Kelly Yang part of Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures series, October 24.

Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures will present Kelly Yang on October 24 as part of its "Words & Pictures" series.

New York Times bestselling author Kelly Yang is back with another heartwarming and inspiring story of Mia and friends!

Mia Tang is going for her dreams! After years of hard work, Mia Tang finally gets to go on vacation with her family — to China! A total dream come true! Mia can’t wait to see all her cousins and grandparents again, especially her cousin Shen. As she roams around Beijing, witnessing some of the big changes China’s going through, Mia thinks about the turbulent changes in her own life. Mia is more determined than ever, now that she finally has . . . room to dream!

Kelly Yang is the author of Front Desk, which won the 2019 Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature and was chosen a Best Book of the Year by NPR, the Washington Post, the New York Public Library, and may others. Kelly’s family immigrated to the United States from China when she was a young girl, and she grew up in California, in circumstances very similar to those of Mia Tang.

The online lecture starts at 6:00 pm and is free, and will be available online for one week.

1926 Japanese silent film A Page of Madness (狂った一頁) at Row House Cinema for Silent Sunday 2021, October 24.

The 1926 Japanese silent film A Page of Madness (狂った一頁) will play at Row House Cinema on October 24 as part of the theater's Silent Sunday 2021.

A man takes a job at an asylum with hopes of freeing his imprisoned wife in this Japanese silent film, but a strange storm has an odd effect on the patients.

Tickets are $22 and allow guests to see as many films as they wish. The day of movies starts at 12:05 pm, with A Page of Madness beginning at 2:15 pm. The single-screen theater is located at 4115 Butler Street (map) in Lawrenceville.

2004 Studio Ghibli film Howl's Moving Castle (ハウルの動く城) in Pittsburgh, October 24, 25, and 28.

The 2004 Studio Ghibli film Howl's Moving Castle (ハウルの動く城) will play in Pittsburgh on October 24, 25, and 28 as part of Studio Ghibli Fest 2021. From the distributor:

From director Hayao Miyazaki and the legendary Studio Ghibli, Howl’s Moving Castle is an Academy Award®-nominated acclaimed fantasy based on the novel of the same name by Diana Wynne Jones.

Sophie, a quiet girl working in a hat shop, finds her life thrown into turmoil when she is literally swept off her feet by a handsome but mysterious wizard named Howl. The vain and vengeful Witch of the Waste, jealous of their friendship, puts a curse on Sophie and turns her into a 90-year-old woman. On a quest to break the spell, Sophie climbs aboard Howl's magnificent moving castle and into a new life of wonder and adventure. But as the true power of Howl's wizardry is revealed, Sophie finds herself fighting to protect them both from a dangerous war of sorcery that threatens their world. Featuring the voice talents of Lauren Bacall, Christian Bale, Billy Crystal, Blythe Danner, Emily Mortimer and Jean Simmons.

It plays locally at the AMC Loews Waterfront and the Cinemark theaters in Monroeville, North Hills, and Robinson, and tickets are available online. The October 24 and 28 shows are dubbed in English while the October 25 show is in Japanese with English subtitles.

EPIK High coming to Pittsburgh, March 19, 2022.

Legendary Korean hip hop group EPIK High is coming to Pittsburgh on March 19, 2022. Tickets went on sale for today for the show at Mr. Smalls Theater in Millvale.

"Music on the Edge Presents Devon Osamu Tipp: New Music for Shakuhachi and Electroacoustic Sound," October 23 at Pitt.

The University of Pittsburgh's Department of Music presents "Music on the Edge Presents Devon Osamu Tipp: New Music for Shakuhachi and Electroacoustic Sound" on October 23.

Music on the Edge presents Pitt PhD candidate Devon Osamu Tipp performing new music by Pitt graduate composers for shakuhachi and electroacoustic elements. The program will include works by Brian Riordan, Ryan McMasters, Mark Micchelli, Jason Belcher, Emmanuel Berrido, Ramin Akhavijou, and Tipp.

Pittsburgh based composer/performer Devon Osamu Tipp creates unorthodox musical environments from ostensibly incompatible realms. A PhD candidate at the University of Pittsburgh, Tipp’s music draws influence from his Japanese and Eastern European roots, his experiences as a jeweler and painter, and his studies of gagaku and hogaku in Japan and the US. His compositions focus on rhythmic and timbral transmutation of cyclical materials, ranging from the orchestral, to string basses prepared with honey stirrers, to concerti for traditional Japanese instruments. He received his BMus from Montclair State University, where he studied composition and microtonal music with Dean Drummond, and shakuhachi with Elizabeth Brown. His music has been performed by microtonal specialists Kjell Tore Innervik, Veli Kujala and Tolgahan Çogulu. He has also worked with Rarescale, the Thin Edge New Music Collective, the TAK Ensemble, and members of Avanti! Chamber Orchestra. His compositions have been featured at the Soundscape Festival, Bowdoin Festival, Beyond 2020: Microtonal Music Festival, and the 2015 Tokyo International Double Reed Society Conference.

The event will be broadcast live online for the general public, though limited in-person seating is available in Bellefield Hall for COVID-safety-compliant university students, faculty, and staff. The event starts at 7:30 pm and registration is required.

Japanese guitarist MIYAVI at Thunderbird Cafe, October 22.

Japanese guitarist MIYAVI will play the Thunderbird Cafe on October 22.

Takamasa Ishihara (石原 崇雅), better known by his stage name Miyavi (雅), is a Japanese singer-songwriter, guitarist, record producer and actor. He is known for his finger-slapping style of playing a guitar. He has been active since 1999, first as guitarist for the now defunct visual kei rock band Dué le Quartz and then as a solo artist starting in 2002. In 2007, he became a member of the rock supergroup Skin and in 2009 founded his own company, J-Glam. He toured worldwide several times, with over 250 shows in 30 countries as of 2015.

