Classics In/Out of Asia

Piku (2015), an Indian film directed by Shoojit Sircar, offers a feminist reading of modern Hindu womanhood that models - in a new, globalized manner - the transitional phase between puberty and marriage where parthenoi are positioned in Greco-Roman comedy. In Piku, Sarcar adapts on-going exchanges between Indian and Greco-Roman cultures (e.g. Kalidasa’s fifth century C.E. Abhijnanamsakuntalam) (Stephens and Vasunia 2010, Hall and Vasunia 2010).

In her Eidolon article introducing the Asian and Asian American Classical Caucus, Stephanie Wong writes regarding her engagement with the field, “I might not have looked like a white person, but if I studied Classics, my brain could be a white person’s brain” (2019). While the pursuit of the “white person’s brain” may be a familiar motivation for many, such a narrative contextualizes a relationship with the ancient Mediterranean world in terms of one’s place, as a person of color, within a white-majority society.

Diaolou are houses or structures with watchtower characteristics that are unique to the Kaiping region of Guangdong province, China.

“I fluctuate between feelings of reality and unreality. I am neither Christian nor a Buddhist. Nor do I possess great self-control. I find myself stranded in a strangely mechanized and standardized, homogenous environment. I feel this most keenly in highly civilised America, and especially in New York.”

--Yayoi Kusama in her autobiography, Infinity Net (2003)

There is increasing interest in the reception of ancient Mediterranean slavery in later periods (Fuente 2020), and in the insights that bringing different manifestations of the institution in dialogue can produce (Peralta 2017). This paper will address the little-known reception of Roman slave law in early modern China with a particular focus on the relationship between servitude and gender in Macau.