Shingo Fujii
The School of Arts and Humanities at UT Dallas has scheduled a guitar concert and a talk this week that explore intersections between Asian and American cultures.
On Thursday, April 5, at 5:30 p.m. in the Jonsson Performance Hall, guitarist and composer Shingo Fujii from Japan will be joined by UT Dallas faculty members Enric Madriguera and Eddie Healy for a concert that blends the sounds of East and West.
“Fujii is an East meets West kind of composer. He spent five years in Spain studying with the greats there,” Madriguera said.
Fujii will perform his own music, as well as an arrangement of the Beatles tune Yesterday by composer Toru Takemitsu, who is deemed a “treasure of Japan.”
“Since the last time Fujii came in the spring of 2009, we have not had such a variety of guitarists on our stage working on the music of one composer. Fujii brings people and players together,” added Madriguera.
Performers in the concert will also include students from UT Dallas, Collin College and the Blue House Group – a community-based youth ensemble. The concert is free and open to the public.
Peter Hershock
On Friday, April 6, Peter Hershock will give a talk titled, In Pursuit of Equity: Globalization and Higher Education.
This talk will compare attitudes toward higher education in Asian cultures, with the “American ideal of educating for greater equity,” which Hershock argues is impractical without rethinking notions of diversity.
Hershock is Coordinator of the Asian Studies Development Program at the East-West Center in Honolulu, Hawaii, and was trained in both Western and Asian philosophy at Yale University and the University of Hawaii, respectively.
Alongside his work designing and implementing faculty development programs aimed at globalizing undergraduate humanities and social science curricula, his research has focused on using Asian philosophical perspectives to address such contemporary issues as technology, human rights, and the role of values in cultural and social change.
The talk begins at noon in the McDermott Suite, McDermott Library. Email asiacenter@utdallas.edu to RSVP.