Events
Fall 2026 Events
- Thursday, October 8th, 4:15 pm in Buttrick Hall 103 Guest Speaker Tara Fickle of Northwestern University
- Thursday, October 8th, 5:30-8 pm VCL Satellite
- Tuesday, October 20th, 12:15-1:30 pm Buttrick Hall 123
- Friday, November 6th, 2 – 4 PM, The Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities presents:
Pedagogy Workshop with Rebecca K. VanDiver (History of Art and Architecture, Vanderbilt University), Yucong Hao (Asian Studies, Vanderbilt University), and Isaac West (Communication Studies, Vanderbilt University).
Abstract: Please join us for a teaching practicum. We will begin with flash-talks by three Vanderbilt faculty (Yucong Hao: “AI Encounters”) and then open the floor for a wider conversation about teaching across media forms and their disciplines.
Bio: Yucong Hao is Mellon Assistant Professor of Asian Studies. Working at the intersection of comparative literature, media history, and performance studies, she studies the global connectivity, postcolonial engagement, and racial imagination in modern Chinese literature and media. Her work has appeared in journals such as Modern Asian Studies, Global Storytelling, and International Comparative Literature.
- Nov 7, Nashville Public Library’s 2026 Literary Award Weekend featuring Ocean Vuong at Martin Luther King High School
NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Nashville Public Library and Nashville Public Library Foundation are proud to honor poet and novelist Ocean Vuong as the 2026 Literary Award winner. Mr. Vuong will be recognized for his contributions to literature during the 22nd Anniversary Literary Award Weekend, presented by First Horizon Foundation. His work, which moves between poetry and fiction with equal force, makes him an ideal recipient for this award sponsored by Sandra Schatten Foundation. Tickets will be available beginning in September.Public Lecture is FREE – REGISTRATION BEGINS IN SEPTEMBER
Free and open to the public
Saturday, Nov. 7 at 10 a.m.
Martin Luther King Jr. High School, 613 17th Ave. N., Nashville, Tenn. 37203
Broadcast live on NECAT and streaming on NPL’s YouTube channel
Sponsored by Dollar General and Carol and Bobby Frist
- Friday, December 4, 2-4 PM, The Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities Presents:
Sunny Xiang (English, Yale University) Conspiratorial Thinking; Or, Breathing Together
Abstract: My talk uses two seemingly disparate material cultural objects that have long preoccupied me—gas masks and bras—to build toward a theory of conspiracy based on the micropolitics and geopolitics of breath. In pursuing this etymological and elemental interpretation of conspiracy as “breathing together,” I also test out a method of conspiratorial reading that adduces hypothetical chemical intimacies in the absence of verifiable causalities. My archive is eclectic, though it is informed by my commitment to studying U.S. militarism and imperialism in a transpacific context. Components of this archive include: a Maidenform bra designed for WWII carrier pigeons; anti-Vietnam War performance art by Nam June Paik and Salvatore Martirano, respectively; NASA’s use of corset technologies in creating pressurized spacesuits; and an Emergency Bra (EBbra) that converts into a gas mask, which was inspired by the Chernobyl disaster and revitalized during the Covid pandemic. (I may not discuss all of these, but I will bring the EBbra to show you!) Through such examples, I hope to develop a critical vocabulary for redescribing the motifs of exposure and enclosure that underpin colonial conceptions of atmospheric harm and protection. Whereas these boundary-asserting motifs presuppose an antipathy between a vulnerable white body and a hostile environment, I wonder if that a more elemental and relational theory of conspiratorial thinking/breathing can help us devise other blueprints for living in and with chemical and colonial violence.Bio: Sunny Xiang is a professor of English and American Studies at Yale who uses wide-ranging aesthetic, cultural, literary, and documentary materials to study U.S. military empire in Asia and the Pacific. She is especially interested in how historical norms for perceiving race and gender have interacted with the sensory economy of colonial violence and militarized security. Her book Tonal Intelligence: The Aesthetics of Asian Inscrutability During the Long Cold War was published in 2020.
- Thursday, February 4th, 2027
Sarah Wang visit for New Skin
In partnership with English
Past Events
- Saturday Feb 12 - Sunday Feb 13, 2022
China and the World Conference
Panels and discussions will be in person on Vanderbilt's campus - Thursday Mar 24,12:30pm, 2022
From Vincent Chin to #StopAAPIHate
Abstract: Before the alarming escalation in anti-AAPI xenophobia resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, there was similar backlash decades prior amid the rise of the Japanese auto industry. The backlash included the murder of 27-year-old Chinese American Vincent Chin in 1982. This year marks the 40th anniversary of his death. From then until now, journalist and activist Helen Zia has been front and center in leading AAPI advocacy and she’s seen it all. Join us for a panel discussion as Helen shares her experience and observations on 40+ years of AAPI resistance, how far we’ve come since Vincent’s death, and the work we have left to do to achieve justice and equity.
