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2. Factual Fiction Versus Autobiography – Marie Myung-Ok Lee on The Evening Hero
- Author:
- Marie Myung-Ok Lee
- Publication Date:
- 03-2023
- Content Type:
- Video
- Institution:
- Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
- Abstract:
- The alchemical magic of fiction means it can involve not just the stories of people, but places and history can be characters on their own. Fiction can tell us about lives people lived with the same truths as a history book, but a different approach. Humans naturally want story, and also truth. It’s a time honored way to create characters and lives based on people we know. But what is it like to write backwards into things we don’t know, but wish we did? Author Marie Myung-Ok Lee speaks about how her family stories—and also silences--of migration and war, her trip to North Korea, and other research informs the fictional world of "The Evening Hero," a winner of a Columbia Humanities War & Peace Initiative Grant.
- Topic:
- Migration, War, History, Literature, Narrative, and Fiction
- Political Geography:
- Asia and North Korea
3. Reading The Backstreets in Ürümchi: Translation as Ethnographic Method and Practice of Refusal
- Author:
- Darren Byler and Andrew J. Nathan
- Publication Date:
- 02-2023
- Content Type:
- Video
- Institution:
- Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
- Abstract:
- While conducting ethnographic fieldwork in Northwest China in 2014, anthropologist Darren Byler found that a Uyghur language novel, The Backstreets, helped Uyghurs to narrate their own stories. By shifting the frame of the narrative of colonial violence away from the authority of the state toward the work it takes for the colonized to live, this difficult, absurdist fable gave young Uyghurs a way to articulate experiences of dehumanization and rage. With its English-language translation and publication, it also gave the novelist, Perhat Tursun, a way of refusing his own silencing through censorship and, ultimately, imprisonment. The Backstreets in Ürümchi is a novel by Perhat Tursun, a leading Uyghur writer, poet, and social critic from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Perhat Tursun has published many short stories and poems as well as three novels, including the controversial The Art of Suicide (1999), decried as anti-Islamic. In 2018, he was detained by the Chinese authorities and was reportedly given a sixteen-year prison sentence. Byler was a cotranslator with ‘Anonymous,’ who disappeared in 2017, and is presumed to be in the reeducation camp system in northwest China. This event would be meaningful to students and faculty in many different areas of the university including the above proposed cosponsors, and students of China and Inner Asia.
- Topic:
- Culture, Minorities, Ethnography, Literature, Language, and Uyghurs
- Political Geography:
- China, Asia, and Xinjiang
4. Derecho humano a la seguridad:Prevención del Extremismo Violentocon Vasili Grossman
- Author:
- Verónica Yazmín García Morales Morales
- Publication Date:
- 06-2023
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal on International Security Studies (RESI)
- Institution:
- International Security Studies Group (GESI) at the University of Granada
- Abstract:
- El presente estudio aborda el derecho humano a la seguridad desde el enfoque de la Prevención del Extremismo Violento. La Prevención del Extremismo Violento (PEV) es una estrategia en el marco de Naciones Unidas enfocada a fortalecer el respeto de los derechos humanos. La PEV aborda el extremismo violento que conduce al terrorismo desde el enfoque de la prevención y de los derechos humanos. Lo más relevante de esta perspectiva es su innovación para garantizar la seguridad como derecho humano. Es más, la PEVsurge como respuesta a las políticas de seguridad antiterroristas que se consideran insuficientes para erradicar este fenómeno. Las medidas de acción de la PEV, por tanto, van más allá de lo que en sentido estricto se conoce como política securitaria. La educación y la cultura tiene así una función importante en la PEV, como también ponen de relieve las políticas de la UNESCO. El análisis que se desarrolla expone una propuesta de espacio dialógico que aplica la medida de educación, cultura y sensibilización a través de la literatura. Se reflexiona así, a partir del diálogo con Vida y destino de Vasili Grossman, sobre el extremismo violento y los derechos humanos.
