Symposium: The Church in Asia, Part I: East Asia
March 31, 2009
Hesburgh Center Auditorium and Great Hall
Presented by Notre Dame’s Center for Asian Studies, the series of symposia on “The Church in Asia” aims to explore the past, present, and future of Catholicism in Asia. This year’s symposium, the first in the series, will feature three preeminent scholars of Catholicism in Asia and will focus on the Church in Japan, China, and South Korea.
The symposium is cosponsored by the Center for Asian Studies, the Kellogg Institute for International Studies, the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts, and the Department of Theology.
Presentations
Don Baker “The Remarkable History of the Catholic Church in Korea: From Its Founding in 1784 to the Present Day”
Kevin Doak “The Church in Japan: An Intercultural Narrative”
Richard Madsen “China's Catholics: Adaptation, Struggle, and Hope”
Presenters
Don Baker is an associate professor of Korean history and religion in the Department of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia, where he has taught since 1987. He first became interested in Korea while serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in the provincial capital of Kwangju from 1971 to 1974. Baker has published on a variety of subjects related to the cultural history of Korea, including the history of the Korean Catholic Church and the life and writings of one of its founding members, Tasan Chŏng Yagyong. In 2008, the Tasan Cultural Foundation awarded him the Tasan Prize for his many articles on Tasan as well as his translations of pieces of Tasan's writings. Baker has also worked on the premodern science of Korea as well as the historiography of the Kwangju massacre of 1980. His most recent book is Korean Spirituality (University of Hawaii Press, 2008). He holds a PhD in Korean history from the University of Washington.
Kevin M. Doak holds the Nippon Foundation Endowed Chair in Japanese Studies at Georgetown University, where he is also professor and chair of the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures. Previously, he taught at Wake Forest University and the University of Illinois and has been affiliated with Tokai, Konan, and Kyoto universities in Japan and Leiden University in the Netherlands. Widely published, his most recent book is A History of Nationalism in Modern Japan (Brill, 2007), and his more than 40 articles in English or Japanese on modern Japanese politics, thought, and culture include “A Religious Perspective on the Yasukuni Shrine Controversy” in Breen, ed., Yasukuni, the War Dead, and the Struggle for Japan’s Past (Columbia University Press, 2008). He is a member of the American Catholic Historical Association and the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars, and is a core faculty member of the Catholic Studies Program at Georgetown University. A Japanese Studies major at Quincy University, a Franciscan college, he holds a PhD from the University of Chicago.
Richard Madsen is distinguished professor of sociology at the University of California, San Diego and a coauthor (with Robert Bellah, et al.) of The Good Society (Knopf, 1991) and Habits of the Heart (University of California Press, 1985), which received the Los Angeles Times Book Award and was jury nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. He has authored or coauthored five books on China, including Morality and Power in a Chinese Village (1985), for which he received the C. Wright Mills Award; China's Catholics: Tragedy and Hope in an Emerging Civil Society (1998); and China and the American Dream (1995), all published by University of California Press. He also coedited (with Tracy B. Strong) The Many and the One: Religious and Secular Perspectives on Ethical Pluralism in the Modern World (Princeton University Press, 2003). His latest book is Democracy’s Dharma: Religious Renaissance and Political Development in Taiwan (University of California Press, 2007).
Schedule
Tuesday, March 31
9:00–10:30 am
“The Church in Japan: An Intercultural Narrative”
Kevin Doak
Introduction by Deborah Shamoon, Assistant Professor, East Asian Languages and Cultures
10:45–12:15
“The Remarkable History of the Catholic Church in Korea: From Its Founding in 1784 to the Present Day”
Don Baker
Introduction by Aaron Magnan-Park, Assistant Professor, Film, Television, Theatre
2:00–3:30 pm
“China's Catholics: Adaptation, Struggle, and Hope”
Richard Madsen
Introduction by Sylvia Li-chun Lin, Associate Professor, East Asian Languages and Cultures
3:45–5:45 pm
Concluding Roundtable
Moderated by Robert Gimello, Research Professor, Theology and East Asian Languages and Cultures
Reception
