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East Asia by the Book! CEAS Author Talks ft. Fumiko Joo
Past event
Featured Book
The Story of the Peony Lantern
“The Story of the Peony Lantern” by the Chinese author Qu You (1347–1433) traveled across lingual, cultural, and geopolitical borders in early modern East Asia. The original story set in 14th-century Ningbo, China, is a tale of ghostly seduction, murder, and subjugation. Peony Lantern Tales: Ghostly Encounters in the Early Modern Sinosphere by Fumiko Jōo examines the historical moments and sociocultural spaces where Peony Lantern narratives and their writers thrived, following the tale as it moved from Hangzhou literati in the 12th to 14th centuries to an early 19th-century group of Edo playwrights, kabuki theater producers, and publishers. Jōo further explores the tale’s transformation by local scholars of Ningbo in the 18th century and the female writer Arakida Reijo (1732–1806) and her Ise literary circle. This volume incorporates a breadth of sources, from local gazetteers to theater ephemera, to shed light on the cultural life of objects, the collective memory of vanished sites, and the public’s desire to encounter the phantom.
This book will be available for purchase at the event.
About This Event
Peony Lantern Tales: Ghostly Encounters in the Early Modern Sinosphere
BOOK GIVEAWAY!
Score a FREE copy of Fumiko Joo’s book!
The first (6) University of Chicago students (currently enrolled) who register to attend the event will receive their very own copy, compliments of the Center for East Asian Studies! Registrant MUST register using their full name AND UChicago email address and check in on the day of the event. Registrant will receive a confirmation email with instructions on how to retrieve their book from CEAS.
Featured Author
Fumiko Jōo
Fumiko Jōo is Associate Professor of Asian Studies in the Department of Classical and Modern Languages and Literatures at Mississippi State University. Before joining the faculty at Mississippi State, she completed postdoctoral research and teaching at Yale University and Johns Hopkins University. She specializes in early modern Chinese and Japanese literatures, with particular interests in Sino-Japanese cultural exchange, gender, and the supernatural. She is the author of Peony Lantern Tales: Ghostly Encounters in the Early Modern Sinosphere (2025) and coauthor, with Joshua Fogel, of Japanese for Sinologists: A Reading Primer with Glossaries and Translations (2017).
About the Venue
Seminary Co-Op Bookstore
For over 60 years, the Seminary Co-op Bookstores has served as a cultural anchor in and beyond Chicago; as the first not-for-profit bookstore whose mission is bookselling, their stores, which include 57th Street Books, celebrate the power of the browsing experience to inspire curiosity, discovery, and delight.
Visit store pageMore at Seminary Co-Op Bookstore
NaNo 2.0
Ready to Write Your Novel? Say hello to NaNo 2.0—a community-led endeavor that’s keeping the spirit of National Novel Writing Month alive. The goal? Write 50,000 words over the course of November or you can pick any writing project for the month that feels exciting to you! At the Seminary Co-Op Bookstores, we want to support our writerly community by hosting NaNo Drop-ins on November 2, 9, 16, and 30 from 5:30pm to 7:30pm at the Seminary Co-Op (5751 S Woodlawn Ave). Seminary Co-op Board Member Holly Smith (MA Writing) will be at each drop-in and available to be a sounding board for anything that has you stuck. If you want to buy books at a NaNo Drop-in, you will just have to do so before 6pm. Please send any questions about the event to events@semcoop.com. We hope to see you there!
Frances Ferguson - "Records of Reward: Essays on Literature and Value" - Heather Keenleyside
Frances Ferguson will discuss Records of Reward: Essays on Literature and Value. She will be joined in conversation by Heather Keenleyside. A Q&A and signing will follow the discussion.
A Conversation with John Scalzi!
Join us for a conversation and book signing with New York Times Bestselling Science Fiction author John Scalzi! We are so excited to welcome beloved Science Fiction author John Scalzi to the Co-op! John will discuss his newest novel MONSTERS OF OHIO. A Q&A and book signing will follow the conversation. About the Book: Welcome to Richland, Ohio. Things aren't great. The town’s biggest employer is closing shop, and Richland's on the brink. It's where Mike Boyd, with his own set of problems, finds himself returning to after decades away. He's not planning to stay. But Richland has other plans for Mike, his old friend Dave, and a newcomer Andi. They're caught in a swirl of local troubles, private equity, executive theft… and something extremely weird involving Jeremy Keller’s prize cow. Welcome to Richland. Leave your expectations behind. Bring a tarp. About John Scalzi: JOHN SCALZI is one of the most popular science fiction authors of his generation. His debut, Old Man's War, won him the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. His New York Times bestsellers include The Last Colony, Fuzzy Nation, Redshirts (which won the Hugo Award for Best Novel), The Last Emperox, The Kaiju Preservation Society, Starter Villain, When the Moon Hits Your Eye, and The Shattering Peace. Material from his blog, Whatever, has earned him two other Hugo Awards. He lives in Ohio with his wife and daughter. Helpful information: *There is street parking only. There is a parking lot next door to our store but it is NOT ours and we cannot guarantee that you will not be towed. *You may start lining up at 6pm. Doors will open at 6:30pm. *Refund requests will not be accepted after 3pm, 11/04! *If you have a free general admission ticket, you MUST purchase the book at the event to enter the signing line. *Limited seating is available on a first come first serve basis. There will be standing room only once seating is full. If you do require seating, please email mgmt@semcoop.com to reserve a seat. *Additional copies of the book and backlist will be available for purchase at the store during the event.