Archive of Events

At Columbia, Professor Gluck taught undergraduates, graduate students, and students in the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) for almost forty years. She has contributed to innovations in undergraduate education at Columbia and around the country, including a four-year $2-million project on Expanding East Asian Studies (www.exeas.org). Her Ph.D. students in history now teach in universities across the United States, Asia, and Europe. A prize-winning historian, her most recent books are Words in Motion: Toward a Global Lexicon, coedited with Anna Tsing (Duke University Press, 2009), Thinking with the Past: Modern Japan and History, and Past Obsessions: World War II in History and Memory. Among her recent articles is "The End of Elsewhere : Writing Modernity Now," American Historical Review (June 2011). At Columbia she is a member of the Committee on Global Thought, and directs the WEAI publications program, working with Ross Yelsey and others to produce the Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Weatherhead Books on Asia, and Asia Perspectives. She serves as elected member of the Council of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, co-chair of the Trustees Emeriti of the Asia Society, on the Board of Directors of Japan Society, the board of the Weatherhead Foundation, and numerous editorial boards and national and international committees. Professor Gluck received her BA from Wellesley in 1962 and her Ph.D. from Columbia in 1977. She joined the Columbia faculty in 1975.

William Burke-White, an expert on international law and global governance, served in the Obama Administration from 2009-2011 on Secretary Clinton's Policy Planning Staff, providing the Secretary direct policy advice on multilateral diplomacy and international institutions. He was principal drafter of the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR), Secretary Clinton's hallmark foreign policy and institutional reform effort. Burke-White has written extensively in the fields of international law and institutions, with focus on international criminal and international economic law. His work has addressed issues of post-conflict justice; the International Criminal Court; international human rights, and international arbitration. His current research explores gaps in the global governance system and the challenges of international legal regulation in a world of rising powers and divergent interests. In 2008 he received the A. Leo Levin Award and in 2007 the Robert A. Gorman award for Excellence in Teaching. He received his Ph.D. from Cambridge in International relations in 2006, his J.D. from Harvard in 2002, his M.Phil. in International Relations from Cambridge in 1999 and his A.B. from Harvard in 1998.

Professor Emeritus at Australia National University, Dr. Tyler is an  esteemed translator of Japanese literature, acclaimed for his translations of the Noh plays, The Tale of Genji, and The Tale of the Heike. A descendant of the American playwright Royall Tyler (1757 - 1826), he was born in London, England, grew up in America and France. With a B.A.  Harvard University, and a Ph.D.,  Columbia University, he taught at the Australian National University in Canberra 1990-2000. Earlier, he taught at Ohio State, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the University of Oslo, Norway. He lives in rural New South Wales.

They Who Tread on the Tiger's Tale was the center of one of University of Pennsylvania Linda Chance's lectures last November 21, 2014, and discussion centered on how the film could be interpreted as an allegory sympathizing with a defeated general. The film was banned by the occupying Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers (SCAP) due to its portrayal of feudal values. It was  released after the signing of the Treaty of San Francisco in 1952 which ended the U.S. Occupation of the main islands of Japan.

Review summary of Kurosawa's Dreams from the New York Times: Following up on his critically acclaimed, blood-splattered epic Ran, master director Akira Kurosawa looks inward with this collection of eight brightly colored dreams. 1) The first section centers on a young boy (Mitsunori Izaki), who witnesses a forest wedding procession of fox spirits in spite of his mother's (Mitsuko Baisho) warning. 2) The second section concerns the same lad who converses with peach-tree spirits after the trees have been cruelly cut down. 3) This is followed by a party of mountain climbers struggling to make it back to base camp in the midst of a terrible blizzard. 4) The fourth dream deals with a man (Akira Terao) -- a Kurosawa stand-in complete with the director's trademark floppy white hat -- who encounters ghosts of Japan's militaristic past in a forlorn tunnel. 5) In the following dream, the same man ventures into a Van Gogh painting called The Crows and meets the artist himself (Martin Scorsese).  6 & 7 The sixth and seventh dreams venture into nightmare territory -- one deals with a nuclear meltdown that threatens Japan while the other concerns post-nuclear mutants.  8) In the final dream, Kurosawa meets a 103-year-old man (played by Ozu regular Chishu Ryu) in a utopian rural village.

Grave of the Fireflies is a 1988 Japanese animated drama film written and directed by Isao Takahata and animated by Studio Ghibli. It is based on the 1967 semi-autobiographical novel of the same name by Akiyuki Nosaka. It is commonly considered an anti-war film, but this interpretation has been challenged by some critics and by the director. The film stars Tsutomu Tatsumi, Ayano Shiraishi, Yoshiko Shinohara and Akemi Yamaguchi. Set in the city of Kobe, Japan, the film tells the story of two siblings, Seita and Setsuko, and their desperate struggle to survive during the final months of the Second World War. Grave of the Fireflies received critical acclaim from film critics. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times considered it to be one of the best and most powerful war films and, in 2000, included it on his "Great Movies" list.Two live-action remakes of Grave of the Fireflies were made, one in 2005 and one in 2008.

Black Rain is a 1989 Japanese film by director Shohei Imamura and based on the novel of the same name by Ibuse Masuji. The events are centered on the aftermath of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. The film moves between Shizuma Shigematsu's journal entries about Hiroshima in 1945, following the dropping of the atomic bomb, and the present, 1950, when Shigematsu and his wife Shigeko are the guardians for their niece Yasuko and charged with finding her a husband (she has been declined three times due to concerns over her having been in the "black rain" fallout). As the story progresses, Shigematsu sees more and more fellow hibakusha, his friends and family, succumbing to radiation sickness and Yasuko's prospects for marriage become more and more unlikely, as she forms a bond with a poor man named Yuichi, who carves jizo and suffers a form of post-traumatic stress disorder where he attacks passing motor vehicles as "tanks."    