- Topic:
- Security, Human Rights, United Nations, Literature, and Countering Violent Extremism
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
5. An Overview of the African Peacebuilding Network’s (APN’s) Contribution to African Peacebuilding Literature
- Author:
- Godwin Onuoha
- Publication Date:
- 05-2023
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Social Science Research Council
- Abstract:
- This working paper surveys, documents, and analyzes the contributions of APN scholars to the knowledge and practice of peacebuilding in Africa against the background of the 10th year anniversary of the APN program. It takes stock of the contributions and impact of the literature produced by APN scholars, particularly how these have brought different interdisciplinary perspectives and novel methodological approaches to bear on African peacebuilding. The paper systematically analyzes African perspectives on peacebuilding, debates between different schools of thought, provides an overview of different publications by APN scholars, and synthesizes the significance of these contributions to discourses on African and global literature on peacebuilding. As part of a broader intellectual project, the publications demonstrate how APN scholars have forged a nexus at which one can explore conflict, peacebuilding, media, gender, youth, boundaries and borderlands, land grabs, migration and refugees, faith-based initiatives, local/ communal cultures, identities, and COVID-19, among other topics. The publications under review transcend the narrow confines of the literature to engage in the complexities and multidimensional nature and contexts of African peacebuilding. In this regard, the publications mainstream African agency and views, particularly in the production of African knowledge in the field of peacebuilding.
- Topic:
- Conflict, Literature, Peacebuilding, and Transdisciplinarity
- Political Geography:
- Africa
6. Russia’s Cultural Heritage Can Be a Bridge to the Future
- Author:
- Robert Cox
- Publication Date:
- 02-2023
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- American Diplomacy
- Institution:
- American Diplomacy
- Abstract:
- Russia has become Europe’s ogre. Beyond the brutality of Moscow’s onslaught on Ukraine looms a harsher ideological backdrop. Too many Russian citizens have been enticed into seeing this invasion as a defence of Russia’s security, national pride and identity, history, Weltanschauung, international standing, and imperial stature. They eulogise Russia’s national church as a defensive shield despite its abuse of spiritual humanity, its soldiers as crusaders. Europeans, in response to this baggage respond with a mixture of fear or unease. Anger, too, along with frustration and ultimately something akin to hatred. With all this comes an inclination in the western world to reject everything Russian. This rejection of a rich culture risks tarnishing our mindset and that of our children. Russian orchestras, dancers and sopranos have been banned from western stages—largely on the pretext that they have not condemned Putin and his acolytes. Ultimately Russian culture risks being airbrushed out of western European mentalities. It is worth pausing for a moment and just looking at what we are rejecting, perhaps unconsciously. Hitherto—and for many Europeans still —Russian culture has had an important place in our education and upbringing. Tchaikovsky, Borodin, Rimsky Korsakov, Shostakovich and the sublime Prokofiev have delighted our concert audiences for decades. Marc Chagall’s imagination has stimulated ours. Ballet in Europe—or the US, for that matter—would not be what it is without the great influence of the ballet russe. Nor, in a related world, would we be so intellectually rich without the heritage of Russian scientists, physicists and mathematicians.
- Topic:
- Foreign Policy, Culture, Literature, and Russia-Ukraine War
- Political Geography:
- Russia, Europe, and Eurasia
7. Astute War
- Author:
- Shano Mohammed
- Publication Date:
- 08-2023
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- Center for Contemporary Arab Studies (CCAS)
- Abstract:
- Yesterday my town fell ill at dead of a sunless dawn from its eyes, a fire blazed dazzlingly everyone rode From a Phoenix bird to ants’ swarms. At the feet of astute war, brought to their knees, until they grew frail, mothers in faint voices wept from what they have bled, for what they have borne. on sidewalks and under tents, children were born others were abandoned little girls were placed, Under barren trees and on hills, for fate to step in.
