KU students place at the 27th Annual Heartland Japanese Speech Contest

Congratulations to our JPN 564 students Jean Duperon, Kevin Reppar, and Aaron Moorman for placing at the 27th Annual Heartland Japanese Speech Contest! The contest was held at Johnson County Community College on March 8th, 2025. 

Speech: 1st place - Jean Duperon

        2nd place - Kevin Reppar

JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test) grammar and vocabulary online quiz N3 level: 1st place - Aaron Moorman

Audience Trivia quiz: 2nd place - Jean Duperon.

The Society for Ming Studies Announces Keith McMahon Geiss Hsu Book Prize Winner

The Society for Ming Studies’ Geiss Hsu Book Prize Selection Committee announced that it has awarded this year’s prize to to Keith McMahon for his book Saying All that Can be Said: The Art of Describing Sex in Jin Ping Mei. 

The committee shared the following statement:

In his magisterial Saying All that Can be Said: The Art of Describing Sex in Jin Ping Mei, senior scholar Keith McMahon brings fresh perspectives to one of Chinese literature’s most read and researched novels. First, drawing on his wide-ranging knowledge of literary and medical works related to sex spanning multiple genres from both earlier and later time periods, McMahon offers a sharper historical contextualization of Jinpingmei than is common and does much to show what is distinctive to the novel. Second, building on decades of research, McMahon insightfully analyzes specific language choices throughout the novel, arguing persuasively that the author of Jinpingmei reveled in linguistic exuberance, both playing with words and expressions, and purposely pushing them in innovative and frequently disruptive directions. Third, and perhaps most crucially, McMahon demonstrates thatJinpingmei’s description of sex varies markedly according to the women’s familial/social status; that is, the novel does not depict sexual activities in a monolithic fashion. Past scholarship has shown that the novel as a whole may be considered an extended and often rambunctiously excoriating commentary on distinction and difference in the late Ming period, ranging from clothing, housing, and furnishings to official rank, social standing, and moral probity. In Saying All that Can be Said, McMahon masterfully demonstrates that the same narrative and linguistic flourishes mark Jinpingmei’s treatment of the most intimate elements of life in Ming China. 

The prize will be awarded at the Society for Ming Studies’ Annual Meeting, which takes place at the Association for Asian Studies’ Conference in Columbus, Ohio, on March 14 from 7 – 9 p.m. in the Morrow Room of the Hyatt Regency Columbus.