Lectures

High Peaks Pure Earth event

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High Peaks Pure Earth: Ten Years of Tibetan Cyberspace in Translation
Monday, April 8, 2019
6:00pm – 8:00pm
EALAC Lounge (Kent Hall 403)
Columbia University

High Peaks Pure Earth has been dedicated to translating literature, news, and cultural commentary from Tibetan cyberspace for the last decade. Join us for a talk by founding editor Dechen Pemba, followed by a roundtable discussion on the internet as a site of Tibetan cultural production featuring Palden Gyal and Riga Shakya (Columbia University) and with video contributions from poet Tsering Woeser (Beijing) and writer Bhuchung D Sonam (Dharamsala).  With an introduction by Eveline Washul.

Light refreshments will be served. This event is sponsored by the Modern Tibetan Studies program, Columbia University.

Kowallis lectures

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Members might be keen on the series of lectures Jon Kowallis, Chair Professor of Chinese Studies at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney, is delivering in China.  He has just given three lectures for the Zhifang Distinguished Professorial Lecture Series at Fudan University’s Department of Chinese Language and Literature.  Sorry this announcement came so late.  Details can be found here:

https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/0f2EGq11rqhTikeo9ZHrNw

Tomorrow (23 Nov) at Zhejiang University Professor Kowallis will deliver the keynote address “Lu Xun’s Classical-style Poetry and Me.”  The following day Saturday (24 Nov) at Hangzhou Normal University he will present on the topic titled “A Great Discovery.”  This will be followed by another lecture next Tuesday (27 Nov) at the Communication University of China, Beijing, on “Understanding Wild Grass by Talking to Oneself: Lu Xun’s Yecaothrough the Lens of Ziyan Ziyu and the Prism of the Past.”

http://rwsk.zju.edu.cn/dflt/index.php?c=Index&a=detail&catid=49&id=766

https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/Y-z36P8jm7J8bFsv5EUFiw

best,

Wah Guan Lim

Baghdad and Beijing in Book Art

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The Program in Chinese Literature and Culture at EALAC and CSSAAME Journal presents
Baghdad and Beijing in Book Art
a lecture by Sonja Mejcher-Atassi, American University of Beirut.
Thursday, November 1, 2018 6:10pm-7:30pm
403 Kent Hall
Columbia University

This talk focuses on the work of the Iraqi artist Rafa Nasiri (1940-2014) and his autobiographical account Rihlati ila Sin (My Journey to China, 2012). It explores cross-cultural encounters between Baghdad and Beijing in the context of geopolitical change after the Bandung Conference of 1955 and the Iraq Revolution of 1958.

Sonja Mejcher-Atassi is an associate professor of Arabic and comparative literature at the American University of Beirut. She was a fellow in residence at the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin in 2017-18. Her research centers on modern Arabic literature, book culture and art, museum and collecting practices, private libraries, cultural/intellectual history and memory, and aesthetics and politics. Her publications include Rafa Nasiri: Artist Books ed. with May Muzaffar (2016); Reading across Modern Arabic Literature and Art (2012); Museums, Archives and Collecting Practices in the Modern Arab World ed. with John Pedro Schwartz (2012); Writing a ‘Tool for Change’: ‘Abd al-Rahman Munif Remembered (ed.) in MIT EJMES Vol. 7 (2007); in addition to numerous book chapters and journal articles. She is currently working on a biography of the Palestinian writer Jabra Ibrahim Jabra and an edited volume on the Syrian playwright and public intellectual Saadallah Wannous.

Moderated by Professor Lydia H. Liu

Posted by: Harlan Chambers <hdc2116@columbia.edu>

Xinjiang and the Uyghur Question in China Today

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If you are in or around New York, you’re welcome to come to this event, on October 29th at NYU.

Xinjiang and the Uyghur Question in China Today

Roundtable Participants: Jim Millward, Ajinur Settiwaldi, Magnus Fiskejo, and Huang Yifan
Moderated by Rebecca Karl
Monday, October 29, 4-6pm
907 Kimmel Center, NYU

Rebecca E. Karl <rebecca.karl@nyu.edu>
History Department

Stan Lai at SOAS

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Taiwanese playwright and director Stan Lai (Lai Shengchuan), will be speaking at SOAS University of London on Saturday 13 October 2018, 3-5 pm. Free entry. All welcome.

