Two public talks in the Asian Studies International Seminar/Korean Studies Speaker Series
The UPEI Faculty of Arts, Asian Studies Program, and Korean Studies Project are pleased to announce the following public talks by two engaging and promising scholars from Philadelphia for the 2020 AST International Seminar and KS Speaker Series. The event is Thursday, March 26, from 2:15–4:45 pm in the Faculty Lounge of UPEI’s SDU Main building:
The event begins with refreshments and a reception. The first speaker is Dr. Jea Sophia Oh, Department of Philosophy, West Chester University of Pennsylvania. She will present a fascinating lecture, “Dao, Creativity, and Water: An Ecofeminist Perspective of Life.” Oh suggests the Dao “as the ethic of nature that human beings need to follow in our ecological catastrophe by sharing the Korean concept of salim (enlivening) as the creativity and healing power of life.”
Dr. Joseph E. Harroff, Department of Religion, Temple University, Philadelphia, presents another thought-provoking lecture, “Confucian jeong/qing (emotion) as Relational Affect in the Religious Studies and Philosophy Classroom.” Harroff will discuss “how foregrounding Confucian (East Asian) assumptions about relational affect or ‘emotion’ understood as a non-analytic and morally truth-tracking aspect of embodied experience can lead to a more creatively democratic classroom dynamic that allows for more diverse participation and a transformative conversation about the application of Confucian texts.”
Do not miss this special series event. Everyone is invited to attend.
Dr. Jea Sophia Oh is an assistant professor of philosophy at West Chester University of Pennsylvania. She received a Master of Sacred Theology degree from Yale University’s Divinity School and a PhD in Comparative Philosophy and Theology (esp. gender studies) from Drew University. Her research and publication primarily focus on East Asian philosophy, comparative ethics, ecofeminism, and postcolonial theory. Her first book, A Postcolonial Theology of Life: Planetarity East and West (2011), is agroundbreaking work in Korean ecofeminist theology and comparative philosophy. She is the editor and author of Nature’s Transcendence and Immanence: A Comparative Interdisciplinary Ecstatic Naturalism (2017). She also co-edited (with Joseph Harroff) a new book, Suffering and Evil in Nature: Asian and American Perspectives (Lexington Books, forthcoming [2020]). She is the section chair of “Religion, Gender, and Sexuality” and “Comparative Religion and Ecology” in the American Academy of Religion (AAR), as well as the program chair of the Society of Asian and Comparative Philosophy (SACP), American Philosophical Association (APA). Oh also serves as the chair of the Society of Study of Process Philosophy at both Central and Eastern divisions of APA.
Dr. Joseph E. Harroff is a lecturer at the Department of Religion, Temple University, Philadelphia. He has held positions at various institutions including Montclair State University, Kent State University, University of Hawai'i, and Beijing University. He received an MA in Chinese Philosophy from Shandong University, China, and a PhD in Comparative Philosophy from the University of Hawai'i (2018). He authored a new book, Resolute Agency in Confucian Role Ethics (SUNY Press, forthcoming [2020]) and co-edited (with Jea Sophia Oh) Suffering and Evil in Nature: Asian and American Perspectives (Lexington Books, forthcoming [2020]). His current interests could be summarized as a strenuous attempt at thinking through the constellations of creative democracy, education, and experience in work inspired by classical pragmatism, Confucianism, and other philosophical movements that give ethical and ontological primacy to habits as “vital arts” of relational flourishing as opposed to moribund forms of thinking that depend upon some pernicious myths of possessive individualism or the positing of discrete, autonomous subjectivity as part of a final vocabulary or “block universe.” Harroff is also very active with various scholarly societies such as APA and AAR.
This international seminar and speaker series project is supported by an international Seed Program for Korean Studies grant through the Ministry of Education, Republic of Korea, and Korean Studies Promotion Service (KSPS), the Academy of Korean Studies (AKS).
For more information, contact Dr. Edward Chung at chung@upei.ca or 902-566-0324.
