How might we de-colonize hegemonic knowledge production about East Asia and its relationship with the West? This interview with Alexa Alice Joubin draws on new perspectives on cultural exchange in her book, Shakespeare and East Asia (Oxford University Press, 2021), which promotes treatment of Asian performing arts as original epistemologies rather…[Read more]

This article examines new theories and praxis of listening for silenced voices and of telling compelling stories that make us human. Elucidation of our Levinas-inspired theories of the Other is followed by a discussion of classroom practices for in-person and remote instruction that foster collaborative knowledge building and intersectional…[Read more]

Scholars who have studied the contested meaning of “creole” in Louisiana have
typically maintained that the “Creole myth,” that is the strategic redefinition of
the term “creole” to refer to the white descendants of Louisiana’s original French
and Spanish settlers, emerged during or shortly after the Civil War. Drawing on
a newspaper art…[Read more]

Since the nineteenth century, stage and film directors have mounted hundreds of adaptations of Shakespeare drawn on East Asian motifs, and by the late twentieth century, Shakespeare had become one of the most frequently performed playwrights in East Asia. There are five striking themes surrounding cultural, racial, and gender dynamics. Gender…[Read more]

The study focuses on the position of female deputies of non-Russian descent in parliamentary debates of the Perestroika period in the Soviet Union. The key issues the author examines concern the grievances which these female deputies were pointing out, and the potential solutions they were proposing to mitigate or eliminate them. The most…[Read more]

Register at https://uchicagogroup.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_jyEzkIZYQZ6bKzjjr3faZg :::: The University of Chicago East Asia by the Book! Author Talks is proud to present a book launch of Alexa Alice Joubin’s Shakespeare and East Asia (Oxford University Press). Chair: Haun Saussy (University of Chicago). Discussant: Michael Saenger (Southwestern…[Read more]

Abstract
There have been numerous and extensive discussions of the role of ‘слухи’ [gossip] in
nineteenth-century Russian literature; usually gossip was viewed as a formative force be-
hind plot dynamics, and as the launching point for grotesque narrative effects. This article
attempts to frame different perceptions of gossip, treating…[Read more]

Israeli officials have long denied that rape was used as an instrument of war against Palestinians. Most of the files relating to the expulsion of Palestinians during the Nakba in 1948 and its aftermath remain sealed in Israeli archives and have been reclassified as top secret. Palestinian oral narratives have long been considered a poor…[Read more]

The chapter focuses on two new institutions, the State Duma (Gosudarstvennaia duma) and Political Consultative Council (Zizhengyuan), which were introduced in the Russian and Qing Empires, when the two imperial formations joined the global constitutional transformations. The names of the two bodies pointed to the statist (etatist) rather than…[Read more]

Focusing on the term zemskii sobor, this study explored the historiographies of the early modern Russian assemblies, which the term denoted, as well as the autocratic and democratic mythologies connected to it. Historians have debated whether the individual assemblies in the sixteenth and seventeenth century could be seen as a coherent…[Read more]

Parliaments are often seen as Western European and North American institutions and their establishment in other parts of the world as a derivative and mostly defective process. This book challenges such Eurocentric visions by retracing the evolution of modern institutions of collective decision-making in Eurasia. Breaching the divide between…[Read more]

Performing Shakespeare in modern times is an act of mediation between characters and actors, creating channels between geocultural spaces and time periods. The multiplicity of the plural term global Shakespeares helps us push back against deceivingly harmonious images of Shakespeare’s ubiquitous presence. Adaptations accrue nuanced meanings as t…[Read more]

Shakespeare and East Asia (Oxford, 2021) explores distinctive themes in post-1950s Asian-themed performances and adaptations of Shakespeare. In this Snapshot, Alexa Alice Joubin discusses the book and the importance of wider research into Global Shakespeares.

COVID-19 has exacerbated anti-Asian racism—the demonization of a group of people based on their perceived social value—in the United States in the cultural and political life. This article that analyzes the language of racism and misogyny. It also offers strategies for inclusion during and after the pandemic. Racialized thinking is ins…[Read more]

Western observers often attribute Chinese suppression of undesirable information to state crackdowns on dissidents, pervasive censorship apparatus, and even self-censorship. For contemporary Chinese citizens under a certain age, Tiananmen Square protests allegedly did not happen. The PRC leadership’s private lives are shrouded in secrecies, m…[Read more]