Ron’s report:

The academic conference I attended in Shanghai in December was titled The International Conference on East Asian Colonialism and Literature (東亞殖民主義與文學). Its focus was on Manchukuo in the 1930s and 1940s.  I gave some opening remarks and then presented my paper on Japanese farmers who were sent to Manchuria, Chinese territory then occupied by Japan, in order to build Japanese villages in the countryside. That research should be published later this year.

Our host was East China Normal University (華東師範大學), a strong research university. In the photo below at the extreme right you can see the organizer, Dr. Liu Xiaoli (劉曉麗). She was a Visiting Scholar here at Suffolk two years ago, invited by the Rosenberg Institute and hosted by our Department of History. Our academic collaboration is a concrete example of the cooperation between Suffolk and East China Normal, and one of the positive outcomes of having international scholars on our campus.

When the photo was taken, she was showing us the campus and surrounding area, when we chanced on this seller of cotton candy at a children’s park. Wow! I love cotton candy. On the extreme left is Chen Shih (陳實), another conference organizer, and next to me is Professor Jonghyun Lee of Bridgewater State University, a conference participant.

L to R: Chen Shih (conference organizer); Professor Jonghyun Lee (Bridgewater State University), Ron Suleski, Liu Xiaoli (conference organizer).