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SEAA Highlights from the 2022 Business Meeting

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Society for East Asian Anthropology
Jieun Cho and Aaron Su
December 1, 2022

SEAA members gathered virtually on November 19 for the annual Business Meeting, where the Board and section members reviewed activities throughout 2022, announced new positions, and awarded book and media prizes.

Fancis L.K. Hsu Book Prize

Committee Members: Jennifer Prough (chair), Yi Wu, Lyle Fearnley, Miriam Driessen

Winner

The Anatomy of Loneliness: Suicide, Social Connection, and the Search for Relational Meaning in Contemporary Japan, written by Chikako Ozawa-De Silva, Associate Professor of Anthropology at Emory University, published by the University of California Press. 

Honorable Mentions

Glossolalia and the Problem of Language, written by Nicholas Harkness, Professor of anthropology at Harvard University, published by the University of Chicago Press.

Stitching the 24-Hour City: Life, Labor, and the Problem of Speed in Seoul, written by Seo Young Park, Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Scripps College, published by Cornell University Press.

The David Plath Media Award 2022

We are pleased to announce the following winner and two honorable mentions for the biennial David Plath Media Award.

Winner: 

206 UNEARTHED  

Director: Chul-nyung Heo
Producer: Sona Jo, SonaFilms

This stunning film blends documentary-style footage, interviews, and metavoice commentary to tell the searing tales of a voluntary group of amateur archaeologists, seeking the remains of civilian dead from the Korean War.  The 206 of the title references the 206 bones of the human body, at best unearthed with painstaking care and pieced together to bring the past to a final reconciliation with the present.  At worst, however, these are bones whose hauntings remain unearthed, unfound, and unresolved. The film astonishes with its elegance, ranging from the philosophical to the deeply personal to the scholarly.  It brings to the fore contemporary anthropological discussions of memory, emotion, trauma, and healing, here rooted in a particular time, place, and group of people, but reaching far more broadly.  In doing so, the film invokes the power of the medium itself to achieve its visual and auditory profundity.

Honorable Mention: 

Miles to Go Before She Sleeps

Producer/Editor: J. Faye Yuan, New Circle Films

This intense and emotionally charged film follows an activist, Ms. Yang, in her fight for the welfare protection of dogs and against the practice of dog meat eating in China. The central ethnographic conundrum of the film (China becoming the largest pet market while being world’s largest dog meat producer) is made clear within the first minutes and immediately captures attention. We are quickly drawn into thinking about the tension between perceiving non-human animals as companions versus perceiving them as food, and consequently the limits of animal—and human—rights. Compellingly combining documentary-style filming with TV news clips and ‘silent’ street scenes overlaid with music, the film is praiseworthy for being both activist-oriented and well-balanced in its approach, and for its careful and courageous way of engaging in this contentious and potentially dangerous topic.

Honorable Mention:

Hengdian Dreaming

Director: Shayan Momin

It is a lively film about hope, dreams, freedom and precarity of life as a background actor in Hengdian, a movie capital of China. As the film skilfully blends online and offline footage to address an unspoken aspect of media production and youth struggles in China, it asks us to consider the nature (and price) of hope, the relationship between mobile technologies and presentation(s) of self, and the relationship between agency and exploitation. A compelling use of visual and audio elements from the ground accentuates the lived conundrum of the background actors and attests to the close engagement of the researcher with the people he represents. There is therefore much that the film can provoke for the classroom not only in relation to the topics evoked, but also in relation to the relationship between the researcher and the people they work with and the politics of representation.

New Anthropology News Column Theme, and Open SEAA Positions

The SEAA Column in Anthropology News will be publishing pieces in 2023 under a new theme, after receiving several submissions during a call for papers: “The Future of the ‘Public’ in East Asia.” The column publishes SEAA members’ reflections and photo essays based on original ethnographic research.

In addition, new SEAA positions will be open soon. Two Councilor positions and one Student Councilor position are available for those who wish to run. Please contact Ellen Oxfeld (oxfeld [at] middlebury.edu) announcing your intent to run as soon as possible.

We also said goodbye to several outgoing members: Jie Yang, Marvin Sterling, Isaac Gagne (Treasurer), and Tim Quinn (Student Councilor). We welcomed a cohort of new members as well: Jun Zhang (Treasurer), Claudia Huang (Councilor), Kunisake Hirano (Councilor), Sojung Kim (Student Councilor).

Thank you to all of these members for volunteering their time and energy to keep SEAA a thriving forum for intellectual exchange! We also thank Guven Witteveen, who has deftly overseen SEAA’s Digital Communications.

Jieun Cho is an editor for the SEAA section news column. She is a PhD candidate in Cultural Anthropology at Duke University and currently writing up her dissertation on children’s health, everyday life, and radioactive uncertainty in post-nuclear Japan.

Aaron Su is an editor for the SEAA section news column. He is a PhD candidate in Anthropology at Princeton University with interests in medical and environmental anthropology, urban design, and contemporary China.

