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Carolina Asia Center

Charles Waldren: JAPANESE ATOMIC BOMBS: EFFECTS ON SURVIVORS Findings from the Radiation Effects Research Foundation,
Hiroshima/Nagasaki, Japan

Date: Tuesday, April 14
Time: 4:00 - 5:30 PM
Place: GEC 1009

The atomic bombs exploded over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August of 1945 killed about 200,000 of the 500,000 people living in the two cities. The health of a cohort of almost 200,000 survivors who had received radiation and a similar number of un-irradiated people has been monitored at the Radiation Effects Research Foundation in Hiroshima and Nagasaki since 1948. These studies are still being funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, with scientific oversight provided by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. The major consequence of radiation is an increase in cancer incidence and mortality and also a slight increase in some non-cancer diseases. Almost 40% of these cohorts are still alive with an average age of 55. As cancer is primarily a disease of old age, these populations need to be monitored for many more years before final conclusions can be drawn. The RERF studies are used worldwide to establish safety standards for exposures to radiation.

Charles Waldren received his PhD in Biophysics & Genetics from the University of Colorado Graduate School/School of Medicine, Denver. He was a faculty member at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center; the Eleanor Roosevelt Institute for Cancer Research, Denver; the Department of Environmental Health and Radiological Health Sciences, Colorado State University; and the School of Veterinary Medicine in Fort Collins, CO. From 2001 – 2006 he served as Chief of Research at the Radiation Effects Research Foundation in Hiroshima/Nagasaki, Japan. He retired to North Carolina in 2006.

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Dr. James Ung Ho Chin, The Najib Administration: The Politics of Reform in Malaysia

Date: Thursday, April 2, 2009
Time: 12:30 - 1:45 pm
Place: GEC 4003

Najib Tun Razak will take over as Malaysia's sixth Prime Minister on April 3, 2009. He is the son of Tun Razak, Malaysia's second Prime Minister, and thus the first son (or daughter) to succeed his father as head of government. In this seminar, Dr. James Chin will examine the challenges facing the new Prime Minister and assess his ability to bring reform to UMNO (United Malays National Organisation), BN (Barisan Nasional) and the country.

Dr. James Chin is Foundation Head and Professor in the School of Arts & Social Sciences, Monash University, Malaysia campus. He is an expert in Malaysian politics and Southeast Asia more generally. In addition to his academic work, Dr. Chin previously served on Papua New Guinea’s National HIV/AIDS Council and is the Malaysian representative to the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific’s study group on combating trafficking in persons.

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Bruce Cumings, North Korea: Still in the Axis of Evil?

Date: Friday, April 3, 2009
Time: 12 Noon - 1:30 PM
Place: GEC 3024

Bruce Cumings examines the disconnect between the long history of confrontation between the U.S. and North Korea, going back more than 60 years, and the American transformation of North Korea first into a "rogue state" in the early 1990s, and then as part of the "axis of evil" in 2002. The American media and most pundits hardly ever examine the background to the U.S.’s conflict with Pyongyang, from 1945 to the Korean War, the American role in introducing nuclear weapons to the Korean peninsula to President Bush’s “preemptive doctrine.” Meanwhile the North rattles bombs and missiles, routinely acting in ways suggesting that the worst things said about it are true. In spite of all this, President Bush abruptly reversed course in early 2007, and concluded a denuclearization agreement with Pyongyang—an agreement still not fulfilled. Today the Obama administration inherits this long-running confrontation.

Bruce Cumings teaches international history, modern Korean history and East Asian political economy at the University of Chicago, where he has taught since 1987 and where he is the Gustavus F. and Ann M. Swift Distinguished Service Professor and the chairman of the History Department. He is the author of The Origins of the Korean War (Princeton University Press, 1981, 1990), War and Television (Visal-Routledge, 1992), Korea's Place in the Sun: A Modern History (W. W. Norton, 1997; updated ed. 2005), Parallax Visions: Making Sense of American—East Asian Relations (Duke University Press, 1999; paperback 2002), North Korea: Another Country (New Press, 2003), co-author of Inventing the Axis of Evil (New Press, 2004), and is the editor of a forthcoming volume of the Cambridge History of Korea.

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Balinese Wayang Kali Shadow Theater

Date: Monday, April 6, 2009
Time: 7:00 PM
with workshop following the performance, open to the public
Place: Hill Hall

In the collaborative Wayang Kali project the performers re-imagine Goenawan Mohamad's re-imagination of the Bharatyuda story. The project brings Eyvind Kang and Jessika Kenney together with composer/musicians Shahzad Ismaily, Andrew McGraw, I Kadek Suardana and Matthew Duvall, directed by the Balinese master shadow puppeteer I Madé Sidia. Mohamad's text weaves in and out of the work, projected as superscript above Sidia's shadows. Novelist Jenny Quilter's text, sung by Kenney, dialogue and cut across Mohamad's imagery.

The Wayang Kali project is ultimately structured like a traditional Balinese wayang kulit shadow play. A single puppeteer sits behind a large rectangular screen, using a fire (in this case, a projected fire) to project the outlines of flat carved leather puppets onto the screen. His dialogues and monologues determine the flow of the narrative; although here his version of the story is juxtaposed to both Mohamad's and Quilter's. They each tackle the fundamental question of Death's role in a complex, violent world, and her relationship to greater Gods, truth and human kind. Sometimes their narratives join forces, at other times they conflict.