Moderator: Rev. Laura M. Cheifetz, Assistant Dean of Admissions, Vocation & Stewardship, Vanderbilt Divinity School
Panelists: Vivian Shaw, Mellon Assistant Professor of Asian American Studies, College of Arts & Science; Linken Lam, President of the Asian Pacific Islander Desi American (APIDA) at Peabody College
Commons Center Multi-purpose Room (2nd floor)
Watch now! - Thursday, September 22, 2022
Japanese Tea Ceremony
In community with the Vanderbilt Center for Languages and the Department of History of Art & Architecture - Friday, September 23, 2022
Ice Cream Social at Sarabha's Creamery - Monday, October 10, 2022
Japanese Cultural Event: Koto Music & Onigiri Action
In community with the Vanderbilt Center for Languages - Thursday, October 20, 2022
JET Info Session - Monday, Nov 14, 2022
Kimono Viewing & Discussion
Organized by Dr. Shimizu
In community with the Department of History of Art & Architecture, the Vanderbilt Center for Languages, and guest expert Sachi Uemoto - Thursday, Dec 1, 2022
Sino-Black Relations: A Discussion with Keisha A. Brown
In community with the Departments of African American and Diaspora Studies & American Studies - Wednesday, February 1, 2023
U.S. Gun Violence and Asian Americans
Roundtable discussion with Sophie Bjork-James, Jonathan Metzl, and Ben Tran - Thursday, February 16, 2023
A Philosophy of Hedonism in Early China: Understanding Yang Zhu in Ancient and Medieval Texts
A lecture by Erica Fox Brindley of Penn State University - Thursday, February 16, 2023
The Handmaiden
Screening of Park Chan-wook’s film presented by iLens and introduced by We Jung Yi - Thursday, February 23, 2023
Decolonizing Cinema Studies and the Rise of Global Korean Cinema
Lecture by Aimee Nayoung Kwan of Duke University - Tuesday, March 7 and Wednesday, March 8, 2023
Caste in the United States
Lecture by Yashica Dutt - Monday, March 20, 2023
Asian Americans and the Spirit of Racial Capitalism
Jonathan Tran of Baylor on his new book - Thursday, March 23 and Friday, March 24, 2023
Women as Harmonius Subjects: Intervals between Antigone and Nguyen Du’s Kieu
Lecture by Nguyen Thi Minh of UCLA - Monday, March 27, 2023
Welcome to the New Real: Why Nipper Barks in Japanese
Lecture by Jonathan Abel of Penn State University on his new book - Thursday, March 30, 2023
Assignment China: An Oral History of American Journalists in the People’s Republic
Lecture by Mike Chinoy of University of California - Thursday, April 20, 2023
Asian American and Critical Enviroment Studies: A Symposium with Neel Ahuja and Aimee Bhang
Lectures by Neel Ahuja of University of Maryland and Aimee Bhang of Pomona College - Thursday, August 27th
Ice Cream Social at Sarabha’s Creamery from 3-5 PM - Sept 11th, 2026: The Ghosts of Chinatown world premiere brings overlooked history to the concert stage
- Wednesday, September 23rd, 2026 12-1:30 PM, The Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities presents:
Dr. Venkatkrishnan is Assistant Professor of the History of Religion in South Asia at The University of Chicago Divinity School. He is an intellectual historian of South Asian religion. His first book, Love in the Time of Scholarship: The Bhagavata Purana in Indian Intellectual History (OUP 2024), shows how popular religion shaped the everyday lives of Sanskrit scholars in early modern India. His current projects include Searching for Sarasvati, an alternate history of American Indology that bridges South Asian, African American, Asian American, and gender and sexuality studies.
We will discuss Dr. Venkatkrishnan’s draft article, “Black and Brown in Babylon: Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda’s Divine Revelations.” As this is a draft, it should not be shared.
- Thursday, September 24th, 2026, 4:10 PM, The Department of Classical and Religious Studies with cosponsorship by The Department of Asian Studies
- Thursday, September 24th, 2026 5:30-7:30 pm at VCL Rothschild Satellite “Mid-Autumn Festival Celebration” sponsored by Asian Studies and VCL Join us for an evening of mooncakes, Chinese food, cultural activities, and the chance to meet new friends while learning about Chinese culture!
- Friday, September 25, 2026 2-4 PM, The Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities presents:
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Debashree Mukherjee (Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies, Columbia University)
“Contract and Conjuring: Indian Film Exhibition in Colonial Fiji” - Thursday, October 1st, 2026 6pm, Wilson 127 "Institutional NON-Neutrality", cosponsored by Asian Studies
- Friday, October 2, 2026 “Race and Capitalism” Seminar At The Robert Penn Warren Center
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Co-directors: Ajay Batra (English) and Maya Singhal (Asian Studies)
Asian Studies Working paper series, in conjunction with this seminar being lead by Mark Sanchez (Asian Studies)