Speaker Series: Writing Ecologies: Environmental Humanities and East Asia

Writing Ecologies: Environmental Humanities and East Asia is a new monthly Speaker Series, which brings together recent scholarship experimenting with ecocritical and greater-than-human approaches in the context of East Asia.

'Writing ecologies' entails the practice of pushing the edges of conventional anthropocentric narratives in history, literary studies, anthropology and beyond. Seeking to respond to the urgency of addressing environmental questions in the humanities and social sciences, we are excited to present a great lineup of speakers and embark on a journey to trace the glimmers of entanglements between humans, land, water, animals, plants, fungi, and much more.

With situated research and stories in East Asia, this series foregrounds critical interventions that advance our understanding of the global environmental crisis and enrich our imagination of a more habitable future.

Writing Ecologies: Environmental Humanities and East Asia: Monthly Speaker Series is organized by Qieyi Liu and MengRan Xu. PhD Candidates in the Department of East Asian Studies

Events:

Landscaping through Competing Lenses: Land Ethics of Conserving Water, Soils, and Forests at Loess Plateau

Speakers:
Meng Yue, Associate Professor, Department of East Asian Studies, University of Toronto
Chen Xi, Sessional Lecturer, Department of East Asian Studies, University of Toronto

Friday, January 27th
3 - 5pm
 

Chinese Medicine Agriculture: To Taste 100 Herbs and Cure 800 Orange Trees

Speakers:
Sigrid Schmalzer, Professor of History, University of Massachusetts Amherst
MengRan Xu, PhD Candidate, Department of East Asian Studies, University of Toronto

Tuesday, February 28th
4 - 6pm

Undoing the Long Twentieth Century: ‘Artificial Cultivation’ of Wild Mushrooms in Contemporary Japan

Speakers:
Shiho Satsuka, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto
Chu Wang, PhD Candidate, Department of East Asian Studies, University of Toronto

Friday, March 24th
4 - 6pm

Notes For Nothing in the Near Future

Speakers:
Eric Cazdyn, Distinguished Professor of Aesthetics and Politics, Department of East Asian Studies, University of Toronto
Peng Yu, PhD Student, Department of East Asian Studies, University of Toronto

Friday, April 21st
3 - 5pm

Book Talk: Knowing Manchuria: Environments, the Senses, and Natural Knowledge on an Asian Borderland

Speakers:
Ruth Rogaski, Associate Professor of History, Vanderbilt University
Qieyi Liu, PhD Candidate, Department of East Asian Studies, University of Toronto

Tuesday, May 9th
3 - 5pm

No registration required, just come along.