-
Jon L. Pitt: “Okamura Bōshichō, Free-Form Haiku, and the Prewar Little Tokyo Art Scene”Join us for a talk by scholar and UC Irvine faculty member Jon L. Pitt, presented alongside our exhibition Tokio Ueyama: The Hollows Between Mountains. Pitt’s talk, entitled “Okamura Bōshichō, Free-Form Haiku, and the Prewar Little Tokyo Art Scene,” will explore the pioneering poetry of Okamura Bōshichō. A collaborator of Tokio Uyeama, Okamura is best known as the founder of the Agost poetry collective and a theorist of so-called free-verse haiku—a unique form of experimental haiku that briefly flourished in Little Tokyo in the 1920s and 1930s. Pitt will discuss his work translating Okamura’s poetry and how the poet’s writings speak to a unique moment in California history. The talk will be followed by a brief segment for audience questions. -
UC Irvine launches Minor in Bilingual Education in East Asian LanguagesUC Irvine is at the forefront of preparing students for a multilingual future. In response to the surging demand for bilingual education, particularly in Chinese, Japanese and Korean, the School of Humanities and the School of Education have collaborated to launch a new Minor in Bilingual Education in East Asian Languages.
-
An official Chinese translation of Kyung Hyun Kim’s Hegemonic MimicryAn official Chinese translation of Kyung Hyun Kim’s Hegemonic Mimicry: Korean Popular Culture of the 21st Century, originally published by Duke University Press in 2021, was released just last month under the title 霸权模仿：21世纪的韩国流行文化. Professor Kim is currently Professor and Chair of East Asian Studies at UCI and also serves as an affiliate member of the FMS.
-
Botanical Imagination by Jon L. Pitt. foreword by Ann SherifBotanical Imagination explores the complicated legacy and enduring lure of plant life in modern Japanese literature and media. Using critical plant studies, Jon L. Pitt examines an unlikely group of writers and filmmakers in modern Japan, finding in their works a desire to "become botanical" in both content and form. -
Care, Kin, Crack-Up by Margherita LongHow does environmental crisis become the impetus for a kind of caring that is also intense thinking? Faced with Fukushima, how do people make sense of nuclear enormity? Care, Kin, Crack‑Up examines Japanese literature and activist narratives to show people at their most creative when struggling to engage ecological catastrophe as the “intrusion of Gaia.” Margherita Long explores the transformation of crack-ups (kurui, or madness) into art and thought, tracing how kurui is bound up with questions of care and kin.
East Asian Studies
About the Department
The Department of East Asian Studies at UCI brings both theoretical sophistication and scholarly rigor to the study of the literatures and cultures of East Asia.
The department focuses on China, Taiwan, Korea, and Japan but also stresses the larger regional and global dynamics of transformation in which these cultures participate.