The Bells of Nagasaki: Dr. Takashi Nagai is one of two people on our list whose lives were directly affected by the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Born in Nagasaki in 1908 Nagai graduated from the Nagasaki Medical College in 1932 and began a career as a radiologist. His own spiritual curiosity and a stint in the Imperial Army saw Nagai being baptized as a Roman Catholic in 1934, and during WW2 he would bring both his medical expertise and deep faith to treating wounded Japanese soldiers. Due to his radiological research Nagai would be diagnosed with leukemia in June of 1945, but he would soon find himself at the center of the beginning of the atomic age. Nagai was in Nagasaki on August 9th. He was seriously injured and lost his wife Midori in the blast, but the month after the attack he and his two children built a small hut close to the hypocenter of the blast. It was here that he spent the remainder of his life in prayer and writing a number of books. The most famous of these was his 1949 memoir "The bells of Nagasaki". A year after its publication Shochiku and director Hideo Oda released a screen adaptation of Nagai's book written by Kaneto Shindo. Actor Masao Wakahara would star as Dr. Nagai and Yumeji Tsukioka would portray his wife Midori. Oda's film, the first film to deal with the atomic bombings, was threatened with censorship by the occupying U.S. forces.

About Our Speakers

Dr. Kenric Tsethlikai, Ph.D.

Managing director, Lauder Institute of Management and International Studies, University of Pennsylvania
As managing director of The Lauder Institute, Kenric Tsethlikai has oversight responsibility for the joint MBA/MA in International Studies and JD/MA in International Studies degree programs. He oversees daily operations in all areas from recruiting and admissions through graduation. Dr. Tsethlikai was previously director of Lauder’s Language and Culture Programs to provide oversight to the nine Lauder Language and Culture programs on campus and abroad. A native of the Zuni Pueblo (New Mexico), he earned his Ph.D. from Stanford University and was certified as an oral proficiency tester in French. Kenric has lived in France and Switzerland and continues to travel extensively around the world.

Beatrice Bolger
Adjunct Professor, Foreign Languages department
Professor Bolger developed and taught the College’s Swahili courses and will teach Swahili 101 in spring 2015.Originally from Kenya, she also has taught Swahili for the University of Pennsylvania and informally for the Independence Charter School. She has been helping to plan a College Study Abroad program to Tanzania for Spring 2016.

Mehmet Darakcioglu
Associate director, Middle East Center, University of Pennsylvania
Dr. Darakcioglu completed his Ph.D. in Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. His primary area of interest is Ottoman institutional and social history in the 19th century. Dr. Darakcioglu is also interested in contemporary Turkish politics. He has published on American relations with Turkey during the Cyprus crisis of 1963.

Lawrence McCarty
Professor Emeritus, Foreign Languages 
Professor McCarty served as department chair of the Foreign Languages department in the 1980s. He initiated the Merida, Mexico program through his contacts there and has brought speakers from Mexico and Central America over a 20-year period through the Witness for Peace Program.

Akiko Mori
Adjunct professor of Japanese
Professor Mori is planning, with David Prejsnar, our first Study Aboard trip to Japan for June 2015. At Community College of Philadelphia, Mori has planned co-curricular activities related to Japan since 2011. Her B.A. and her M.A. in East Asian Studies are from the University of Pennsylvania.

Massimo Musumeci
Professor Musumeci teaches French full-time for the College and also teaches Italian. He has organized many International Festival events related to Italy. He and Sarah Iepson, chair of the Art Department, will lead a spring 2015 Study Abroad program to Florence and Rome.

Mildred Savard
Adjunct professor in the History, Religious Studies and Philosophy
Professor Savard teaches history and interdisciplinary humanities courses for the College, including Humanities 150: Introduction to Latin American Cultures and Civilizations. Since 2001, she has been a faculty leader in our Merida, Mexico Study Abroad Program, and has twice been a faculty leader in Cusco, Peru.

Lan Xu
Ms. Xu expects her Ph.D. in Educational Linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania in December 2014. By coincidence, in 2001, she was part of an ASDP group exchange program with Fay Beauchamp. In 2013, she presented her techniques on using hip-hop to 500 Chinese language teachers.

About Our World Cultures and Languages Days Coordinators

Fay Beauchamp, professor of English, is the founding director of Community College of Philadelphia’s Center for International Understanding. She is the project director of a 2014–2016 U. S. Department of Education Title VI Undergraduate International Studies and Foreign Languages project that promotes the study of less commonly taught languages such as Arabic, Chinese, Hebrew, Japanese and Swahili, languages offered at the College. The Title VI Project is also helping to support Study Abroad programs to Japan in 2015 and to Tanzania in 2016.

Christopher DiCapua has spent more than 10 years as Foreign Languages department chair and Study Abroad coordinator. He is the Chair of World Cultures and Languages Day, working with Fay Beauchamp. The Organizing Committee also includes Oscar Cabrera, current Foreign Language chair and Study Abroad coordinator; Massimo Musumeci, Foreign Languages department; David Prejsnar, Religious Studies and Humanities; and Marian McGorry, assistant dean, Business and Technology Division.

We thank our consultants at the University of Pennsylvania National Resource Centers:

• Paula Roberts, East Asia Center
• Mehmet Darakcioglu, Middle East Center
• Ali Ali-Dinar, Carol Muller and Audrey Mbeje, Africa Studies Center
• Jody Chavez and Raili Roy, South Asia Center