#  2025 Schedule 

 



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#### February 14, Friday

**12:30**  
**Welcome and Opening Remarks (S010)**  
 Professor Alexander Zahlten, Chair of RSEA

**13:00 – 15:00**  
**Panel A1: Subverting East Asia: Ecological Queering and Queering the Ecology (S010)**  
 Faculty discussants: David Wang (Harvard University) and Moira Weigel (Harvard University)  
 Moderator: Scofield Zou

 Claire (Ruo Fan) Ping (University of Cambridge)  
 Gendering the post-socialist “Rust Belt”: space, time, and masculinities in The Long Season

 Wendy Wang (UC Berkeley)  
 Bodies on the Timber Reels: Visualizing Scientific Forestry in Cold War Taiwan

 Xiangu Qi (UC Irvine)  
 Diaspora at Home: Displaced Water, Body, and Indigeneity in Long Time No Sea (2018)

 Ruohan Wang (Duke University)  
 A Queer Metamorphosis: Animal Narratives and Lesbian Love in Contemporary Chinese Cultures

 Quynh Hai Luong (Columbia University)  
 Schizophrenic Animals: Beastars and the Crisis of Postmodern Subjectivity

**Panel A2: Objects in Focus: Material History of Transregional China (S020)**  
 Faculty discussant: Michael Szonyi (Harvard University)  
 Moderator: Zhaoyuan Pei

 Ying Yi Tan (Columbia University)  
 Western Root, Eastern Shore: The Journey of American Ginseng in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

 Yunxiang Gao (Indiana University Bloomington)  
 Opium Trafficking, Piracy, and Making of a Narco-state in Portuguese Macau, 1800-1810

 Ziyu Qiu (Harvard University)  
 Producing Textiles for the Frontier: The Official Textile Trade between Jiangnan and Xinjiang, 1757-1853

 Chaoying Li (University of Washington)  
 The Forbidden Forests: State Control and Local Conflicts around the Imperial Tombs in Ming Dynasty China

 Jackson Herndon (New York University)  
 Utopian Frontiers: Modeling the Future at Xingan Land Reclamation Zone

**15:00 – 15:30 Tea Break (CGIS-South Concourse)**

**15:30 - 16:30 Keynote Lecture I (S010)**  
 Eugenio Menegon (Boston University)  
 Global Microhistory in East Asia: China in the Early Modern / Late Imperial Period as a Case Study

**16:45 – 18:15**  
**Panel B1: Records of Authenticity: Visibility in/ of Japanese Literature (S010)**  
 Faculty discussant: Robert Goree (Wellesley College)  
 Moderator: Zari Smith

 Yichao Lei (University of Chicago)  
 Kingship and Political Culture of Ancient Japan: On the Structure of Text in Nihon Shoki under Comparative Cultural Perspective

 Siyuan “Zoey” Liu (Duke University)  
 The Otherworldly Station: Reality of Japanese Mysterious Incidents in the Urban Legend Kisaragi Station

 Yongkang Chen (Duke University)  
 Siren’s Song: Deterritorialization, Decolonization, and Opacity of the Okinawan Language in Sakiyama Tami’s Tsukiya, Aran and Unjuga, Nasaki

**Panel B2: China’s Transnational Negotiation of Labor and Presence (S020)**  
 Faculty discussant: Arunabh Ghosh (Harvard University)  
 Moderator: Jeffrey Ma

 Yuntian Xuan (Rutgers University)  
 From “Shipping Master” to “Shipping Agent:” Lock Ah Tam (1872-1926) and Labor Contracting of Chinese Seafarers in Early 20th-Century Liverpool

 Ailin Li (University of Hong Kong)  
 Spatial Transition and Power Dynamics: Child Labor in Republican Shanghai, 1920s-1940s

 Jing-hui Wang (New York University)  
 Labor and deliver in peace and joy: Painless childbirth, pain management, and socialist medical care in 1950s China

 Zhengzai Pei (Yale University)  
 “World Drifters”: Institutional Reform, Illicit Enterprise, and Organized Crime in a Post-Socialist Factory Town, 1985-Present

**18:30 – 19:30 Conference Dinner (CGIS-South Concourse)**   
**(panelists, chairs, and staff ONLY)**

#### February 15, Saturday

**8:45 - 9:20 Light Breakfast (CGIS-South Concourse)**  
  (panelists, chairs, and staff ONLY)

**9:30 - 10:30 Keynote Lecture II (S010)**  
 Shigehisa Kuriyama (Harvard University)   
 The Deep History of Global Flows that Underlies Your Present Experience of Life

**10:45 – 12:15**  
**Panel C1: Political History and the Restructuring of Chinese State Power across Boundaries (S010)**  
 Faculty discussant: Peter Bol (Harvard University)  
 Moderator: Yuehan Yin

 Alice Du (Fudan University)  
 Landmarks of Eternity: Post-war Reconstruction and Local Identity in Early Southern Song

 Zaicheng Liu (Fudan University)  
 From Eyewitness Accounts to Qing Historiography: The Textual Evolution and Narrative Dynamics of the Chongzhen Emperor’s Posthumous Edict

