East Asian Studies Program

September 30th, 7:00-9:00 p.m.

Yoko Hiraoka
Stories from the Tale of Heike performed and sung by Yoko Hiraoka
Emory Performing Arts Center

The Biwa is an ancient lute-like string instrument from Japan which has been used for centuries to recount stories from medieval times with themes of love, hardship, epic battles and the evanescence of life.

Many of these stories are collected together in ‘The Tale of Heike’ an account of the amours, battles and tragedies suffered by two warring clans, the Minamoto and Taira clans of 12th century Japan. The influence of these stories on Japanese culture can be seen even today, in contemporary anime themes.

This beautiful musical and academic event is illustrated with projected images of scenes from the Tale of Heike. Yoko performs four of the classic biwa compositions. In this way she is bringing to life the Tale as it has been done for centuries, with singing voice and a dynamic and expressive biwa accompaniment.

Librettos of all the sung pieces are provided to audiences in both English and phonetic Japanese.

Yoko Hiraoka is a senior master performer of Biwa, Koto, Shamisen and Jiuta voice. She is a native of Kyoto, Japan and studied classical koto and shamisen music from an early age. She has been studying and performing Chikuzen 5-string Biwa for most of her professional life.

Sponsored by The Russian and East Asian Languages and Culture Department, The East Asian Studies Program, and The Hightower fund, this program is free and open to the public. Further inquires may be made to martha.shockey@emory.edu

Film and Music Special Presentation

Film screening with live accompaniment by the Devil Music Ensemble.(Hong Xia, Wen Yimin, black and white, silent with English intertitles, 1929, 90 minutes). Episode six of Red Knight-Errant, also known as Red Heroine,the only surviving episode of the 13-part serial, is also one of the few complete and earliest extant silent martial arts films. A band of outlaws raids a village and kidnaps a maiden, causing the death of the young woman's grandmother. The captive maiden is rescued by a mysterious Daoist hermit and re-emerges three years later as a full-fledged warrior, flying to the sky to revenge her grandmother's death. While generously sprinkled with anachronisms and prurient incongruities (imagine a bandit's harem of beauties in bikinis!), the film remains a robust telling of a young woman's transformation from abject victim to resolute warrior.

The DME offers a very unique multimedia experience, presenting a synthesis of live music and movie to entertain and inspire audiences. Recent performances by the DME have taken place at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington D.C., the Chicago Cultural Center, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Silent Movie Theatre in Los Angeles CA, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston MA, the Caixa Forum in Barcelona Spain and the Danish Film Institute in Denmark. The greatest asset of the DME is their ability through music to control the audiences, responses to what is being presented to them visually via a silent film. Audience members often forget that a live band is playing the soundtrack and are all of sudden snatched out of the suspension of disbelief to see exactly how the music for the film is unfolding before their eyes. It's a thrilling effect. This screening is co-sponsored by the Emory College Center for Creativity & Arts, the Department of Film Studies, REALC (Department of Russian and East Asian Languages and Cultures), the Confucius Institute of Emory University, the Department of Theater Studies and the Department of Music.

For more information please contact Emory Film Studies www.filmstudies.emory.edu

October 15th, 7p.m.
Chinese Development and World History: Putting the "East Asian Model" in Perspective
Kenneth Pomerantz, University of California Irvine

High Museum of Art, Hill Auditorium, Free

The award winning author of The Great Divergence will discuss Chinese Development and World History: Putting the East Asian Model in Perspective Dr. Pomeranz is Chancellor's Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine and founding Director of the University of California's Multi-Campus Research Program in World History. He has been recognized as a leading historian of China who moves beyond the study of a self-contained China or East Asia by attempting to understand the origins of a world economy as the outcome of mutual influences among various regions, rather than the simple imposition by a more advanced Europe on the rest of the world.

October 16th, 4:00-5:15, White Hall, Rm TBA
Yomi Braester, "Taipei, Angel Sanctuary: The Invisible City on Film"

October 24th, Time and location TBA
Zhen Xuewu, Artist-in-Residence at Appalachian State University in North Carolina
Chinese Writing and Calligraphy in Contemporary Chinese Art

The First Emperor - China's Terracotta Army

The East Asian Studies Program is very pleased to be a sponsor of this exhibit at The High Museum of Art. The First Emperor: China's Terracotta Army is inspired by one of the greatest archaeological discoveries of the 20th century. The exhibition includes complete terracotta warrior figures and represents one of the most important groups of works relating to the First Emperor ever to be loaned to the U.S.

The famed terracotta army was initially discovered in 1974. In recent years, ongoing excavations have revealed that the army stood guard over a vast underground palace of far greater complexity than was previously assumed. The exhibitions will present both iconic and recently discovered examples including warriors from the terracotta army, court officials, acrobats, musicians, terracotta chariot horses, and bronze water birds discovered beside the complex's underground river.

Visit the website at The High Museum of Art for more information and updates on events and exhibition details.

January 16-18, 2009

48th SECAAS Annual Meeting
Emory Conference Center

The Southeast Conference of the Asocciation for Asian Studies (SEC/AAS) is a non- political, non-profit scholarly organization dedicated to promoting the study of Asia in the southeastern region of the United States. To that end, SEC/AAS has held (since 1962) an annual three-day conference featuring scholarly panels, teacher workshops, and book exhibits. The year 2009 meeting of the SEC/AAS, sponsored by Emory University, will be held in Atlanta, Georgia, during the weekend of January 16-18, 2009. All those interested are encouraged to join the SEC/AAS and attend the meeting. Information concerning the meeting can be found throughout this website.