In Memoriam of David Plath (1930-2022)

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The below prose was offered by Christine Yano on November 19th as part of the annual SEAA business meeting online to honor the work and the life of our dear colleague.

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It is with deep sadness and gratitude that I offer these few words in memory of David Plath who served as mentor, friend, and inspiration to many of us.  David taught many of us through his scholarship, which often veered off the beaten path to the marginalia of culture, to the “after hours” of human life.  In this, he wished to give the messy emotional, social, and aesthetic side of culture its due.  Equally, David moved many of us through his warmth and integrity, as well as his generous spirit, which was as acerbic as it was empathetic.  His contributions to the field of East Asia Anthropology are many, but for today when our wounds are still so raw, let me place his memory in the hands and words of his many friends. 

Laura Miller, past president of SEAA:  David was one of the smartest, wittiest, kindest Japan scholars I ever met.  His undergraduate degree in journalism from Northwestern University is reflected in his wonderful writing.  He served as an officer in the US Naval Reserve’s Pacific Fleet (1952-55) before earning a master’s degree (1959) and a PhD (1962) from Harvard in anthropology and Far Eastern languages.  He often ruffled the feathers of theoryhead anthropology by being outspoken about his impatience with jargon (at a conference he once called it ‘intellectual masturbation’).

Instead of trendy “intellectual masturbation”, David preferred straight talking, from-the-heart-to-the-heart insight and expression, including poetry.  He valued beauty and integrity that shed light on the human condition, both in words and images.  And he produced both words and images in his rich body of work.  Thus SEAA named the biennial award for the best multimedia work on East Asian anthropology. the David Plath Media Award.  He loved that tribute.

Here is one of his favorite poems, bestowed upon friends, from the pen of a farmer-poet, Wendell Berry.

THE PEACE OF WILD THINGS

When despair for the world grows in me

And I wake in the night at the least sound

In fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

Rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things 

who do not tax their lives with forethought

Of grief.  I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

Waiting with their light.  For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

 To David – now resting in the eternal grace of the world, and utterly free.  Remembering the knowing twinkle in your eye of droll humor and sly wit, we thank you.

SEAA Highlights at the 2021 AAA Annual Meeting

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Society for East Asian Anthropology
Aaron Su and Jieun Cho
December 15, 2021

Amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the Society for East Asian Anthropology (SEAA) convened a vibrant virtual business meeting and featured many stimulating panels in its program for this year’s AAA. Membership and finance increases revealed a productive year of accomplishments, while numerous announcements, awards, and transitions took center stage at the business meeting.

Also announced at the meeting were a new theme for SEAA’s Anthropology News column and a call for open SEAA positions, each listed at the end of this recap.

SEAA-sponsored Panels

SEAA received a total of 31 individual paper and panel submissions this year, exploring pressing themes ranging from the resurgence of pandemic nationalisms in East Asia to the cultural and affective economies of tourism in China, Japan, and Korea. From these submissions, SEAA offered 2 invited sessions and 1 co-sponsored session with the Association for Queer Anthropology.

Business Meeting

SEAA members gathered virtually for the annual Business Meeting, where the Board and section members reviewed activities throughout 2021, announced new positions, and awarded book and essay prizes.

Silvia Lindtner from the University of Michigan was awarded this year’s Francis L.K. Hsu Book Prize for Prototype Nation: China and the Contested Promise of Innovation (Princeton University Press, 2020). The award’s Honorable Mention was given to Lyle Fearnley from the Singapore University for Technology and Design, for his book Virulent Zones: Animal Disease and Global Health at China’s Pandemic Epicenter (Duke University Press, 2020). This year’s book prize committee was chaired by Marvin Sterling.

In addition, the 2021 SEAA Outstanding Graduate Student Paper Prize, chaired by Nicholas Harkness, was awarded to Ruiyi Zhu (University of Cambridge) for her essay, “Aspiring to standards: Mongolian vocational education, Chinese enterprise, and the neoliberal order.” Timothy Y. Loh (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) was awarded Honorable Mention for his paper, titled: “Mother Tongue Orphan: Multiculturalism and the Challenge of Sign Language in Singapore.”

A virtual yet spirited shamoji (rice paddle) ceremony reigned in this year’s transitions in SEAA board positions. As the incoming present, Ellen Oxfeld took over the shamoji from former president Sonia Ryang; Christine Yano, the president-elect, will assume this role at the end of Oxfeld’s term.

We also said goodbye to several outgoing members: Satsuki Kawano (Secretary 2019-21), Andrew Kipnis (Councilor 2019-21), Nicholas Harkness (Councilor 2019-21), Yifan Wang (Student Councilor 2020-21), and Hanna Pickwell (Anthropology News SEAA Section Editor 2019-21). We welcomed a cohort of new members as well: Teresa Kuan as Secretary; Zachary Howlett, Beata Świtek, Jennifer Prough, and Yi Wu as Councilors; Yookyeong Im and Tim Quinn as Student Councilors; and Aaron Su and Jieun Cho as Anthropology News SEAA Section Editors.

