Bringing together philosophy, Chinese cultural studies, and critical theory this panel explores how choices morph and change as timeframes expand and contract and asks: how do choices look different in retrospect, and how do we understand cause and effect in such a complex world?

PRE-RECORDED PRESENTATIONS

Carlos Rojas
"Fifty Years Without Change": Reimagining Futurity Through a Focus on the Extended Present

Karen Thornber
Choice and Health - Healing, Well-being, and Literature.

Synchronous discussion and Q&A moderated by Keren He, Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities, Wolf Humanities Center.

Carlos Rojas is Professor of Chinese Cultural Studies, Gender, Sexuality, & Feminist Studies (GSF), and Cinematic Arts at Duke University. His research focuses on issues of gender and visuality, corporeality and infection, and nationalism and diaspora studies. He is the author, editor, and translator of numerous studies, including Homesickness: Culture, Contagion, and National Transformation in Modern China. He is currently working on a project on Queering the Hong Kong Handover. 

Karen Thornber is Harry Tuchman Levin Professor in Literature and Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University. She is author of three major scholarly monographs. Most recent is Global Healing: Literature, Advocacy, Care (Brill 2020), which draws on literatures from 20 languages and close to 50 nations, across six continents. Thornber’s two previous major scholarly monographs both won multiple international awards: Ecoambiguity: Environmental Crises and East Asian Literatures (Michigan 2012) and Empire of Texts in Motion: Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Taiwanese Transculturations of Japanese Literature (Harvard 2009). Thornber’s fourth single-authored monograph, Gender Justice and Asian Literatures, is under preliminary contract. In addition, Thornber has published more than 70 academic articles and chapters on a range of fields (e.g., medical humanities, health humanities, environmental humanities, diaspora, imperialism, transculturation, translation, gender, inequality, and injustice), is (co)editor of several volumes including one on Global Indigeneities and Environment, and an award-winning translator of Japanese literature. Thornber has held many leadership positions at Harvard, including Victor and William Fung Director of the Asia Center, Acting Director of the Reischauer Institute, Chair of Comparative Literature, and Chair of Regional Studies East Asia.