faculty LIASE colloquium about the challenges of coordinating emergency response following the series of disasters following the traumatic earthquake and tsunami in Japan on March 11, 2011. At the time, Matt was an officer in the Navy and was placed in charge of operational logistics for the Navy. He helped supervise and organize relief efforts between the US Navy and the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force, an operation that came to be know as “Operation Tomodachi” (Operation “Friendship”). Matt worked closely with public officials as well as NGOs that worked to gather and distribute emergency supplies in areas where ordinary channels of distribution had been disrupted. He spoke movingly about the challenges of motivating a diverse set of actors and institutions in a cultural context with which one has only just started to become comfortable. As environmental impact is a key component of any natural disaster, especially one as radioactively potent as the March 11 disaster in Japan, Matt’s talk was received warmly by the colloquium members in addition to students from Prof. Jorden Hayes’ “Earth’s Hazards” (ERSC141) course and the upcoming LIASE-sponsored Meltdown and Waves: Responding to Disasters in the US and Japan summer mini-mosaic program.

For Dickinson website coverage of the deconsecration ceremony held on the final day of the Drepung Gomang Monastery monks’ visit to the College, click here.

From Wednesday, November 18th through Saturday, November 21st, the monks of Drepung Gomand Monastery made a sand mandala in the lobby of the Waidner-Spahr Library. Check out the photos and video below to see how the process unfolded.

Outlining the mandala.

Merchandise from India and Tibet.

Mandala beginning to take shape.

Mandala from up close.

Closer to completion

This week Dickinson College welcomed the monks of Drepung Gomang Monastery in India. Professor Dan Cozort (Religious Studies) took the lead in organizing the visit, which is supported by the LIASE, Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues, Center for Sustainability Education Grant, Departments of East Asian Studies and Religion, Center for Service, Spirituality, and Social Justice, Waidner-Spahr Library, and Division of Student Life. According to Prof. Cozort, this is the third time that the monks have visited Dickinson, with the last time being 20 years ago. From Wednesday to Saturday morning, the monks will construct a sand mandala dedicated to the Buddhist diety Tārā in the Waidner-Spahr Library.

On Tuesday evening, Prof. Cozort gave a brief introduction to the ritual and meaning of the Green Tārā. The lecture was followed by a puja, ritual chanting for the diety, performed by the eight monks. Prior to the lecture and chanting ritual, the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues held a reception with faculty, staff, and students to welcome the monks.

On Wednesday evening, the monks also put on a performance of Tibetan culture in the Rubendall Recital Hall that included a lion dance.

Prof. Dan Cozort (Religious Studies) discusses the ritual and meaning behind the Buddhist Green Tārā

The monks of the Drepung Gomang Monastery prepare their puja for the Green Tārā

Director of the Clark Forum and Prof. of American Studies Amy Farrell welcomes the monks to a reception with students, staff, and faculty.

Dining with students.

Performance of Tibetan culture.

A lion with a message.

The Vase Project: Made in China—Landscape in Blue, a new exhibit initiated and overseen by Professor Barbara Diduk, Charles A. Dana Professor of Art at Dickinson College, and the Chinese ceramicist Joey Zhao, opened at the Dickinson College Trout Gallery on October 30, 2015. The exhibition presents 101 identically shaped and similarly painted porcelain vessels that feature scenes of modern industrial landscapes in China. The project was sponsored by the Luce Initiative on Asian Studies and the Environment.

Learn more about the exhibit here.

With the support of a grant from the Luce Initiative on Asian Studies and the Environment, Dickinson College hosted Gillen D’Arcy Wood, Professor of English at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, for a faculty colloquium on Wednesday, September 9, 2015. Prof. D’Arcy Wood facilitated a discussion about his new book entitled Tambora: The Eruption that Changed the World.

The titular Tambora is a volcano located in present-day Indonesia. When Tambora erupted in 1815, it scattered volcanic ash into the stratosphere that spread around the world. The eruption affected climate in locations as far away as China, the UK, and the United States for the next three years. In his colloquium with faculty,
Prof. D’Arcy Wood traced New England’s “Year without Summer” in 1816 to this massive event, and explained how this climatic change induced a shift away from rice cultivation and toward opium cash-cropping in southwestern China. What’s more, the cold, cloudy days and intense storms the ash cloud caused in Europe led a young writer named Mary Shelley to stay indoors telling ghost stories with friends, stories that inspired her most famous work Frankenstein.

Prof. D’Arcy Wood’s also gave a public lecture on the evening of Thursday, September 10. The lecture focused on how the climatic cooling that followed in the wake of the eruption led, ironically, to a melting of ice near the arctic, thus opening the so-called northwest passage across northern Canada to exploration and trade.