The "Making History" Graduate Alumni Symposium will be held on January 19, 2024, from 10 am to 3:30 pm in the Office of China Initiatives (basement floor of Fine Arts Library). This full-day event will feature a fantastic roster of alumni speakers from the History Department graduate program, a mentoring coffee hour, and many opportunities for networking, conversation, food, and drink. 

In case the University closes due to winter weather, the event will be held on Zoom starting with Panel One at 11 am. A link will be distributed to registered participants. Questions can be addressed to emilymokros@uky.edu

Program

10:00 am – 10:15 am: Welcome and Introductions, Emily Mokros, Kathy Newfont, and Anastasia Curwood

10:15 am – 11:00 am: Making History Together: Mentoring Coffee Hour

11:00 am – 12:30 pm: Panel One: Making History on Campus, moderated by Ashley Sorrell

Le Datta Grimes, Oral Historian, Clemson University
Joanna Lile, Lecturer, Georgetown College
Jillean McCommons, Assistant Professor, University of Richmond Anthony Miller, Assistant Professor, Hanover College

12:30 pm – 1:15 pm: Lunch and Networking

1:30 pm – 2:45 pm: Panel Two: Making History Beyond Campus, moderated by Allen Fletcher

Jonathan Coleman, Executive Director, Blue Grass Trust for Historic Preservation Amanda Higgins, Executive Director, LexHistory
Stephanie M. Lang, Editor, The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society Amber Sergent, Social Studies Teacher, Woodford County High School

3:00 pm – 3:30 pm: Making History Going Forward: Closing Discussion, moderated by Garrett Freas and Arshiya Jeelani

3:30 pm: Closing comments, Hilary Jones

Please join the Committee on Social Theory for the fourth, and final, speaker in our Spring 2024 Speaker Series on the theme of Global Asias happening on Friday, April 19 at 2 pm ET in the UK AA Alumni Auditorium at the William T. Young Library with Dr. Tansen Sen! 

This series will be featuring guest speakers engaging with interdisciplinary approaches across the humanities and social sciences to address the intensified contestation about Asia in light of the shifting geopolitical dynamics in the Asia-Pacific area and globally. The framing seminar which incorporates these guest speakers, ST 690/ MCL 525/ GWS 595: Global Asias, is co-taught by Dr. Liang Luo and Dr. Charlie Yi Zhang.

Title: A Global Asia Travelogue: Gita Bandyopadhyay and Her Travels in China in 1949–50

Lecture Abstract:
Gita Bandyopadhyay was the first Indian and most likely also the first woman from independent India to pen a travelogue on recently liberated China. Entitled Moskow theke Chin (From Moscow to China), the travelogue, written in Bengali, recounts Bandyopadhyay’s visit to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to attend the 1949 Conference of Women of Asia held in Beijing. The details about the conference, her meetings with various Chinese women, and her visits to other Chinese cities provide unique perspectives on the PRC. The travelogue also presents Bandyopadhyay’s critical views on the newly established Nehru government and demonstrates the brewing relationship between the PRC government and the leftist movement in India. This presentation examines the importance of this neglected travelogue to underscore the contributions of women to China–India interactions, the role of non-state actors in these exchanges, and the state of China–India relations prior to the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries. It also examines Bandyopadhyay's global connections with members of the feminist movement in Europe and the United States of America.

Please join the Committee on Social Theory for the second speaker in our Spring 2024 Speaker Series on the theme of Global Asias happening on Friday, March 1 at 2 pm ET in B&E Room 191 in the Gatton Business School with Dr. Arnika Fuhrmann! 

This series will be featuring guest speakers engaging with interdisciplinary approaches across the humanities and social sciences to address the intensified contestation about Asia in light of the shifting geopolitical dynamics in the Asia-Pacific area and globally. The framing seminar which incorporates these guest speakers, ST 690/ MCL 525/ GWS 595: Global Asias, is co-taught by Dr. Liang Luo and Charlie Yi Zhang. 

Lecture Abstract

What does it mean to imagine “Asia” beyond the reductive visions of contemporary policy? This
talk explores the contemporary visual culture of Chinese pasts and colonial modernities, revived
in the cinemas, new media, hospitality venues, and other material sites of Bangkok. Examining
the doubling of Hong Kong, Bangkok, and Shanghai across these sites, it investigates how a
transregional Chinese modernity that emerged under but always exceeded conditions of colonial
and national governance informs the present. As film directors such as Wong Kar-wai and hotels,
bars, and clubs revive 1930s Shanghai and 1960s Hong Kong modernities—and exploit the
Chinese past of Bangkok’s old European trading quarters—this redeployment of (semi-)colonial
histories and Chinese urban pasts is emerging as a primary signifier of the good life and
understandings of Asia in the present. The deployment of this twentieth century translocal
modernity points to enduring regional imaginaries that diverge from global notions of “China
Rising,” the People’s Republic’s own Belt and Road Initiative, or the policies of the Association
for Southeast Asian Nations. Bangkok—as a Chinese city—stands at the center of these
prominent, transregional revivals in which media and urban design projects speak of radically
different desires than those of current policy.