Society for Intercultural Comparative Studies

Society for Intercultural Studies

Schedule

Authenticities East and West
March 30 - April 1, 2001

What do the terms "East" and "West" mean within the multifarious overlapping structures of political, economic, and cultural power and exchange that have defined the course of modernity? Is it meaningful to compare aesthetic phenomena and philosophical systems from Western and East Asian cultures in the absence of a direct element of allusion or reference – and do such gestures risk replicating, at the level of theory, the very forms of imperialist dominion that they seek to undermine? Are scholars of East Asia doomed to be "specialists" in an academic landscape where general theoretical applicability and interdisciplinary relevance are rewarded above all else? These are the questions that the Society for Intercultural Comparative Studies will be asking in its upcoming conference.

We hope not for final and definitive answers to these questions – a task which, even were it desirable, would be well beyond the capabilities of any one generation of scholars – but for a heightened awareness of their importance (as much political and ethical as methodological and epistemic) for all academic work in the nascent century.

Conference Location. Information about and directions to the conference site, are now available through the website for Frist Campus Center. Most events will take place on the third floor of Frist, near the Gest Oriental Library. All rooms are equipped for multimedia presentation, and Internet access is available in the building.

Friday, March 30, 2001

4:00 - 4:30	Opening Remarks by Organizers (Frist 302)
4:30 - 5:50	Workshop I Karatani Kôjin (Columbia), "Transcritique: Kant and Marx"
6:30	Reception (Welcome remarks from Sandra Bermann, Princeton Comp. Lit. Chair)

Saturday, March 31, 2001

8:30	Breakfast
9:00 - 10:40	SESSION I
	Panel 1: Authenticities From the Edge: Diaspora and the Margins (Frist 308) Fumio Maeda (Columbia) "Comparative Analysis of Two Immigrant Novelists: Amy Tan and Miri Yû" Patricia Schiaffini (Pennsylvania) "The Outsider's Gaze and the Insider's Will: Tashi Dawa's Alleged 'Magical Realism'" Kazuko Suzuki (Princeton) "Pornography or Therapy?: Japanese Girls Creating the Yaoi Phenomenon" Discussant: Micah Auerback (Princeton)
	Panel 2: Writing Lives: True and False (Frist 309) Jonathan Augustine (Princeton) "Bodhisattva as Saint: Japanese Bodhisattva Monks in the Broader Hagiographic Context" Valerie Henitiuk (Alberta) "The Authentic Self in Rousseau and Michitsuna's Mother" Shion Kono (Princeton) "The Distinction between Fact and Fiction: Mori Ôgai and Virginia Woolf" Discussant: Thomas Hare (Stanford)
11:00 - 12:20	Workshop II Robert Wardy (Cambridge), "Inauthenticity: Some Examples"
12:20 - 2:00	Lunch
2:00 - 3:40	SESSION II
	Panel 3: The Latest Classic: I to Hecuba (Frist 308) Julie Anderson (UC Berkeley) "Crying Out in the Ancient Lyric: Comparing 'O!'s, 'Ah!'s, and Animal Sounds in Ancient Greek and Chinese Poetry" Tamara Chin (UC Berkeley) "Authenticating Desires: Of Sappho (31), Shijing (1) and Difference" Kristina Chew (U. of St. Thomas) "Grafting as Comparative Literature: Vergil's Georgics and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's Dictee" Discussant: Kevin Tsai (Princeton)
	Panel 4: Wounded Canons and Textual Illness (Frist 309) Jonathan Abel (Princeton) "Canon and Censor: How War Wounds Bodies of Writing" Stacy Nakamura (Princeton) "Ill Performances: Melodramatic Tuberculosis and Dramatic Aids" Lezlie Christensen (Georgetown) "The Rhetoric of Love: A Comparative Study of Korean Kisaeng and Occitanian Trobairitz Lyrical Poetry" Discussant: Beau Mount (Princeton)
3:40 - 4:30	Coffee Break
4:30 - 5:50	Workshop III Rey Chow (Brown), "Asymmetry, Appropriation, Authenticity: Persistent Problematics in East-West Comparative Studies"
7:00	Dinner by invitation only.

MacLean House, the site of conference reception.

Sunday, April 1, 2001

8:30	Breakfast
9:00 - 10:40	SESSION III
	Panel 5: Cultivated Authenticities: Nation-States, Perspectives, and Comparison (Frist 309) Chun-yen Chen (Cornell) "I Write, Therefore I Am: Writing as a Trope of Authenticity in European Modernity and Postcolonial Taiwan" Aiko Okamoto MacPhail (Indiana) "Zone of Intermediacy" Masako Ono (Teikyo) "Temptation of Genres" Discussant: Jonathan Abel (Princeton)
	Panel 6: The Uses of Philosophy: The Sagacious Fool and the Foolish Sage (Frist 308) Yun Shao (Princeton) "The Poetics of Folly: The Dream of Red Chamber and Don Quijote" Curie Virág (Harvard) "Knowledge as Authentic Experience: Epistemology and Subjectivity in Medieval China and Europe" Chi-ming Yang (Cornell) "A Philosophical Inquiry into the Logic of Eastern Exemplarity" Discussant: Andrew Plaks (Princeton)
11:00 - 12:00	Roundtable Discussion. Karatani, Chow, Wardy. Chair: Richard Okada (Princeton) (Frist 302)
12:00 - 12:20	Closing Remarks. Earl Miner (Princeton) (Frist 302)

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