“It’s not about you”: From Research to Story in the Public Humanities

“It’s not about you”: From Research to Story in the Public Humanities

3rd October 2022.
With Tzy Jiun Tan.

Public Humanities is the work of engaging diverse publics in reflecting on heritage, traditions, and history. In a time of disinformation campaigns, competitive attention economy, and abundance of entertainment media, public historians are often confronted with the challenge of making knowledge consumable for the wider public, while also maintaining professional standards. Thus, in recent years, historians have experimented with different narrative outputs, including biography, fiction, documentary, and podcasts.

This talk draws from Tzy Jiun’s research on the ”Cold War” in Southeast Asia. It explores how craft and research intersects in the production of a narrative podcast. What does “authenticity” mean in this context? What is the relationship between narrative and what happened? What are the tensions between storytelling and scholarship? More widely, this talk considers the challenges of producing history for audiences outside of the academy.

Location: C2-329

The Weaponization of Supply Chains in the Contactless Economy under COVID-19: The Role of the U.S.-China Race for Supremacy in AI in the Japan-South Korea Chip War

The Weaponization of Supply Chains in the Contactless Economy under COVID-19: The Role of the U.S.-China Race for Supremacy in AI in the Japan-South Korea Chip War

13th Sept 2022.

With June Park.

On Tuesday, we are excited to host June Park—a specialist in Political Economy and Fung Global Fellow, Princeton Univ ersity—who speak on the subject of: “The Weaponization of Supply Chains in the Contactless Economy under COVID-19: The Role of the U.S.-China Race for Supremacy in AI in the Japan-South Korea Chip War.”

June Park is a political economist working on the geoeconomics of conflict in the digital economy, observing East Asia, the U.S. and Europe.

As a 2021-22 Fung Global Fellow of the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies at Princeton University, Park works on trade, energy, and tech conflicts with a broad range of regional focuses. She studies economic pressures and conflicts, analyzing different policy outcomes based on governance structures – domestic institutions, leaderships, and bureaucracies that shape the policy formation process. Her current work pertains to post-pandemic geoeconomic conflicts in data governance and emerging technology in the post-pandemic era.

Africa, China and the Global South Novel: In Koli Jean Bofane’s Congo Inc.

Africa, China and the Global South Novel: In Koli Jean Bofane’s Congo Inc.

NYU Gallatin’s Duncan Yoon gives us a preview presentation of his article, now out in the journal Comparative Literature. 

From the Abstract: “The People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) presence in Africa has fundamentally changed globalization patterns. Most scholarship interrogates whether the Chinese presence is either a “new colonialism” or a “win-win” for development by focusing on economic or social scientific factors. In contrast, this article examines China as a trope in Congo Inc. (2014) by In Koli Jean Bofane. Congo Inc. is one of the first African novels to take the Africa-China relationship as a central theme, depicting how Congolese actors negotiate the PRC’s presence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The article examines the unexpected partnership of a trickster, Isookanga, and a stranded Chinese national, Zhang Xia, analyzing their partnership according to the relationship between time and globalization.”  Read more here.

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Bhopal: Thirty Five Years After

Bhopal: Thirty Five Years After

In our Keynote Lecture for AY19-20, Marc Galanter reflects on what Bhopal has taught us about international law, in conversation with Swethaa Ballakrishnen. To learn more about Professor Galanter’s work on Bhopal, look here. Held on 4 December 2019.