- Topic:
- Poem, Literature, and Iraq War
- Political Geography:
- Iraq and Middle East
8. Bibliometric Analysis of Publication Related to Bhutan, 1894-2022
- Author:
- Sonam Wangdi
- Publication Date:
- 12-2023
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Bhutan Studies
- Institution:
- Centre for Bhutan & GNH Studies (CBS)
- Abstract:
- This study provides an overall growth of Bhutan-related literature to understand scientific productivity of the nation. This paper aims to assess scientific productivity of Bhutan in terms of the country’s literature growth in the international arena and to establish baseline information on research trends and hotspots, benefiting both scholars and policymakers.The bibliometric technique was employed to analyze the evolutionary trend, identify key institutions, prolific authors, leading countries, and prominent themes, while also highlighting emerging areas of research in Bhutan. A total of 4145 Bhutan-related publications were identified and retrieved from the Scopus database (1894-2022). The result showed that the growth of Bhutan-related literature increased significantly over the last decade with a maximum publication in 2021 (n=461). Of the total, about 72% consists of articles, whereas conference reviews and data papers were minimum. Journal of Threatened Taxa published the highest number of literature. Among the Bhutanese institutions, the Jigme Dorji Wangchuck National Referral Hospital (JDWNRH) published the highest (n= 398) total number of publications, while the Ministry of Agriculture and Forests (MoAF) received the highest network of publication connections. Keyword analysis revealed that the field of taxonomy, new species and climate change were dominant in Bhutan’s research landscape and are expected to remain prominent in the future. The findings revealed that Bhutan published the highest number of literature among the top ten countries, and ranked the highest number of corresponding authors from multiple countries (n=159). However, the international collaboration rate in literature publication was low compared to Australia, Thailand and Nepal.
- Topic:
- Research, Literature, Academia, Bibliometric Analysis, and Publication
- Political Geography:
- South Asia and Bhutan
9. The Buddhist Dream Tale: Past and Present
- Author:
- Francisca Cho and Seong Uk Kim
- Publication Date:
- 03-2022
- Content Type:
- Video
- Institution:
- Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
- Abstract:
- Kim Manjung's Kuunmong, or Dream of the Nine Clouds, was written by a scholar-official and he turned to the Buddhist trope that "life is nothing but a dream" in order to express his doubts and disappointment about the Confucian social structure in which he lived. The speaker argues that the dream tale turns the act of fiction writing into a Buddhist philosophical exercise, and she will draw out this argument by considering how the medium of fiction functions in a ritual way. In this vein, she brings the dream tale into the present by considering the experience of cinema as an analogue. This event is cosponsored by the Center for Korean Research and the Weatherhead East Asian Institute.
- Topic:
- Religion, Arts, Culture, and Literature
- Political Geography:
- Asia
10. Professing Literature: The Example of Austin Warren
- Author:
- Aaron Urbanczyk
- Publication Date:
- 01-2022
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Humanitas
- Institution:
- The Center for the Study of Statesmanship, Catholic University
- Abstract:
- Literary studies in America are in a late stage of decay. For nearly a century English departments have been a revolving door of influences, most of which have not been salutary. In rapid succession historical and philological scholarship of the early twentieth century gave way to the New Criticism, the critical influences of Marx and Freud, postmodernism (deconstruction), New Historicism, and the currently dominant hermeneutics of race, class, gender, and sexual orientation. University English departments today are divided along these various ideological lines, with the result that literary studies have morphed into a heterogeneous set of subdisciplines with the word “studies” appended. Here I intend no polemic against or diagnosis of the chaotic state of literature as a discipline; rather, I propose considering this state of affairs from the point of view of its practitioners. The professoriate is defined by those who profess. Borrowing Gerald Graff’s phrase, one might ask who stands out as a model of “professing literature” amidst this disciplinary chaos?
- Topic:
- Education, Literature, Academia, and Discipline
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus