Conference Examines East Asia’s Century-Old Involvement With Olympics

“The Olympics in East Asia” will be the theme of a campus conference on Friday and Saturday, Oct. 3 and 4.

The conference, subtitled “Nationalism, Regionalism and Globalism on the Center Stage of World Sports,” is sponsored by the Council on East Asian Studies, part of The MacMillan Center at Yale, and the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Hong Kong. It was organized by professors William W. Kelly of Yale and Susan Brownell of the University of Missouri-Saint Louis.

The organizers write: “The 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics have brought East Asia to the center stage of the global Olympic movement, in celebration and in controversy. However, East Asia’s involvement in the Olympics is century-old, and the Olympic Games, summer and winter, have been held in Japan, South Korea and China a total of five times in recent decades. This international symposium brings together scholars from three continents to consider the historical contributions of East Asian nations to the Olympics and the impact of the Olympics on these East Asian societies.”

There will be two sessions: “Japan, Korea and East Asian Olympic History,” on Friday, 2-5:30 p.m. in the Luce Hall auditorium, 34 Hillhouse Ave.; and “China and the East Asian Olympic Future,” on Saturday, 9 a.m.-12:30 p.m. in Rm. 101 of the Anthropology Building, 10 Sachem St. A reception will follow the Friday session in the second-floor lounge of Luce Hall.

Featured speakers will include a staff member of the Beijing Olympic Organizing Committee and sportscasters from China.

The conference is free and open to the public. A list of speakers can be found online at http://research.yale.edu/eastasianstudies/olympicsposter.pdf. For further information, call (203) 432-3428 or send e-mail to anne.letterman@yale.edu.