THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELLED.
Please join for a lecture with:
Zev Handel, Professor, University of Washington
Moderated by: David Lurie, Wm. Theodore and Fanny Brett de Bary and Class of 1941 Collegiate Professor of Asian Humanities and Associate Professor of Japanese History and Literature, Columbia University
This event brings Prof. Zev Handel (University of Washington) to campus to speak about his new book, Sinography: The Borrowing and Adaptation of the Chinese Script (Brill, 2019). This revolutionary work is an analysis of the adaptation of the Chinese script to write Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, and several Central Asian languages, and thus it will be of interest to a wide range of faculty and students in EALAC. We propose to bring Prof. Handel to visit Columbia some time in the spring semester, probably on a Friday in February or April. We will arrange for him to have lunch with graduate students and then participate in an event consisting of a book talk followed by a panel discussion (tentative panel participants: Li Feng, Jungwon Kim, David Lurie, John Phan, Shang Wei). This event will consider Prof. Handel’s arguments about the links between linguistic typology and the different tempos and characters of uptake of sinographic writing across East Asia, discussing also the lasting influence of these varied relations to the script on the subsequent spread of printing (xylographic and typographic); on modern reforms of national languages and their scripts (including the abandonment of sinographs in Vietnam and Korea); and on the ongoing digital revolutions that are currently reshaping the functioning of writing across the region.
