Speaker: Vanessa Hope, Film Producer and Director Moderator: Andrew J. Nathan, Class of 1919 Professor of Political Science, Department of Political Science, Columbia University From the film’s promotional materials: “With unprecedented access to Taiwan’s then sitting head of state, director Vanessa Hope investigated the election and tenure of Tsai Ing-wen, the first female president of Taiwan. Thorough, incisive and bristling with tension, Invisible Nation is a living account of Tsai’s tightrope walk as she balances the hopes and dreams of her nation…

Lasting from the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 to the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976, the Mao era is often misunderstood as a time of “isolation” and “closing off from the world.” On the contrary, as I demonstrate in this study, Mao’s China was a place seething with new international connections and rapidly evolving visions of the world and China’s place in it. These connections, moreover, were not limited to the socialist world but…

In this talk, Matthieu Felt discusses his 2023 book Meanings of Antiquity, the first dedicated study of how the oldest Japanese myths, recorded in the eighth-century texts Kojiki and Nihon shoki, changed in meaning and significance between 800 and 1800 CE. Generations of Japanese scholars and students have turned to these two texts and their creation myths to understand what it means to be Japanese and where Japan fits into the world order. As the shape and scope of the world explained…