NYCAS ‘03 The
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“The
Monkey Knows No Walls.” |
Walls in 714 Clemens Hall (716) 645-3474, (716) 645-3473 (Fax) asian-studies@buffalo.edu |
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CONTACT US
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The Program will include
≈ A lecture/performance of Monkey King stories from Beijing
opera titled, The Monkey Knows No Walls
≈ A plenary address by Ayesha
Jalal, Professor of History at Tufts University and leading scholar on
India-Pakistan partition, on Holes in
the Wall: India's Partition Revisited
≈ An address by AAS President James L. Watson on The
Other Side of the River: Hong Kong’s Border Saga, 1898-2003
≈ A roundtable on Asian studies in SUNY, with John Ryder, SUNY Director of the
Office of International Programs ~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A wall demarcates a separation, a conceptual distinction between those
it includes and excludes. Over the
centuries, walls have become symbols of Asia in the minds of Asians and
non-Asians alike. Noteworthy are the
Great Wall stretching across much of North China, the Hakata wall that helped
repel the Mongol Invasion from Kyushu, the 38th parallel in
contemporary Korea, the newly erected wall of barbed wire along the
Indo-Pakistani border.
Walls are structurally simple but symbolically complex. They may denote distrust and disdain; they
may also symbolize community, security, and belonging. They may divide the known world from the
unknown or make a statement about ownership or social differentiation. They protect people from the elements and
can create a sense of order in an otherwise chaotic cosmos and society. Walls differentiate gardens from less
attractive sites. Passing through a
garden’s inner wall, one moves from one visual feast to another. Walls themselves can be aesthetic
treasures. A decaying plaster wall is
integral to the visage of a rock garden.
Movable screens - themselves potential works of art - give an illusion
of privacy alike in a palace room and a modern communal office. Like the enclosure surrounding Edo’s
Yoshiwara, walls can titillate, can stir curiosity and lust for what lies
near but unseen and out of reach.
Walls usually have gates - routes of access and egress from one domain
to another, portals of exchange and influence that can undermine the very raison
d’etre of the wall itself.
A wall often has political significance. It may protect a fragile culture from
destruction by relentless external forces, but it may also preserve power and
privilege over those it encloses. It
may foster indigenous forms of expression, creativity, and worship; but it
may also censor ideas and movements deemed injurious to local orthodoxy. It may protect a society from waves of
armies and colonizers; but it may also take the form of racial exclusion,
gender discrimination, and trade barriers.
The complexity of walls and their ubiquitous presence in the life of
Asia - both physical and abstract - invite scholarly inquiry in a wide
variety of disciplines and subject matter.
The conference will address the “Walls” theme broadly and inclusively,
and envisions a program with diversity in approach and perspective. Walls also arise in Asian studies. Disciplinary boundaries have both defined
our field and created tensions within it.
How are these boundaries shifting?
Divisions and rifts can play a positive role in the emergence of new
thought. In our present work, which
demarcations do we find to be most creative and productive? How do the texts we read address questions
of distance and intimacy? How does our
identity as Asianists wall us alternately in and out with respect to
colleagues, schools of thought, and the very objects of our study? What commonalities can enable us to
confront questions of origin and indebtedness - to mothers, for instance, or
to the environment - independent of cultural difference, independent of
national proclivities, independent of Asia? |
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© Asian Studies
Program
State University of New York at Buffalo
Maintained by Zhen Li
Hits
since
