Association for Asian Studies Western Conference Screening Recap

The 48th annual Western Conference of the Association for Asian Studies was held between October 22-23 at California State University, Northridge. The theme of this year’s conference was “Translating Asia: Past, Present, & Future.”

Northridge experienced a large 6.7 magnitude earthquake back in January 17, 1994. I may be mixing up my earthquakes, but I seem to recall being home in San Diego during that time. Duck and cover is something ingrained in every California’s mind, but I remember distinctly being frozen in fear in my bed as the quake went on for just under a minute. The earthquake’s epicenter was just two miles away from CSUN’s campus, and it caused $400 million dollars in damages; the rebuilding project was finally completed in 2007. As a student at Stanford in the mid-90′s, I saw how long it took for repairs to be completed; it seemed every quarter there was another building that was closed to do earthquake repairs or retrofitting.

We had two screenings at the conference. Both screenings had mostly academics in the crowd. This contrasted with our previous two screenings. At UC Santa Barbara, the crowd was mostly students, whereas at the South Pasadena Public Library, it was primarily members from the community in attendance. We fielded some tough questions from the CSUN academic crowd; that’s good because it keeps us on our toes!

We’ll be seeing many of these conference attendees in just a few months, as we’ll be attending the 2011 Association for Asian Studies National Conference in Hawaii at the end of March. We’ll be part of a panel discussing how we translated Qiu Jin’s works onto the silver screen.

Here are just a few photos from our time at the WCAAS Conference.

WP-SmugMug Plugin: http://tow.com/projects/wordpress/*[[](/batch.download.php?aid=8213345)CSUN sign.](http://photos.tow.com/1061953651FLsX3-L.jpg) *Outside Sierra Hall at Cal State Northridge. *Books and DVDs for sale. *Our first screening at CSUN. *Rae introduces the film to the crowd at the Western Conference Association of Asian Studies. *Asking questions during our second screening at CSUN.