Please see the announcement and Facebook event page below:
https://www.soas.ac.uk/taiwanstudies/events/13oct2018-in-conversation-with-playwright-and-theatre-director-stan-lai-.html
https://www.facebook.com/events/401164937085587/

Regards,

Rossella Ferrari 費萊麗
Reader in Chinese and Theatre Studies
Regional Managing Editor (China), The Theatre Times

Fairbank Center events

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A few recent events we have recorded at the Fairbank Center might be of interest to MCLC subscribers:

Recent Developments in Xinjiang, with Adrian Zenz

https://soundcloud.com/fairbank-center/recent-developments-in-xinjiang-with-adrian-zenz

Speaker: Adrian Zenz, Lecturer in social research methods, European School of Culture & Theology, Germany. Dr. Zenz is author of the recently published paper, ‘”Thoroughly Reforming Them Towards a Healthy Heart Attitude” – China’s Political Re-Education Campaign in Xinjiang,’ (Central Asian Survey 2018).

Moderator: Mark Elliott, Vice Provost, International Affairs, Harvard University

Co-Sponsored by:

Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies
Committee on Inner Asian and Altaic Studies
East Asian Legal Studies Program, Harvard Law School
Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Islamic Studies Program

The End of Concern: Maoist China, Activism, and Asian Studies Panel Discussion

https://soundcloud.com/fairbank-center/the-end-of-concern-maoist-china-activism-and-asian-studies-panel-discussion

Panelists: Continue reading →

Cambria event in Singapore

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Professor Victor Mair (University of Pennsylvania), general editor of the Cambria Sinophone World Series, will be the guest of honor and giving a speech at the Cambria double book launch event for Painting History: China’s Revolution in a Global Context and Gao Xingjian and Transmedia Aesthetics. The event will be held on July 14, 2018 (Saturday) at 2–5 p.m. at iPreciation (Singapore), a premier gallery that showcases the best of modern and contemporary Asian art, including the works of Nobel laureate Gao Xingjian. Attendees will have the opportunity to meet Professor Mair, in addition to authors Mr. Shen Jiawei and Dr. Mabel Lee, who will be giving talks about their books. If you will be in Singapore on this date, please join us for this special event and register now for it. Registration is free.

Celebrity artist Shen Jiawei is not only known for his commissioned portraits of dignitaries, such as Pope Francis and Princess Mary of Denmark, but also his famous history paintings, which are held at the National Museum, Art Museum, and Military Museum in Beijing, as well as in public and private collections around the world. Mr. Shen’s unique experiences and innovative techniques are documented in his new book Painting History: China’s Revolution in a Global Context (edited by Dr. Mabel Lee), which he will discuss at the event. Continue reading →

Seminars in modern Chinese fiction

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Two Seminars in Modern Chinese Fiction at the Lau China Centre, Kings College London
Thursday 7th and Thursday 14th June, 10-12, at Bush House, KCL

The first seminar will consider ‘I Love Dollars’ by Zhu Wen, originally published in Chinese in the late 1990s, and the second ‘The Story of Ah Q ‘ by Lu Xun, first published in Chinese in 1921.

The seminars are presented by journalist and writer Poppy Sebag-Montefiore, will be discussions on short stories from bestselling classics from either end of the 20th century.

Through close reading, the sessions will explore the ways the texts deal with sexuality, patriarchy, filial piety, women, masculinity, the individual, romantic love, society and the state. They will also consider the tone of the writing, the use of humour, parody and the absurd, and consider the ways in which they experiment with the story form. Continue reading →

Sino-British botanical exchanges in the 18th-19th centuries

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I would like to introduce this incoming talk about the botanical interactions between Britain and China in the 18th century which I will co-present on March 24th in Oxford.

Botanical Art, Botanical Commerce: Britain meets China at the Dawn of Modernity
Oxford (United Kingdom) March 24th (12:45)

Speakers:

Former director of the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew Sir Peter Crane, author and expert in the history of science, medicine and culture Jordan Goodman and expert in Sino-British exchanges and China Trade paintings Josepha Richard discuss the John Bradby Blake collection.

