Event Category Archives: Featured Events

The Politics of Common Reading Vernacular Knowledge and Everyday Technics in China, 1894–1954

What did common readers read in the midst of the revolutions that punctuated China’s long Republic (1894-1954)? How did they manage the challenges of the era—from new technologies to novel diseases, from institutional failure to commercial globalization? What did they know and how did they know it? These are the questions that animate The Politics […]

Lights, Camera, Culture: A Night of Student Cinema & Multilingual Storytelling

You are warmly invited to walk the red carpet and celebrate an exciting evening of student creativity, film artistry, and multilingual storytelling. Join us for the premiere showcase of short films produced by students from CHIN 485: Contemporary Chinese Fiction in Film, together with special participation from UBC Student Association of Sinology (漢學社) and Vancouver […]

Between Dusk and Dawn: Forugh Farrokhzad and the Art of Living in Between

The Alireza Ahmadian Lecture in Iranian and Persianate Studies presents: Between Dusk and Dawn: Forugh Farrokhzad and the Art of Living in Between on April 18, 2026. This presentation brings together Forugh Farrokhzad’s poetry, film, letters, interviews, and prose to offer a portrait of a writer who reshaped modern Iranian literature by inhabiting its in-between […]

Forging Empire: Networks, Encounters, and Contestation in the Early Modern World

This talk is free and open to the public. Registration is required. Date & Time: Thursday, April 23, 2026 | 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM (PT) Location: Room 120, C.K. Choi Building, 1855 West Mall, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z2   Speakers Munkh-Erdene Lkhamsuren (National University of Mongolia & University of Cambridge) Azfar Moin (University of […]

Screening of “Like the Dyer’s Hand”

Professor Chia-ying Yeh (1924-2024) taught pre-modern Chinese literature in the Department of Asian Studies at UBC from 1969 to 1989 and was a Member of the Royal Society of Canada. She was also a Member of the Central Research Institute of Culture and History of China and Director of the Research Institute of Chinese Poetry […]

Iranians before Iran: Identity and the Safavid Diaspora in Mughal India

The Alireza Ahmadian Lecture in Iranian and Persianate Studies presents: Iranians before Iran: Identity and the Safavid Diaspora in Mughal India on May 21, 2026. What did it mean to be “Iranian” before the rise of the modern nation of Iran? Critics of Iranian nationalism have long shown how the political and social purchase of […]