KEYNOTE SPEAKER
Shimada Yoshiko (嶋田美子, b. 1959, Tokyo) lives and works in Chiba, Japan. She graduated from Scripps College, USA, in 1982, and received her PhD from Kingston University, London, in 2015. Her artwork explores themes of cultural memory and the role of women in the Asia-Pacific War. Her works have been exhibited both nationally and internationally. In recent years, Shimada has been researching post-1968 art and politics in Japan. She has curated exhibitions, such as Anti-Academy (John Hansard Gallery, 2013), Nakajima Yoshio Syndrome (Atsukobarouh, 2015), and From Nirvana to Catastrophe (Ota Fine Arts, 2017), for which she wrote and edited the catalogues. She lectures on Japanese art and politics of the 1960s and 70s, and art and feminisms in Japan at The University of Tokyo.
MODERATORS
Steven Hugh Lee is associate professor and co-chair of the International Relations Prgram at the University of British Columbia. He is author of Outposts of Empire: Korea, Vietnam, and the Origins of the Cold War in Asia, 1949-1954 (McGill-Queen’s Press, 1995) and The Korean War (Longman, 2001) and co-editor, with Yun-shik Chang, of Transformations in Twentieth Century Korea (Routledge, 2006). He is currently writing a global history of the long twentieth century for Wiley-Blackwell publishers.
Ross King earned his BA in Linguistics and Political Science from Yale College and his MA and PhD from Harvard in Linguistics. Currently he serves as Professor of Korean and Head of Department in the Department of Asian Studies at UBC in Vancouver, Canada. His main research interests are Korean historical linguistics, Korean dialectology, the history of Korean linguistics, and the history of language, writing and literary culture in the ‘Sinographic Cosmopolis’ (漢字文化圈).
Sharalyn Orbaugh is Professor of Modern Japanese Literature and Popular Culture at the University of British Columbia. One of her primary research interests is the racial and sexual politics of popular culture, particularly issues of propaganda and censorship. Recent publications include: Propaganda Performed: Kamishibai in Japan’s Fifteen Year War (Brill 2015) and “Play, Education, or Indoctrination? Kamishibai in 1930s Japan” (forthcoming in Mechademia).
Christina Yi is Assistant Professor of Modern Japanese Literature at the University of British Columbia. She is a specialist of modern Japanese-language literature and culture, with a particular focus on issues of postcoloniality, language ideology, genre, and cultural studies. Her first monograph, Colonizing Language: Cultural Production and Language Politics in Modern Japan and Korea, was published by Columbia University Press in 2018. She is also the co-editor for a forthcoming special issue in Azalea: Journal of Korean Literature and Culture entitled “The Politics of Passing in Zainichi Cultural Production.”
Ayaka Yoshimizu is an instructor at the Department of Asian Studies and the UBC-Ritsumeikan Exchange Programs. Her research has been concerned with the intersection of transnational migration, diasporic cultures, and media of memory and senses. Her current research looks at cultural memories of Ameyuki-san, Japanese women who were involved in the transpacific sex trade in North America at the turn of the 20th century. At one level, she critically examines how memories of Ameyuki-san are produced today through literary, cinematic and art forms in Japan, Canada, and the United States. At another level, she explores an alternative way to remember their lives through her performative archival research.