71st MCAA September 16-18

Announcements

The mcaa@ku.edu email address will become inactive on February 15, 2023. Please contact the Center at ceas.ku.edu if you have any questions about the 2022 MCAA.

The KU Center for East Asian Studies would like to thank everyone who made this year's conference a success. Enjoy the video we made of some of the highlights.

Keynote Speaker

Kamran Asdar Ali, University of Texas-Austin

Saturday, September 17th @ 6:30 pm (during banquet)

"Female Desire, Forbidden Love and Forgotten Archives: Sexual Politics in 1960s Pakistani Cinema"

My address will focus on the film Saheli (1961) to open up the question of domestic life and sexuality in Pakistan by turning to an underused archive, cinema. Indeed, by concentrating primarily on women’s lives as depicted in this film, I do not seek to dismiss the importance of other studies, but to make an added and necessary argument. It enables me to make visible and audible those instances that may have historically enabled women (and men) in Pakistan to create emotional fields and varied forms of connections to each other. The argument will help me discuss women’s representation in the popular media in Pakistan in order to create a different archive of cultural and sexual politics and histories. Following this argument, I seek to further discuss Neela Parbat, a 1969 Pakistani Urdu film directed by Ahmad Bashir. The film did not do well at the box office and dealt with the theme of incest and other sexual themes. It was only the second film that received an “Adult Only” certificate (the other being the horror film, Zinda Lash). The paper will lay out the plot and historicize the genre of these two films, while putting forward a discussion on how themes of same sex desire, incest and other “taboo” subjects were brought forward in Pakistani cinema.

Presidential Luncheon Panel

Saturday, September 17th @ 12:00 pm

"Global Asia and Science, Technology, Environment, and Medicine"

Dr. Hiromi Mizuno, President of the Midwest Conference on Asian Affairs (University of Minnesota, History), will lead the discussion with panelists Megan Greene (University of Kansas, History), Ian Baird (University of Wisconsin, Madison, Geography), and Susan Burns (University of Chicago, History).