This is a CDDRL's Special Seminar within our Democracy in Taiwan Program. In this seminar, Dr. Da-chi Liao will reassess Taiwan's political polarization and make her prediction regarding Taiwan's upcoming legislative and presidential elections.

Dr. Liao is Professor of Graduate Institute of Political Science at National Sun Yat-sen University, Taiwan. She is currently a Fulbright Scholar at The Hoover Institution, Stanford University.

Professor Liao is former President of Taiwanese Political Science Association. She received her Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Michigan in 1990. Since then, she has been involving in an international project entitled "Democracy & Local Governance," which has been conducted in more than twenty-six countries at least once throughout the last fifteen years. Dr. Liao has been the project leader of Taiwan since 1993. Her other research interests include issues related to democratization, constitutional development, and legislative institutions. Recently, she is utilizing a new research tool, data-mining, developed by information technologists, to uncover politics beneath the surface.

Dr. Liao has published about 40 refereed articles in journals such as Issues & Studies, Journal of Contemporary China, Chinese Political Science Review, Taiwanese Political Science Review, Sun Yat-sen Journal of Social Sciences, Taiwan Journal of Democracy.

Tsuyoshi Hasegawa is a professor of history at UC Santa Barbara. His book, "Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan", was published by Harvard University Press in 2005. It has won various awards, including the Robert H. Ferrell Book Prize, sponsored by the Society of Historians of American Foreign Relations, and the Yomiuri Yoshino Sakuzo Prize. Earlier this year, Stanford University Press published a volume edited by Professor Hasegawa, "The End of the Pacific War: Reappraisals."

This event is cosponsored by the Department of History, CREEES, and FSI.

An additional seminar will be held on May 7th at 3:15pm, Bldg 200, Room 307. Professors Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, Barton Bernstein, and David Holloway will be commenting on Professor Hasegawa's work.

Hendrik M.J. Maier received traditional training in philology and textual criticism of the languages of Indonesia at the University of Leiden, the Netherlands, where he held the chair of Malay and Indonesian Language and Literature before moving to UC Riverside in 2003. His major interests are the languages and literatures of Indonesia and Malaysia, which he now tries to understand within wider networks, in particular the socio-political and cultural interactions within the Southeast Asian region. Some of his secondary interests include so-called "colonial literature."

This talk will be in Japanese only.

Professor Kawamura is a specialist in colonial literature. His publications include Kankoku, Chôsen, Zainichi o yomu (Inpakuto Shuppankai, 2003). Ever since his debut as a literary critic in 1980, Kawamura has been opening up new vistas in the critical perspective on modern Japan. Whether writing about colonial literature or Japan's minority writers, Kawamura has revealed the central importance of cultural domains previously dismissed as marginal to modern Japanese history; his work has had a profound impact on the very definitions of "Japan" and "Japanese literature."

Kurahashi Yumiko's 1985 novel Amanonkoku Okanki (Record of a Round-Trip Journey to Amanonkoku) has been described as fantasy science fiction, feminist literature, political satire, and futurist picaresque. Whatever label one might pin on this novel, its thematic and structural emphasis on sexual adventures as an engine of storytelling is undisputable. The tale centers on the missionary P's journey to and from the land of men on earth to the land of women on Amanonkoku in the heavens, where his mission is to civilize and convert them to the monotheistic (monokami) belief system of men. By the end of the novel, however, the outer space travels of P turn out really to have been inner space travels in a woman's body; consequently, the imperialist plot to control Amanonkoku is revealed also to have been a bio-political plot about reproduction, sexuality, and gender difference.

Kurahashi's satire interrogates the politics of both feminism and anti-feminism even as it never lets the violence of presumptive male superiority off the hook. Professor Knighton will read Amanonkoku Okanki against the backdrop of Kurahashi's late-1960s Anpo and Beiheiren-era protests novel, Sumiyakist Q no Boken (The Adventures of Sumiyakist Q). In doing so, in today's historical moment of feminist backlash in Japan, American exceptionalism, and globalized military and religious war-mongering, Kurahashi's work takes on an almost prescient contemporary relevance.

