LOCATION
Philippines Conference Room
Encina Hall
616 Serra St., 3rd floor
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305
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The 1950s, the period between the catastrophic Korean War (1950-1953) and Korea’s ambitious industrialization in the 1960s and 70s, has remained relatively "neglected" among historians of modern Korea. The guest speakers will present their studies of this era’s culture, intellectual climate, and politics; and discuss colonial legacy, cold war, and reconstruction in the wake of the Korean War.

Participants:

Carter J. Eckert trained in Western ancient and medieval history at Lawrence College in Wisconsin, and also at Harvard. He subsequently developed a strong interest in Korea and East Asia as a result of his experience as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Seoul in the late 1960s and 1970s. After several years of working and studying in Korea, he returned to the United States for doctoral study in Korean and Japanese history at the University of Washington. Since 1985 he has been teaching modern Korean history at Harvard, including a popular undergraduate course called "The Two Koreas," and working to build up the Harvard Korean studies program.

Eckert is the author of a number of books and articles, including Offspring of Empire: The Colonial Origins of Korean Capitalism, and he is also a co-author of Korea Old and New: A History, a widely-used university textbook on Korean history. 

Michael Robinson earned a PhD in history at the University of Washington in 1979. He taught at the University of Southern California for sixteen years after which he moved to Indiana University where he is a Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures and an adjunct Professor of History. He has written extensively on the origins and evolution of Korean nationalism. His first book, Cultural Nationalism in Colonial Korea focused on nationalist ideology formation during the 1920s. More recently he has become interested in popular culture and the origins and development of modernity in Korea. With Gi-Wook Shin his Colonial Modernity in Korea examined a number of nodes of modernity appearing during the period of Japanese occupation. He has just finished a new book, Korea’s Twentieth Century Odyssey: a Short History that was published by the University of Hawaii Press in Spring 2007. He has collaborated with Jonathan Lipman and Barbara Maloney on a new text, East Asia Since 1600,  published in 2012 by Littlefield Press in London.

Robinson has worked extensively in program development at the university and national level with a special focus on Korean Studies.

Tae Gyun Park is an Associate Professor at the Graduate School of International Studies, Seoul National University and an Advisor to Minitry of Unification in Korea. He was a Coordinate Researcher at Harvard-Yenching Institute, 2007-2008. He authored An Ally and Empire: Two Myths in Korea-U.S. Relationship (AKS Press,2012) and "Beyond the Myth: Reassessing the Security Crisis in the mid 1960s on the Korean Peninsula" (Pacific Affairs, 2009).

 

Yumi Moon is an Assistant Professor of History at Stanford University where she has taught modern Korean history since 2007. She received her undergraduate degree and an MA in Political Science and International Relations from Seoul National University, and a PhD in East Asian Studies from Harvard University.

Moon is the author of Populist Collaborators: The Ilchinhoe and the Japanese Colonization of Korea, 1896–1910 (Cornell University Press, 2013). She is currently working on a new book tentatively titled Toward a Free State: Imperial Shift and the Formation of Post-Colonial South Korea, 1931–1950.

World War II yielded many photographs of bombed-out cities. In this talk I telescope between two sets and scales of images that represent the principal frames through which the American and Japanese publics have memorialized the incendiary bombings that laid waste to Tokyo: aerial photographs taken by the US Army Air Force during its wartime planning, prosecution, and assessment of the raids; and the ground-level images captured by Ishikawa Kōyō, a photographer working on behalf of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police. By means of a detailed examination of the production, circulation, and consumption of these photographs -- what some scholars have called an “archaeological approach” to images of ruination -- this talk explores not only the visual rhetoric and reality of the destruction of Japan's cities, but also how that destruction is situated in history, memory, and visual culture.

David Fedman is the co-author of “A Cartographic Fade to Black: Mapping the Destruction of Urban Japan during World War II” (Journal of Historical Geography, Vol. 38, No.3) and an affiliate of japanairraids.org, a bilingual digital archive dedicated to the international dissemination of information about the air raids.

Ian Morris, Jean and Rebecca Willard Professor of Classics, Professor of History, and Fellow of the Stanford Archaeology Center, Stanford Unviersity

Thomas Fingar, Oksenberg-Rohlen Distinguished Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University

Francis Fukuyama, Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford Unviersity (moderator)

In his two recent books, "Why the West Rules--For Now" and "The Measure of Civilization", Ian Morris has designed an index of social development, to quantify social power in different parts of the world across the 15,000+ years since the end of the last ice age. The index suggests three main conclusions--first, that geography has been the main force behind the West's global dominance; second, that the East is likely to catch up in the late 21st century; and third, and most importantly, that the world will see bigger transformations in the next 100 years than it did in the last 100,000 years. 

In the wake of the V-J Day on August 14, 1945, eleven nations that had been at war with Japan established the International Military Tribunal for the Far East in the capital city, Tokyo, in order to hold wartime leaders of Japan accountable for the commission of aggression and atrocities against the people of China and other nations in the Asia-Pacific region. In addition to the Tokyo Tribunal, the Allied Powers set up additional war crimes courts at some 50 separate locations across the former theaters of war—in British Southeast Asia, China, the Dutch East Indies, French Indochina, the Philippines, and other Allied-controlled Central and South Pacific Islands. More than 2,240 trials involving some 5,700 suspected war criminals were carried out between 1945 and 1951.

