Past Events

Dr. Van Norden discusses Analects 13.3, the locus classicus for the expression zhèng míng 正名 (commonly translated “rectifying names” or “correcting terms”).  More specifically, he discusses contemporary English-language Interpretations of the passage, its dramatic context, its likely date of composition, and the history of interpretations of the passage.  This exploration will help illustrate the complementary lessons of Gadamer that “a person who is trying to understand a text is always projecting,” and “it is the tyranny of hidden prejudices that makes us deaf to what speaks to us in tradition."

Bryan William Van Norden is Kwan Im Thong Hood Cho Temple Professor and Head of Studies of Philosophy at Yale-NUS in Singapore.

Film screening of Anno Hideaki's 2016 film -- Bureaucrats deal with a monster that suddenly appears in Tokyo Bay

Lecture, Demonstration, and Performance by the Noh Society of New York.

Supported by the Toshiba International Foundation and the Japan Foundation New York and locally by the Japanese Language Program, the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, CEAS, and the Theatre Arts Program at the University of Pennsylvania

This research proposes and provides evidence for a new source of gains from trade: Firms invest in product differentiation to escape import competition. In the data and in the model, these investments are associated with increases in measured productivity, introduction of new goods, and shifts to skill-intensive sectors. Investment in differentiation downstream leads upstream firms to also invest in differentiation. For China, these “downstream tariff” reductions increase the measured productivity of suppliers by more than they increase the productivity of firms directly competing with imports.

Ann Harrison is Professor of Business Economics and Public Policy at the Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania

Film screening of Kitamura Ryohei's 2004 film --Giant monsters attack the world; Godzilla resists, aided by a man-made mutant army!

Professor Li Zhaojie (James Li) received his LL.B. from Peking University, both his LL.M. and Master in Information and Library Studies from the University of California at Berkeley, and his S.J.D. from the University of Toronto. He is a Professor of International Law at Tsinghua University School of Law in Beijing, China. Prior to joining the faculty at Tsinghua Law School, he taught in the Department of Law at Peking University. He served as Co-Chief Editor for the Chinese Yearbook of International Law and Vice President of the Chinese Society of International Law. He is widely published in both the English and Chinese languages.

Co-sponsored by the Center for Asian Law and the Center for the Study of Contemporary China

Film screening of the "Giant Monsters All-Out Attack", directed by Kaneko Shusuke (2001). Ancient protectors defend the world against Godzilla!

Scott Moore offers the first book-length treatment of the distinctive problem of subnational hydropolitics: why states and provinces, as well as countries, fight over shared water resources.His research features a new theory of the factors that shape the dynamics of conflict and cooperation over water: decentralization, sectional identity, and political participation. He proposes solutions for how to improve international cooperation in shared river basins and discusses the timely issue of climate change and how it will affect hydropolitics, especially in the Colorado and Yellow River Basins.Open to all, lunch provided.

Film screening of Okawara Takao's 1999 film -- a meteorite transformed... into an alien spaceship?

In this talk, Dr. Lai explores the dialectical relationship between iconoclasm and the destruction and preservation of cultural heritage over the course of China’s turbulent twentieth century. Modern ideas about heritage conservation were introduced into China from the West, taking the form of modernizing projects carried out by the governments and the social elites. In fact, the very notion of a national heritage emerged with modernity, and modernity compelled changes in how cultural heritage was conceived and conserved.