This year’s CU Boulder Asian Studies Graduate Association (CUBASGA) Conference was an enormous success.
The conference took place on Friday, February 19th and Saturday, February 20th and featured two distinguished keynote speakers: Professor Ronald Egan of Stanford University and Professor Adam Kern of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Conference participants also included nine visiting graduate students from academic institutions around the United States and Canada, who were joined by 15 CU Boulder graduate students. Together, they presented on topics in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean studies that ranged from poetry and literature to art history and dance. Many faculty members and students, as well as members of the community attended the eight panels. With an average attendance of 40 people, the question and answer sessions that followed each presentation generated rich dialogue and explored numerous interesting academic avenues.
As the highlight of the conference, this year’s two keynote speeches were both very well received by the audience. Professor Egan’s keynote presentation, “Chinese Poems with Contested Meanings,” addressed a core issue in literary studies that any student of literature may find illuminating, especially those who engage deeply with the exegetical elasticity of classical Chinese poems. Likewise, Professor Kern’s talk, “Dirty Sexy Haiku,” stimulated heated discussion about the value of challenging conventional wisdom, and the benefits such endeavors have for our renewed understanding of the traditions.
The CUBASGA conference is an annual event held in cooperation with the Department of Asian Languages and Civilizations and the Center for Asian Studies. To these organizations and our conference sponsors, the CU Boulder Asian Studies Graduate Association would like to extend its heartiest gratitude for their generous support. Please join us next year for the 2017 CUBASGA conference.