SOAS: Venue: Virtual Event
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Abstract China has already parlayed the world’s second largest economy and defense budget into armed forces boasting global superlatives. It has long retained the world’s largest standing ground force. Each of China’s three sea forces—Navy, Coast Guard, Maritime Militia—is now the world’s largest by number of ships. China has the Indo-Pacific’s largest air forces. It has the world’s largest sub-strategic missile forces, and one of the world’s largest and most sophisticated surface-to-air missile forces. The world’s largest technological acquisition and application infrastructure augments domestic weapons development. Forces’ further advances and potential employment are guided by the most far-reaching, clearly defined grand strategy of any great power today, with lofty goals for 2035 and 2049. Long before those milestones, paramount leader Xi Jinping wants his sweeping defense reforms to yield overwhelming military power that commands deference to Party policies at home and abroad. At the nexus of those contested parameters lies the greatest of all flashpoints: Taiwan. And the most dangerous decade may well have already begun. China under Xi has likely reached its peak growth rate and the zenith of its leaders’ ability to mobilize resources to serve ambitious national objectives. Biography Professor Andrew S. Erickson is a Professor of Strategy in the U.S. Naval War College’s China Maritime Studies Institute. A core founding member, he helped establish CMSI and stand it up officially in 2006, and has played an integral role in its development. CMSI inspired the creation of other research centers, which he has advised and supported; he is a China Aerospace Studies Institute Associate. Erickson is currently a Visiting Scholar in full-time residence at Harvard University’s John King Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, where he has been an Associate in Research since 2008. He is also an Executive Committee member of Israel’s Haifa Maritime Center and a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Erickson has deployed in the Pacific as a Naval Postgraduate School Regional Security Education Program scholar aboard the flagship aircraft carrier USS Nimitz. Erickson received his Ph.D. from Princeton University. He runs the research website www.andrewerickson.com. Registration This webinar will take place online via Zoom. After registering, a separate Zoom link will emailed to you closer to the date of the webinar. Online Registration Chair: Professor Steve Tsang (Director, SOAS China Institute) Organiser: SOAS China Institute Contact email: sci@soas.ac.uk
SOAS: Venue: Virtual Event
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The webinar is open to all and there is no need for registration. All our webinars are recorded and will be made available on this webpage at a later date.
SOAS: Venue: Virtual Event
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Abstract In her newest book, Japanese Culture Through Videogames, Rachael Hutchinson explores videogames as a window into the Japanese worldview. This talk will focus on the cultural content of globally popular games such as SoulCalibur, Final Fantasy, and Metal Gear Solid. Delving into character design, background setting and environment, aesthetic style, thematic content, and games dynamics and goals, Hutchinson points to ways in which Japanese role-playing games serve as popular entertainment narratives that tackle big issues like social anxiety, absentee parents, nuclear power, and war memory. Video games are not only texts with aesthetic value, but may also be read as part of contemporary discourse, while gameplay itself can be understood as discursive practice. Speaker Biography Rachael Hutchinson received her D.Phil from the University of Oxford in 2000, and now teaches Japanese language, literature and culture at the University of Delaware, USA. She has published widely on representation and identity in Japanese narrative texts, from the novels of Nagai Kafu to the manga of Tezuka Osamu, the films of Kurosawa Akira to the videogames of Kojima Hideo. Her latest book, Japanese Culture through Videogames (Routledge 2019) was recently featured on the podcasts ‘Meiji at 150’ and ‘Japan Station.’ Registration If you would like to attend the event please register. The link to the webinar will be emailed to the registered attendee closer to the event date. Online registration Organiser: SOAS Japan Research Centre Contact email: centres@soas.ac.uk
SOAS: Venue: Virtual Event
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She was a Member of Sub-panel 27 (Area Studies), Research Excellence Framework (REF 2014), and is a Member of Sub-panel 25 (Area Studies), Research Excellence Framework (REF 2021). Her publications include: Politics and Poetics in the Algerian Novel (Edwin Mellen Press: 1999), The Arab Diaspora: voices of an anguished scream (Routledge: 2006 2011), Gender and Diversity in the Middle East and North Africa (Routledge: 2010 2014), Gender and Violence in Islamic Societies: Patriarchy, Islamism and Politics in the Middle East and North Africa (I. B. Tauris, 2013) and, most recently, Occidentalism: Literary Representations of the Maghrebi Experience of the East-West Encounter (EUP: 2019). She has also published a number of articles on literature and gender with focus on the Middle East and North Africa.