Thank you to all of these members for volunteering their time and energy to keep SEAA a thriving forum for intellectual exchange! We also thank Guven Witteveen, who has deftly overseen SEAA’s Digital Communications.

New Anthropology News Column Theme, and Open SEAA Positions

The SEAA Column in Anthropology News will be publishing pieces in 2022 under a new theme, after receiving several submissions during a call for papers: “Materialities and Movements in a Changing East Asia.” The column publishes SEAA members’ reflections and photo essays based on original ethnographic research.

In addition, new SEAA positions will be open soon. Two Councilor positions, one Treasurer position, and one Student Councilor position are available for those who wish to run. Please contact Ellen Oxfeld (oxfeld [at] middlebury.edu) announcing your intent to run as soon as possible.

Aaron Su is an editor for the SEAA section news column. He is a PhD candidate in Anthropology at Princeton University with interests in medical and environmental anthropology, urban design, and contemporary China.

Jieun Cho is an editor for the SEAA section news column. She is a PhD candidate in Cultural Anthropology at Duke University and currently writing up her dissertation on children’s health, everyday life, and radioactive uncertainty in post-nuclear Japan.

Announcing the SEAA regional conference in August 2019, Tokyo

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Society for East Asian Anthropology
Regional Conference 2019 – Tokyo

East Asian Anthropology Now and into the Future:
Transformations, Dynamics, and Challenges

[update 29 April 2019: registration begins on June 1]

The region of East Asia offers a fertile ground for anthropologists who seek to understand the pulse of a new modernity, whether it be the effects of economic restructuring, new modes of living and being, new ways of relating, technologies and human interfaces, population dynamics, understandings of well-being, the life well lived or the ‘good’ death, mobilities in the region, and much more. We hope to assemble a variety of papers from the latest anthropological research on the transformations and dynamics as well as challenges people in the region face as they go about their daily lives in the 21st century.  


August 2-3, 2019 hosted at Graduate School of Asia-Pacific Studies (GSAPS) of Waseda University

Conference Aims

The conference aims:

  1. to provide a platform for anthropology teachers and students and scholars in related disciplines to share their latest research findings;
  2. to provide an opportunity for building academic networks and for exploring possibilities of research collaboration among scholars and between institutions; and
  3. to promote anthropology in East Asia.

 

Organizers

The Society of East Asian Anthropology (SEAA), an officially recognized section within the American Anthropological Association (AAA), consists of close to 400 anthropologists whose primary area of study is East Asia.  SEAA is committed to developing international channels of communication among anthropologists throughout the world. It seeks to promote discussion and share information on diverse topics related to the anthropology of Taiwan, PRC, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea; other societies/cultures of Asia and the Pacific Basin with historical or contemporary ties to East Asia; and diasporic societies/cultures identified with East Asia.  Its website is https://seaa.americananthro.org/ 

 

Call for papers

The Executive Committee of the Society of East Asian Anthropology (SEAA) invites proposals for panels and individual papers to be presented at the conference. All presentations are to be delivered in English.

Proposals for panels or for individual papers should be submitted to seaa.tokyo.2019@gmail.com before February 28, 2019. Results of the selection of papers will be made by March 31, 2019.


Panels:

A panel will consist of either 3 or 4 paper presenters and 1 discussant (non-presenter); however, double-sized panels of up to 8 papers and 2 discussants will also be considered.

To submit a panel, please provide a 200-word abstract for each individual paper and a 200-word statement for the theme of the panel. Only full panels will be considered for acceptance. In middle January an online form to help self-organize panels (interested individual papers seeking fellow presenters to form a full panel) will be hotlinked here.


Individual papers:

To submit an individual paper, please provide a 200-word abstract. We will cluster together papers that broadly fit theoretically. Junior scholars are given priority.

 

Registration

Registration starts on June 1, 2019. Refer to the information page of instructions here.
Participants will arrange and pay for their own lodging and transportation. Some general advice will be developed for Tokyo at http://bit.ly/about2019seaa-tokyo

Many restaurants near the conference venue are available at lunchtime.
A reception, the cost of which will be included in your registration fee, will be held on Saturday, August 3, 2019.

 

I look forward to welcoming you at GSAPS!

Glenda S. Roberts, SEAA President
Professor, GSAPS at Waseda University
Tokyo, Japan

SEAA Conference – Hong Kong, June 2016

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preparing for June 2016 conference

preparing for June 2016 conference

SEAA has had great success in hosting meetings independent of AAA sessions at the Annual Meeting.
Come to Hong Kong to engage with colleagues from 19 to 22 June 2016, where the conference theme is “East Asia and Tomorrow’s Anthropology.”

Download proposal forms for paper or panel at the “Call for Papers” tab, http://arts.cuhk.edu.hk/~ant/SEAAconf/
Deadline for registration is Dec. 1. After the program is announced in January, the conference registration will begin and accommodations will be arranged.
Consider presentations you can make or panels to join in. Please, also invite colleagues near and far to participate.