In Wayang Kali the traditional gamelan orchestra is replaced by an eclectic ensemble of some of America's leading performers and composers of new and experimental music.

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"Feng Xiaogang and Chinese New Year Films"
Talk with Dr. Ying Zhu

Date: Thursday, March 19
Time: 5:00 PM -
Place: New West 219

Free and open to the public

Ying Zhu is an Associate Professor in the Media Culture Department at the College of Staten Island (CSI)-the City University of New York, the coordinator of CSI’s Modern China Program, and the Director of Ethnic & Area Studies Panel, University Committee on Research Awards (UCRA) & Alternate Executive Committee Member, UCRA-CUNY. Her publications have appeared in leading media journals such as Cinema Journal, Quarterly Review of Film & Video, Journal of Communication, Consumption, Markets & Culture and various edited book volumes. She is the author of Chinese Cinema during the Era of Reform: the Ingenuity of the System (2003) and Television in Post-Reform China: Serial Drama, Confucian Leadership and Global Television Market (2008); and co-editor of Television Drama: A Chinese and US Perspective (with Qu Chunjing, 2005) and TV Drama in China (with Michael Keane, 2008). Her upcoming books include “Deliberative Autocracy”: The Transformation of China Central TV and the Shifting Chinese State-Society Relationship and two edited volumes Chinese Cinema after A Century: The Interplay of Art, Politics and Commerce TV China (with Stanley Rosen) and TV China (with Chris Berry).

Sponsored by the UNC Department of Asian Studies.

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From To Live to Brothers
A Discussion with Chinese Writer Yu Hua
Free and Open to the Public

Date: Tuesday March 17
Time: 3:30 p.m.
Place: 103 Howell Hall (directly south of Morehead Planetarium)


Contact: rvisser@email.unc.edu

Yu Hua, an often-named candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, will discuss his creative process. From his avant-garde fiction in the 1980s, to his award-winning novel, To Live (1992), to his latest bestseller in China, Brothers (2005), Yu Hua’s fiction provokes controversies and intrigues readers.

Reviews of Brothers, short-listed for the 2008 Man Asian Literary Prize, call it “a tremendous novel in tone and historical scope and narrative technique” (NPR) and “one of the great literary achievements” of the year (Boston Globe). “The only response possible to its not winning [the Man Asian Prize] is that the novel that did win must have been magnificent indeed” (Taipei Times).

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Thailand: Does tourism growth help the poor? Do disruptions hurt them?

A Public lecture by Ian Coxhead, University of Wisconsin - Madison

Date: Friday, February 20, 2009
Time: 12:00 PM – 1:30 PM
Place: FedEx Global Education Center, Room 3024

It is widely believed that tourism growth can improve income distribution in low-income countries by expanding demand for relatively low-skilled labor. Dr. Coxhead’s talk examines this belief for the case of Thailand, a highly tourism-intensive economy. He finds that tourism growth demand raises aggregate household income but worsens its distribution. This talk then addresses what losses the economy suffers when tourism is disrupted, and how those losses are distributed.

Ian Coxhead is a professor of applied economics and Southeast Asian studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he is also chair of the Development Studies PhD program. His research addresses growth, trade, development and distribution in emerging and transitional economies, especially those in Southeast Asia, a region where he has conducted research and fieldwork for over twenty years.

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Internet Politics in Thailand

A Public lecture by Pitch Pongsawat, Chulalongkorn University

Date: Monday, February 23, 2009
Time: 5:30 PM - 7:00 PM
Place: FedEx Global Education Center, Room 1009

Since at least 2005 internet political struggle emerged as a key site of contestation in Thailand. Since the 2006 coup the battle for cyberspace has been an internet insurgency. The coup regime tried to crack down on websites and block them, including the famous blocking of YouTube, and promulgated the Cyber Crime Act 2006. As online and offline political struggles have come together, the new Democrat Party-led coalition has placed additional emphasis on controlling access to websites and pages. The battle for cyberspace continues to rage in Thailand.

Pitch Pongsawat, a lecturer of Political Science at Chulalongkorn University is also a newspaper and political magazine columnist, an internet blogger, and a co-producer of political commentary internet television – Chupitchtv.com which is part of Prachathai.com – an alternative news agency in Thailand. Pitch’s publications include his 2007 “Middle-class Ironic Electoral Cultural Practices in Thailand: Observing the 2005 National Assembly Election and Its Aftermath” (in Chua Beng Huat. ed., Elections as Popular Culture in Asia, London: Routledge) and his 2002 “Virtual Democracy in Thailand: Information Technology, Internet Political Message Board, and the Politics of Representation in Thailand after 1992,” in Journal of Social Sciences. Pitch is currently a visiting assistant professor at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

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To see our past events in archives, click the links below:

Spring 2003 | Fall 2003 | Spring 2004 | Fall 2004 | Spring 2005 | Fall 2005
Spring 2006 | Fall 2006 | Spring 2007 | Fall 2007 | Spring 2008 | Fall 2008