Mary A. Knighton received her M.A. and Ph.D. in English (American Literature), as well as an M.A. in Japanese, at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research attends to global Modernism, the relationship between politics and aesthetics, and postwar Japanese literature, with a special interest in women writers and feminist theories of race, class and gender.

This talk considers the Namahage, a famous festival in Akita

Prefecture, exploring how the gaze of the tourist plays a critical

role in shaping the contemporary structure of the event. By

interpreting the festival through the lens of tourism (with its paired

desires to see and to be seen), critical questions are raised with

regard to notions of authenticity, ritual and performance. As part of

this exploration, the theoretical work of folklorist Orikuchi Shinobu

can be deployed with new relevance.

Ambassador Scharioth, who joined the Foreign Service in 1976, previously served as state secretary of the Federal Foreign Office (2002-2006), political director and head of the Political Directorate-General (1999-2002), head of the International Security and North America Directorate (1998-1999), head of the Office of the Foreign Minister (1998), head of the Defense and Security Policy Division at the Federal Foreign Office (1996-1997), and chef de cabinet to the NATO secretary-general in Brussels (1993-1996). In addition, he worked in the International Law Division of the Federal Foreign Office (1990-1993), the German Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York (1986-1990), the Policy Planning Staff of the Federal Foreign Office (1982-1986), the German Embassy in Ecuador (1979-1982), and the Asia Division, Press Division and State Secretary's Office at the Federal Foreign Office (1977-1979).

Ambassador Scharioth holds a master's of arts degree, a law degree and a doctorate from the Fletcher School of Diplomacy.

During the strategic modernization program that the Soviet Union undertook in the 1970s, it deployed a large number of multiple-warhead ballistic missiles. This deployment raised concerns in the United States about vulnerability of its land-based missile force and was one of the factors that contributed to the military buildup that the United States undertook in the late 1970s-early 1980s. The newly available documents that contain evidence of the Soviet missile programs demonstrate that the "window of vulnerability" did not exist and provide some insight into the Soviet modernization program.

Pavel Podvig joined CISAC as a research associate in 2004. Before that he was a researcher at the Center for Arms Control, Energy and Environmental Studies at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT). He worked as a visiting researcher with the Security Studies Program at MIT and with the Program on Science and Global Security at Princeton University, and he taught physics in MIPT's General Physics Department for more than ten years.

Podvig graduated with honors from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology in 1988, with a degree in physics. In 2004 he received a PhD in political science from the Moscow Institute of World Economy and International Relations.

His research has focused on technical and political issues of missile defense, space security, U.S.-Russian relations, structure and capabilities of the Russian strategic forces, and nuclear nonproliferation. He was the head of the Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces research project and the editor of a book of the same title, which is considered a definitive source of information on Russian strategic forces.

The PC business is one of the most aggressive in the world, with operating efficiency a critical factor for success. At the time of the HP/Compaq merger in 2000, both PC businesses were losing money. Now, seven years later, HP has reported a record first quarter for PCs, generating $8.7B in revenue, a 17% year over year growth and delivering 4.7% in operating profit, representing 0.8pt improvement year over year. So, what operating model has HP used to accomplish this turnaround and be ranked #1 in the world today? How are resource deployment decisions made? What are the key supply chain considerations? How does the company manage P&L and balance sheet tensions? How will HP continue to stay ahead?

As Vice President and General Manager for HP's Consumer Desktop PC Business Unit, Richard Walker is responsible for a global business that provides desktop PCs and digital entertainment centers to consumer markets. Immediately prior to his current assignment, Richard was Vice President of Emerging Markets, responsible for developing long term strategic growth plans for HP's targeted list of emerging countries, with an initial focus on Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC). Richard received his bachelor's degree in business from Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, England. He also serves on the advisory boards for R&D Logic, a San Mateo based life sciences company; Pacific Peninsula Group, a Menlo Park property development company, and SPRIE at Stanford University.