Center for East Asian Studies resumes public health series programming
LAWRENCE — The Center for East Asian Studies (CEAS) will soon launch the second phase of its 2022-23 public health series. Last fall, the center presented a film series addressing diverse public health-related issues. CEAS will continue its series with two Global Asia Speaker events and a two-day symposium in spring 2023.
The first event is a virtual talk by Sujung Kim, associate professor of religious studies at DePauw University. She will discuss the religious, historical and iconographic dimensions of healing talismans and talismanic culture in East Asia in “Dying with the Buddha: The Twenty-four Buddhist Talismans in Chosŏn Korea” at 7 p.m. Feb. 9.
The second Global Asia speaker, Rae Erin Dachille, assistant professor of religious studies and East Asian studies at University of Arizona, will lecture on Tibetan Buddhism with a focus on body mandala, ritual, representation and imagination in “Applying the Antidote: A Tantric Perspective on Body, Representation and Imagination” at 3:30 p.m. Feb. 15 at the Sabatini Multicultural Resource Center.
The CEAS Public Health Symposium on April 7-8 at the Sabatini center will bring together graduate students from various disciplines with a wide range of theoretical and methodological approaches to highlight whole-body mental health and healthy behaviors; health access and communication in contexts of race, class, gender, sexuality, caste, ethnicity and other intersectionalities, providing new connections with culturally diverse and hard-to-reach populations; and quick and informed responses to health risks and public health emergencies or pandemics. The symposium will start with a keynote address followed by three panels covering the topics mentioned. Each panel features guest scholars and KU graduate students from varied disciplines to foster further active interactions, knowledge exchanges and academic collaboration. Graduate students will also be able to register for a professionalization workshop.
On the second day of the symposium, the center will welcome Aileen Smith, activist, photographer and co-author of “Minamata: The Story of the Poisoning of a City and the People Who Choose to Carry the Burden of Courage” (Holt, 1975). She will screen the feature film “Minamata” (2020) at the Lawrence Public Library at 2 p.m. The movie is a biographical drama about Aileen and her partner, Wichita photojournalist W. Eugene Smith, as they worked to expose the ravages of industrial mercury poisoning in the Japanese village of Minamata. Smith and Andrew Levitas, the film’s director, will lead a discussion after the showing. Smith also plans to visit local high schools for dialogues on public health, environmental issues and social movements.
CEAS is a Title VI-funded National Resource Center that promotes East Asian languages and cultures to a variety of audiences in the Midwest through K-12 and community college educator workshops and resources, public events, and area partnerships. The center was founded in 1959.