Topic:

The Oak Spring Garden Foundation, Virginia, USA, contains the archive of 18th-century East India Company supercargo John Bradby Blake. Blake first visited Canton in 1767/68 as a trader and, before his death in 1773, his collaboration with the Chinese artist Mauk-Sow-U produced over 150 striking and botanically accurate paintings of Chinese plants. These paintings and the associated archives provide details of an interesting life and previously little-known dimensions of late 18th-century social and scientific interactions between the British and Chinese, including British attempts to secure living plants that could prove useful at home and in its colonies. Continue reading →

Dazibao exhibition

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Source: Sup China (11/14/17)
When Words Kill: ‘Big-Character Posters’ Are Testament To Tenacity And Suffering In One Of China’s Darkest Periods
By ELEANOR GOODMAN

In China in Ten Words, translated into English by Allan H. Barr, author Yu Hua gives a trenchant description of big-character posters (大字报 dàzìbào) as he experienced them as a child:

At the outset of the Cultural Revolution “big-character posters” started to appear. Political screeds rendered in clumsily handwritten characters — and now and again some elegantly written ones, too — these were the first acts of the disenfranchised masses in challenging the power of officialdom. Written on broadsheets are big as decent-sized windows and posted on the walls that ran alongside city streets, shorter versions took the form of two sheets of paper mounted one on top of another, while longer ones involved five or six sheets set out in a horizontal row. In the years to follow, these big-character posters would become the largest exhibition of calligraphy China has ever seen: all across the country, in cities and towns, big streets and small, walls were decorated with them. People would gather in the streets and read the posters with undisguised relish, for although they all employed much the same revolutionary rhetoric, they began to criticize officials and their high and mighty ways. Continue reading →

Xu Zhimo event

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I’m one of the organizers for the Xu Zhimo event in New York tomorrow. The reason that we are conducting the event in Chinese is that the event is not in the form of a symposium, but rather readings of Xu’s poems and music tributes. We do have some speeches and readings in English such as the remarks by Dr. Tony Hsu, Xu Zhimo’s grandson and a UN interpreter (on a poem he translated into English). See the event program at:

http://chineselectures.org/program_en.pdf (in English)
http://chineselectures.org/program_chinese.pdf (in Chinese)

For people who are interested, you are welcome to tune in live streaming from 2 to 4:30 pm tomorrow at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYloBzl4EWCXn0pXIOa9SOg/live.

The event description is at http://chineselectures.org/upcoming.html

Yong Ho <ho@un.org>

US-China Poetry Dialogue

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Source: Notes on the Mosquito (10/24/17)
US-China Poetry Dialogue at University of Oklahoma

Xi Chuan and other Chinese and American poets are at the University of Oklahoma for the US-China Poetry Dialog, organized by Jonathan Stalling.

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The first public events will be on the 24th at 10:30 a.m. in OU’s Bizzell Memorial Library and 7 p.m. at Fred Jones Museum of Art. There will also be a reading on the 25th in Eureka Springs, AR, at 7 p.m. at the Writers Colony at Dairy Hollow, and on the 26th in Bentonville, AR at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art at 6 p.m. Continue reading →

Teaching Global Community in an Age of Anti-Immigration

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PODCAST: Teaching Global Community in An Age of Anti-Immigration, with Eileen Chengyin Chow

Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/fairbank-center/teaching-global-community-in-an-age-of-anti-immigration-with-eileen-chow

iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/teaching-global-community-in-age-anti-immigration-eileen/id1255938359?i=1000390848201&mt=2

What role is there for storytelling and roleplay in teaching about Chinatowns and Chinese diasporas?

The “Harvard on China” podcast talks to Eileen Chengyin Chow, Professor in Duke University’s Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies and Co-Director of Duke’s Story Lab, director of the Shewo Institute of Chinese Journalism at Shih Hsin University, and Harvard alum. She is the author of the forthcoming “Chinatown States of Mind,” as well as the co-translator with Carlos Rojas of Yu Hua’s two-volume novel “Brothers” and the co-editor of the “Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas.”

The “Harvard on China” podcast is hosted by James Evans at Harvard’s Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies.

You can subscribe to the “Harvard on China” podcast on iTunes, or listen on Soundcloud, Stitcher, and other podcast apps.