Tickets for the 18+ show are available online from $30 (plus the multitude of fees); doors open at 7 pm, show starts at 8 pm. The Thunderbird Cafe & Music Hall is located at 4023 Butler St. in Lawrenceville (map).

"Imperial Gateway: Colonial Taiwan and Japanese Expansion in South China and Southeast Asia, 1895–1945," November 15 at Pitt.

via @seijishirane

The University of Pittsburgh will host Dr. Seiji Shirane and his talk "Imperial Gateway: Colonial Taiwan and Japanese Expansion in South China and Southeast Asia, 1895–1945" on November 15, part of the center's Asia Now Fall Lecture Series.

This talk examines how Japanese colonizers and Taiwanese subjects transformed colonial Taiwan—the sub-tropical island Japan acquired from China in 1895—into a staging ground for imperial expansion across the East and South China seas. Taking advantage of Taiwan's proximity and cultural affinities with South China and Southeast Asia, Japanese colonial leaders innovated new strategies to compete with the Chinese and Western powers for regional hegemony. They mobilized Taiwanese overseas as economic and cultural brokers in the pre-war period (1895–1937) and as military personnel during the Asia-Pacific wars (1937–45). Studying the intricate ties between colonial governance and international relations helps us transcend the conventional emphasis on two-way relations between Japan's home islands and each of its colonies. A regional approach to Taiwan allows us to recover transnational networks often neglected due to divisions in area studies. Japanese imperialism was a contested process among not only state agencies but also mobile colonial subjects whose interests did not easily map on to national, local, or ethnic categories. The overseas Taiwanese in particular challenge prevailing assumptions of imperial hierarchies. Gradations of power and categories of identity—colonizer and colonized—were much more fluid outside Taiwan's territorial borders.

It runs from 4:30 to 5:45 pm in 211 Lawrence Hall, and is free and open to members of the Pitt community who abide by the university's health guidelines.

Charles Yu with Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures, October 18.

Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures will present an online discussion with author Charles Yu on October 18 as part of its Ten Evenings series.

The author of four books and numerous television scripts, Charles Yu won the 2020 National Book Award for Interior Chinatown, an ambitious satire about race, pop culture, immigration, assimilation, and escaping roles we are forced to play. Willis Wu doesn’t perceive himself as the protagonist in his own life: he’s merely Generic Asian Man. Sometimes he gets to be Background Oriental Making a Weird Face or even Disgraced Son, but always he is relegated to a prop. Yet every day, he leaves his tiny room in a Chinatown SRO and enters the Golden Palace restaurant, where Black and White, a procedural cop show, is in perpetual production. He’s a bit player here, too, but he dreams of being Kung Fu Guy—the most respected role that anyone who looks like him can attain. Or is it?

Tickets for the 7:30 pm event are available online for $10 to $15. It's a virtual event, and those who purchase tickets can watch it anytime for one week.

"Belonging Otherwise: Chinese Undergraduate Students at South Korean Universities," November 1 at Pitt.

via moreweeping

The University of Pittsburgh's Asian Studies Center will present Dr. Jiyeon Kang and her talk "Belonging Otherwise: Chinese Undergraduate Students at South Korean Universities" on November 1, part of the center's Asian Now Fall Lecture Series.

Following the South Korean government’s drive in the 1990s for globalization and deregulation of higher education, Korean universities aggressively recruited Chinese students as both symbolic and economic resources. The number of Chinese students studying at Korean universities consequently increased 57-fold between 2000 and 2019 (from 1,200 to 68,537). This presentation will share the findings from interviews with some of these Chinese students, who chose South Korea with academic and cultural aspirations but often found that neither Korean students nor the university itself welcomed them into classes or communities. As a result, Chinese students have not adapted to Korean university in the ways imagined by the normative framework, but instead make their study-abroad experience livable by constituting material, technological, and imagined modalities of belonging. These modalities of “belonging otherwise” reveal South Korea as a node of commercialized, non-elite, inter-Asian student mobility, and illuminate Chinese students’ strategies in this new regime of study abroad.

It runs from 4:30 to 5:45 pm in 211 Lawrence Hall, and is free and open to members of the Pitt community who abide by the university's health guidelines.

"Digging Cambodian Rock: Global Media Archaeologies of Popular Music," October 27 at Pitt.

via KUNR, story by NPR.

The University of Pittsburgh's Asian Studies Center will present David Novak and his talk "Digging Cambodian Rock: Global Media Archaeologies of Popular Music" on October 27, part of its Asia Now Fall Lecture Series.

Thinking toward a media archaeology of global popular music, this presentation will trace the contemporary circulation of “golden era” 1960s and 1970s "Cambodian Rock." The lecture seeks to contextualize and historicize revivals of pre-Khmer Rouge pop recordings through the mediated movements, dubs, and remixes of cassette tapes among North American independent labels and the activities of online archivists and heritage centers in present-day Cambodia, which helped to generate the documentary film Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten, the play Cambodian Rock Band, and the Los Angeles based group Dengue Fever. Drawing from ethnographic interviews with contemporary preservationists and reissue labels in Cambodia, California, Oregon, and Massachusetts, the lecture considers the role of music in memories of genocide and war, the importance of physical materials in the global recognition of Southeast Asian history, and the ethical politics of media access in the transition to a digital archive.

It runs from 4:30 to 5:45 pm in 211 Lawrence Hall, and is free and open to members of the Pitt community who abide by the university's health guidelines.