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Undergraduate Open House

Columbia undergraduates are invited to attend our open house on Tuesday, February 26 from 12:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. in 403 Kent Hall.  There will be a Q&A session led by EALAC faculty for those interested in the East Asian Studies major or concentration, and current majors and concentrators will be present to help answer questions as well.  Food will be served.

We hope that you will join us for friends, food, and information that could help you choose your field of study!

28th Annual Columbia Graduate Student Conference on East Asia

The Annual Columbia Graduate Student Conference on East Asia will be held on Columbia University from February 15-16th at Kent Hall. This two-day conference provides students from institutions around the world with the opportunity to meet and share research with their peers.

Over sixty presenters and discussants will cross national, temporal, and disciplinary boundaries to critically interrogate the categories that both bind and sub-divide East Asian studies. Panels will run in split sessions throughout both days, and range over an impressive variety of topics, including, “Commodities in the Global Age,” “State and Society in Imperial Japan,” “Imaging Techniques and the Birth of Modern China,” “Repressed Voices in the Second Sino-Japanese War,” “Sites of Religion in the Premodern World,” “The Politics of Performing Femininity,” and “Koreas in the Postwar World.”

This year’s keynote is given by Nicholas Bartlett, Assistant Professor of Contemporary Chinese Culture and Society, Barnard College. Bartlett’s keynote will contextualize his own research within the fields of China/East Asian studies, with a focus on his first book, a phenomenological exploration of long-term heroin users’ recovery from addiction in a mining community in southwest China. The opening remarks will be delivered by Paul Anderer, Mack Professor of Humanities and Professor of Japanese Literature, Columbia University. The two-day conference will conclude, as per long-standing tradition, with a celebration in C.V. Starr Library with a playlist that emphasizes East Asian pop.

Gray Tuttle Receives Lenfest Distinguished Faculty Award

The department would like to congratulate Gray Tuttle, Leila Hadley Luce Professor of Modern Tibetan Studies, on receiving the Lenfest Distinguished Faculty Award for his exceptional instruction and scholarship this year.  His mentorship of graduate students and work with Columbia’s Center for Teaching and Learning has led to greater involvement of students in conference planning and presenting as well as the development of new teaching tools for undergraduates.  Professor Tuttle is also a pioneer in the field of Tibetan studies and has done much for its advancement at Columbia and other institutions across the country and abroad.  We are delighted to recognize his many achievements and thank him for his continued service to our academic community.