Barnard's Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Cultures Hosts Symposium Linking International Scholars: "Commonality and Regionality in the Cultural Heritage of East Asia"
東アジアの文化遺産—その普遍性と独自性
May 28, 2009
 On May 9 and 10, almost forty scholars from seven countries convened at Barnard to discuss how the common Chinese cultural heritage developed outside China in the East Asian cultural sphere. Four conference panels addressed questions including: How were Chinese characters and the Chinese language appropriated in Japan, Korea and Vietnam? How did Buddhist practice take regional forms in the younger culture of Japan? How where the Chinese Classics interpreted and used in Japanese intellectual and literary culture? And, lastly, how did aesthetics—and also actual tastes such as tea culture—travel within East Asia?
Bringing together scholars from Japan, China, Korea, UK, Italy, the United States and Canada, the symposium grew from a year-long collaboration between Professor Wang Yong, Director of the Institute for Japanese Culture Studies (Zhejiang Gongshang University, Hangzhou, China) and visiting scholar of the American Council of Learned Societies at Barnard College for 2008-09, and Professor Wiebke Denecke of Barnard's Asian and Middle Eastern Cultures Department.
"Even in this day and age when scholars move swiftly between Asia, Europe and America, significant gaps exist in the communication among scholars of Japan," said Professor Denecke, explaining that communications among scholars of Japan has occurred primarily between Japanese and Chinese scholars, and Japanese and West scholars. "There has been a missing link in the dialogue, between Chinese and Western scholars. This conference was conceived as an experiment of sorts – an opportunity to bridge that gap and forge a more triangular exchange of ideas and study." Additionally, the symposium was intended as an opportunity for international scholars to examine closely the common Chinese origins of East Asia, and discern the regional - influences of that cultural heritage in Japan, as well as Korea and Vietnam.
The symposium was generously sponsored by the International Shinto Foundation, New York; Institute for Cultural Interaction Studies, Kansai University, Osaka, Japan; Institute for Japanese Cultural Studies, Hangzhou, China; Department of East Asian Languages and Culture, Columbia University; Donald Keene Center of Japanese Culture, Columbia University; and Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Cultures, Barnard College.
LINKS:
Conference program and website
Photo slideshow of conference
Download audio of the Opening Ceremony
Welcome: Wiebke Denecke, Wang Yong
Greetings: Debora Spar, Hu Jianmiao, Rachel McDermott, Uchida Keiichi, Robert Hymes, Fukami Toshu
Download audio of two keynote speeches:
Professor Benjamin Elman (Princeton University):
Sinophiles and Sinophobes: Politics, Classicism, and Medicine in Tokugawa Japan
(Comments by Professor Kate Wildman Nakai, Sophia University, Tokyo)
Professor Peter Kornicki (Cambridge University, UK):
Translation, Vernacularization and the Loss of Universality in East Asia
(Comments by Professor Haruo Shirane, Columbia University)
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