Dr. Totani is currently working on a book project that explores a cross-section of these trials in order to assess their historical significance in our understanding of war, war crimes, war guilt, and issues of individual responsibility, justice, and the rule of law. In this talk, she will discuss the general trends of war crimes studies for the last seven decades or so in order to consider what present-day relevance there is, if any, in exploring the records of these historical trials for the further advancement of Asia-Pacific studies and, especially, in relation to the fields of law, history, international relations, and human rights.

Yuma Totani earned her Ph.D. in history at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2005. She authored The Tokyo War Crimes Trial: The Pursuit of Justice in the Wake of World War (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2008) and produced its expanded Japanese-language edition, Tōkyō saiban: dai niji taisen go no hō to seigi no tsuikyū (Tokyo: Misuzu shobō, 2008). As a recepient of the Frederick Burkhardt Residential Fellowships for Recently Tenured Scholars (of ACLS) for 2012-2013, she is presently working on her new book project while based for residence at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.

China’s “rise” has been achieved through participation in the international system led by the United States, but many predict that Beijing will attempt to replace the US-led global order with one shaped by its own vision and priorities.  The 2013 Oksenberg Lecture will examine China’s desire and ability to remake the global order by focusing on what it would like to retain and what it would like to change.  Oksenberg-Rohlen Distinguished Fellow Thomas Fingar will give the keynote address, and Professors Thomas Christensen (Princeton) and Jia Qingguo (Peking University) will provide commentary and their own views on the subject.

The Oksenberg Lecture, held annually, honors the legacy of Professor Michel Oksenberg (1938-2001). A senior fellow at Shorenstein APARC and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Professor Oksenberg served as a key member of the National Security Council when the United States normalized relations with China, and consistently urged that the United States engage with Asia in a more considered manner. In tribute, the Oksenberg Lecture recognizes distinguished individuals who have helped to advance understanding between the United States and the nations of the Asia-Pacific.

SPEAKERS

Thomas Fingar is the inaugural Oksenberg-Rohlen Distinguished Fellow in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. From May 2005 through December 2008, he served as the first deputy director of national intelligence for analysis and, concurrently, as chairman of the National Intelligence Council. He served previously as assistant secretary of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (2004–2005), principal deputy assistant secretary (2001–2003), deputy assistant secretary for analysis (1994–2000), director of the Office of Analysis for East Asia and the Pacific (1989–1994), and chief of the China Division (1986–1989). Fingar is a graduate of Cornell University (AB in government and history, 1968), and Stanford University (MA, 1969 and PhD, 1977 both in political science).

Thomas Christensen is William P. Boswell Professor of World Politics of Peace and War and Director of the China and the World Program at Princeton University. From 2006-2008 he served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs with responsibility for relations with China, Taiwan, and Mongolia. His research and teaching focus on China’s foreign relations, the international relations of East Asia, and international security. Before arriving at Princeton in 2003, he taught at Cornell University and MIT. He received his B.A. from Haverford College, M.A. in International Relations from the University of Pennsylvania, and Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University.

Jia Qingguo is Professor and Associate Dean of the School of International Studies of Peking University. He received his Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1988. He has taught in University of Vermont, Cornell University, University of California at San Diego, University of Sydney in Australia as well as Peking University. He was a research fellow at the Brookings Institution between 1985 and 1986, a visiting professor at the University of Vienna in 1997 and a CNAPS fellow at the Brookings Institution between 2001 and 2002. He is a member of Standing Committee and the Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference and a member of the Standing Committee of the Central Committee of the China Democratic League.

Co-sponsored by the Department of Religious Studies

The Caodai religion is unique.  Born in French Indochina in 1926, it mixes Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism with organizational elements from the Catholic Vatican and French spirit-writing practices.  It is a masculine monotheism that worships Cao Dai (the Jade Emperor) as the head of an elaborate pantheon of “spiritual advisors” who include, alongside Asian sages, Jesus, Victor Hugo, Vladimir Lenin, and Jeanne d’Arc.  The religion emerged in tandem with the Vietnamese struggle for independence as a form of “cultural nationalism” expressed as spiritual revival.  Described as both conservative and revolutionary, nostalgic and futuristic, it has been called an “outrageous form of syncretism”—an excessive, even transgressive blending of piety with blasphemy, obeisance with rebellion, the old with the new.   It counts some four million followers worldwide and has grown rapidly in the US, with dozens of temples in California.  Using the case of Caodaism, Prof. Hoskins will explore the controversial concept of “syncretism” and its application to Asian religions.

Janet Hoskins is a professor of anthropology and religion at the University of Southern California.  Her books include Fragments from Forests and Libraries (2001); A Space Between Oneself and Oneself: Anthropology as a Search for the Subject (1999); Biographical Objects: How Things Tells the Stories of People’s Lives (1998); and Headhunting and the Social Imagination in Southeast Asia (contributing ed., 1996).  The Association for Asian Studies awarded its Benda Prize in Southeast Asian Studies to The Play of Time: Kodi Perspectives on History, Calendars and Exchange (1993).  She has also written and produced three ethnographic documentaries, including “The Left Eye of God: Caodaism Travels from Vietnam to California” (2008).

Left Eye of God Preview

The Left Eye of God: Caodaism Travels from Vietnam to California