Visual Culture in Modern China

A workshop sponsored by the Simpson Center for the Humanities, the East Asian Studies Center, and the China Program at the University of Washington

Wednesday, May 28

Opening Session (5:30, Kane Hall 110)

• Opening remarks
  Kathleen Woodward, University of Washington
  Yomi Braester, University of Washington
• Keynote speech (in conjunction with the Forum on Public Spaces & the Public Sphere, Institute for Transnational Studies)
  Wu Hung, University of Chicago: “Monumentality of Time: Giant Clocks, the Drum Tower, the Clock Tower.”

Thursday, May 29

Panel 1 (Parrington Commons, 9:00-10:30)

• Madeleine Dong Yue, University of Washington:
  “The Chinese Modern Girl as Spectacle and Caricature”
• Lai Delin, University of Chicago:
  “The Design of A Modern Chinese Monument: The Competition for Sun Yat-sen’s Mausoleum”
• Yomi Braester, University of Washington:
  “Vision as a National Symbol: The Spirit of the Orient, the Science of Perspective, and the Formation of a Pictorial Idiom in the 1930s”

Panel 2 (Parrington Commons, 10:45-12:15)

• William Schaefer, University of Minnesota:
  “Shadows, Ruins, Landscape: Photography, Writing, & Shanghai’s Projected Past”
• John Zou, Bates College:
  “The Singing Body: Mei Lanfang and the Visuality of Peking Opera”
• Kristine Harris, SUNY-New Paltz:
  “Reflecting on ‘Double Films’ in 1930s China”

Panel 3 (Parrington Commons, 1:45-3:45)

• Robert Chi, SUNY-Long Island:
  “High Maoism: Cinema in China, 1949-1979”
• Nicole Huang, University of Wisconsin-Madison:
  “Listening to Films: Cinematic Cultures in 1970s and ’80s China”
• Ban Wang, Rutgers University:
  “Photographical History, Experience, and the Aura: Good Old Days Are Here”
• Daniel B. Abramson, University of Washington: “Space and Face: Some Chinese Challenges to Global Discourse on the Architecture of the City

Panel 4 (Parrington Commons, 4:15-6:15)

• Wu Hung, University of Chicago:
  “Face of Authority: Mao’s Portrait on Tiananmen”
• Megan Ferry, Union College:
  “Advertising, Consumerism and Nostalgia for the New Woman in Contemporary China”
• Zhong Xueping, Tufts University:
  “Understanding Television Drama and Its Production in the Age of Social and Economic Transformation”
• Claire Conceison, University of California – Santa Barbara:
  “Framed Foreigners: The Promotion and Consumption of American ‘Stars’ on Chinese Stage and Screen”

Friday, May 30

Panel 5 (Parrington Commons, 9:00-10:50)

• Chris Berry, UC-Berkeley:
  “Postsocialist Realism: Jishizhuyi in Chinese Cinema from Neighbors to Xiao Wu”
• Gang Xu, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign:
  “Devils in the Great Wall: The Violence of (Visual) Representation.”
• Robin Visser, Valparaiso University:
  “Architecture in Motion: Visualizing Urban Landscapes in Contemporary China”
• Carlos Rojas, University of Florida:
  “After-Images of the Flesh: On Corporal Vestiges, Urban Ruins, and Visual Memory in Contemporary Beijing.”

Concluding discussion (Parrington Commons, 11:00-12:15)

• Observations by scholars at the University of Washington
• Cross-periodical comparisons: a discussion