Events at: Asian Centre Auditorium

Press Start: Culture, Industry, and Innovation in Japanese Gaming

Press Start is a two-day conference on Japanese videogames to be held at The University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. The event will bring together scholars, players, and game industry representatives for a wide variety of panels and discussions relating to Japanese gaming culture. Press Start is completely free and open to the public […]

An Evening with Shauna Singh Baldwin

“MIND-DANCING WITH LANGUAGE” A special evening with the acclaimed novelist Shauna Singh Baldwin Languages our families brought from the old country, and that welled up from this land, whisper in the rhythms of our stories. Will you stumble or glide with this tool you’ve received, this English language so filled with biblical references, colonial constructs, and […]

Courting Komachi: A Noh Demonstration

Join us for an evening with master Konparu noh actor and cultural envoy Yamai Tsunao. A brief performance and demonstration will be complemented by short presetations from specialists, practiconers, and researchers including Maiko Behr, Stefania Burk, Christina Laffin and Colleen Lanki. We will close the evening with a preview of the noh and chamber opera […]

Wendi Adamek on Fathers and Daughters in Chinese Buddhism

In Mothers and Sons in Chinese Buddhism, Alan Cole traced the development of a distinctive Buddhist discourse on filial piety. He focussed exclusively on mothers and sons, but there is much that could be said about Buddhist father-daughter relationships. Most famously, father-daughter conflict and reconciliation drives the plot of The Precious Scroll of Incense Mountain, […]

Buddhism and the Ecological Challenge

Buddhism, like many forms of “spirituality,” tends to be divorced from the needs for collective social transformation. As Buddhism interacts with democratic societies, there is an opportunity for an integration of personal and public via the traditional technologies of “waking up.” David argues that there is an important parallel between what Buddhism says about our […]

Buddhism, Christianity and the Silk Road: A Talk with Dr. Frances Wood

In celebration of UBC Library’s centennial, author and former British Library curator of Chinese collections Dr. Frances Wood, will speak on the movement of ideas and icons across Central Asia facilitated by the Silk Road trade routes. The rich variety of religions was evidenced by the great cache of manuscripts discovered in Dunhuang in 1900. […]

Documentary Screening of “Minako: Last Geisha of the Yoshiwara”

Minako: Last Geisha of the Yoshiwara Documentary movie on the last living geisha of the Yoshiwara district Brief presentations on geisha and Edo culture by director Makoto Yasuhara and Edo specialist Kenji Watanabe, followed by a screening of Minako   Minako: Last Geisha of the Yoshiwara Director Makoto Yasuhara spent six years getting to know […]

The Mindful Teen: Secular and Buddhist Mindfulness for Adolescents

Sponsor: The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Program in Buddhism and Contemporary Society Mindfulness means “Paying attention in a particular way: On purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally” (Kabat-Zinn). The field of mindfulness-based interventions for adolescents is currently exploding. Emerging mindfulness-based interventions for youth are showing significant promise in helping adolescents to cope […]

Buddhism and Global Secularisms

The standard modernization-as-westernization narrative of Buddhism closely parallels the twentieth-century narrative of secularism as a global, linear, and uniform process of religion waning and becoming less relevant to public life. The processes of disenchantment, social differentiation, displacement, and the growing dominance of instrumental reasoning and scientific thinking, according to this narrative, would gradually come to occupy the spaces once inhabited […]

Contested Governance, Competing Nationalisms, and Disenchanted Publics: Kashmir beyond Intractability?

Spiralling unrest has continued in the Kashmir Valley since the July 2016 killing of the home-grown Hizbul commander Burhan Wani by the security forces. Never before has the Valley seen such unrelenting violence, literally on a daily basis. And never before has the Valley witnessed Kashmiri people from all walks of life and from every […]

Where Is Korea Going?: Thoughts From Korea’s Leading Philosopher

Dr. Young-Oak Kim 金容沃, popularly known as “Master Doh-ol 檮杌先生,” is widely considered as the leading contemporary philosopher in South Korea. Dr. Kim has sold over 3 million copies of his 75 monographs, making him the best-selling book author of all time. His works cover a wide array of topics, including philosophy, history, medicine, religion, […]

India’s Innovation Journey — Scripted Digitally

Abstract: India embarked on a Telecom Revolution in the 1980’s under Rajiv Gandhi’s National Technology Mission , which was led by Sam Pitroda.  Combined with economic reforms, this journey paved the way for several other innovations and transformatory changes in subsequent decades.  This talk will present a ringside view of that journey, along with present […]

Canada at 150: Trauma, Memory and the Story of Canada

Artists’ Roundtable Date: September 29, 2017 Time: 3:00PM – 5:00PM Location: Asian Centre Auditorium, 1871 West Mall Join artists curator Raghavendra Rao K.V., and members of the South Asian Canadian Histories Association to explore this artistic intervention in the story of Canada at 150+. Sameer Farooq’s work for the exhibition, entitled Pouf, Sausage, Weight, Arc […]

Liu Case RoomSplane Lecture in Social Policy: Poverty, Basic Income and Social Policy with Dr. David Piachaud

Watch the recording of the Splane Lecture below: Join us at Dr. David Piachaud’s talk on “Poverty, Basic Income, and Social Policy,” as part of the 2018 Dr. Richard B. Splane Lecture in Social Policy. Thursday, March 15th 5:30 pm – 7:30 pm  Light refreshments provided during the reception. New Venue! Asian Centre Auditorium, 1871 West […]