 Peter Zhang (University of British Columbia)  
 Remains of the Ming: 17th Century Chinese Diaspora in Japan and Korea and Transnational Discourses on National Identities in Early Modern East Asia

 James Farquharson (Peking University)  
 The sea surrounded by steppes - the localisation of politics in Gansu and the enclosure of the northern Qinghai steppe during the late-Qing reforms (1895-1909)

**Panel C2: Sociology & Anthropology: Marginality Adrift in Asia (S020)**  
 Faculty discussant: Felicity Aulino (UMass Amherst) and Robert P. Weller (Boston University)  
 Moderator: Jamie Tang

 Jiah Lee (Stanford University)  
 The Hallyu Dream and Romantic Desire: Media-Driven Migration and Self-Perception Among Burmese Women in South Korea

 Zhaopu Liu (Nanjing University)  
 Seeking Safety in an Anxious Group:Affective practice among elder land- displaced peasants in China

 Siu Yu Lo (Yale University)  
 Reconfronting Survival: Reconstructing “Normality” in the Kowloon Walled City

 Thelma Wang (MIT)  
 Displaced Becoming: Trans Chinese Niche of Vaginoplasty in Bangkok

**12:15 –13:15 Lunch (CGIS-South Concourse)**  
  (panelists, chairs, and staff ONLY)

**13:30 –15:00**   
**Panel D1: Policies, Institutions, and Ideologies: Political Economy of China in the World (S010)**  
 Faculty discussant: Jeremy Friedman (Harvard University) and Shengqiao Lin (Fairbank Center Postdoctoral Fellow)  
 Moderator: Shangbo Jing

 Yachun Zhang (University of Washington)  
 Why Experimental Policies Fail: A Case Study of Property Tax Policies in Chongqing and Shanghai

 Lin Song (Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen)  
 Informal Institutions, Party Co-optation, and Public Goods Provisions: Evidence from Rural China

 Shunan You (Department at Northeastern University)  
 Negotiating Pathways: U.S.-China Talent and Knowledge Flows in the Global Biopharmaceutical Industry

**Panel D2: Mediatic Forms and its Materiality (S020)**  
 Faculty discussant: Alexander Zahlten (Harvard University)  
 Moderator: Yihang Zhang

 Ruiying Zhang (Cornell University)  
 Vernacular Piracy: Technological Flows and Localized Innovation of Input Games on “Computer Learning Machines” in 1990s China

 Senter Bi (The Chinese University of Hong Kong)  
 Memory and Matter: The Enchantment of “Emptiness” in Koo Bohn-chang’s Photography of Korean Ceramics

 Nicholas Chung (Harvard University)  
 From Utopia to Ubiquity: The Radical Banality of Moving Walkways at Expo ‘70

 Ann Wang (Columbia University)  
 Flattening Deep Time: Archaeologies of Extraction in Post-Mao China’s Polar Media Practices

**15:15 – 16:45**  
**Panel E1 Imagination of Politics: Progenitor, Ideology, and Lineage (S010)**  
 Faculty discussant: Enhua Zhang (UMass Amherst)  
 Moderator: Wilson Wang

 Nuo Chen (Kyoto University)  
 Red Counterpoint: The CCP’s Reimagining of Proletarian Choral Tradition in the 1930s

 Yuzhe Li (University of Wisconsin-Madison)  
 Amateur Professionalism: Crafting the “Innovation Enthusiast” in Early Socialist Chinese Literature

 Muyun Zhou (Pennsylvania State University)  
 Inventing “Thirdness”: Third World Internationalism and Lee Yu’s Baodiao Writing

 Zekun Feng (New York University)  
 “Overcoming Modernity” and “Modernity as Anti-Modernity”: A Comparative Reading between Intellectual Pan-Asianism of Takeuchi Yoshimi and of Wang Hui

**Panel E2 Words and Images: East Asian Art History (S020)**  
 Faculty discussant: Ryuichi Abe (Harvard University) and Eugene Wang (Harvard University)  
 Moderator: Zackary Kaplan

 Yisu Huang (Kyoto University)  
 Clouds and Omens: The Emergence and Transformation of Black Clouds in Japanese Literature and Art, (8th-16th century)

 Yu Zhang (UC Santa Barbara)  
 Revisiting the Margin: Utagawa Kuniyoshi’s Water Margin Heroes and His Source Materials

 Ruihan Zhang (University of Oxford)  
 Sutra Pillars inside Pagodas? Examining the role of the dhāraṇī pillar and other dhāraṇī materials in the Chaoyang North Pagoda

 Yueling Li (University of Michigan)  
 Between Rock and Water Floats Life: Materiality of Song Black Glazed Teacups

**17:00 Closing Remarks (S010)**  
 Professor Si Nae Park, RSEA Director of Graduate Studies

For a detailed version with speakers' bios and abstracts, please refer to the booklet (pdf file) below for 2025 HEAS Conference (as updated on Feb 10, 2025).



 

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 Attachments- [  picture\_as\_pdf  2026 HEAS Program.pdf ](/sites/g/files/omnuum10581/files/2026-02/2026%20HEAS%20Program.pdf)
 
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