International Symposium

Intercultural Studies for a Global Age: Principles, Methodology, Practice

This symposium explores the ways in which we can remap and reorganize a transdisciplinary field of intercultural studies that would go beyond the current field of cultural studies while preserving and reorienting some of its valuable insights within a global reference frame.  Topics include: current concepts of culture operative in various academic and nonacademic fields; the main guiding principles of intercultural studies and practices and their cognitive and ethical implications; the mutual feedback loops between intercultural studies, comparative literature, translation studies, and other relevant fields in the humanities, arts and social sciences; the development of new institutional and curricular frameworks as well as new information and communication technological platforms for intercultural studies.

Please click here for more information.

Forgetting and Othering: Representing the War of Resistance

Xiaojue Wang

Rutgers University

Forgetting and Othering: Representing the War of Resistance

Xiaojue Wang

Rutgers University

War narratives are products of both memory and amnesia. Neither remembering nor forgetting is inherently good or bad. However, when it comes to ways of dealing with war past, forgetting is often dismissed as the malignant other of remembering, something that needs to be resisted against. This paper considers the politics of forgetting in war cinema and understands forgetting as a constitutive part that connects war and cinema. By examining the intricate figure of the Other Chinese, the paper discusses the representational strategies of forgetting and othering in a range of Chinese films of the War of Resistance against Japan (1937-1945) produced since the 1950s. The divergence in cinematic representations allows us to reconsider wartime and postwar epistemologies of Asia and China’s changing self-positioning in the region and the globe. 

 Xiaojue Wang is Associate Professor of Chinese Literature at Rutgers University.  She received her Ph.D. degree in Comparative Literature at Columbia University. Her research interests are Chinese literature and culture from late imperial to contemporary periods, the cultural Cold War, cultural memories, film and media studies, and comparative literature. She is the author of Modernity with a Cold War Face: Reimagining the Nation in Chinese Literature across the 1949 Divide (Harvard University Asia Center, 2013), which examines the diverse, dynamic cultural practices in mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and overseas across the 1949 Chinese divide, and re-positions modern Chinese literature in the global context of the Cold War. She is currently finishing her second book on the prominent woman writer Eileen Chang and the concept of literature in the making of Chinese modernity.

Her official website: http://asianstudies.rutgers.edu/menu-i/fbaos/41-faculty/faculty-profiles/573-xiaojue-wang

Dr. Luiz Fernando Valente

Professor of Portuguese and Brazilian Studies and Comparative Literature, Brown University

Body, Law, and Desire in Guimarães Rosa's Corpo de Baile

"Body, Law, and Desire in Guimarares Rosa's Corpo de Baile"

(as part of the Romance Languages Colloquium Series)

Dr. Luiz Fernando Valente

Professor of Portuguese and Brazilian Studies and Comparative Literature, Brown University

Body, Law, and Desire in Guimarães Rosa's Corpo de Baile

Luiz Fernando Valente is Professor of Portuguese and Brazilian Studies and Comparative Literature at Brown University. A past President of the American Portuguese Studies Association, Professor Valente cofounded the journal Brasil/Brazil, and he has taught as a visiting professor both in Latin America and at institutions in the United States. The author of more than seventy book chapters and articles, Valente’s books include Mundivivências: leituras comparativas de Guimarães Rosa (2011) and História e ficção: convergências e contrastes (2002), and he is currently finishing a monograph on Euclides da Cunha. His presentation represents part of his research into the role of masculinities and patriarchal order in Brazilian fiction.

 

Type of Event: 

Colloquium

"Dissidence and the Critical Humanities"

(as part of the Willson Research Seminar:  Cultural and Linguistic Identity in the Americas)

Dr. Luiz Fernando Valente

Professor of Portuguese and Brazilian Studies and Comparative Literature, Brown University

Body, Law, and Desire in Guimarães Rosa's Corpo de Baile

Luiz Fernando Valente is Professor of Portuguese and Brazilian Studies and Comparative Literature at Brown University. A past President of the American Portuguese Studies Association, Professor Valente cofounded the journal Brasil/Brazil, and he has taught as a visiting professor both in Latin America and at institutions in the United States. The author of more than seventy book chapters and articles, Valente’s books include Mundivivências: leituras comparativas de Guimarães Rosa (2011) and História e ficção: convergências e contrastes (2002), and he is currently finishing a monograph on Euclides da Cunha. His presentation represents part of his research into the role of masculinities and patriarchal order in Brazilian fiction.

 

Type of Event: 

Colloquium

Come celebrate the Japanese culture with us! There will be food, drink, and fun cultural activities! Bring your friends! The event is open to everyone interested in the Japanese language and culture.

Joe Brown Hall Lobby

Friday, March 30

3:30-4:45PM

Come celebrate the Japanese culture with us! There will be food, drink, and fun cultural activities! Bring your friends! The event is open to everfyone interested in the Japanese language and culture.

Qiu Xiaolong was born in Shanghai, China. He published prize-winning poetry, translation and criticism in Chinese in the eighties, and became a member of the Chinese Writers’ Association. In 1988, he came to the United States as a Ford Foundation Fellow, started writing in English, and obtained a Ph.D. in comparative literature at Washington University.

He is the author of Death of a Red Heroine (2000), A Loyal Character Dancer (2002), When Red Is Black (2004), A Case of Two Cities (2006), Red Mandarin Dress (2007), The Mao Case (2009), Don’t Cry, Tai Lake (2012), Enigma of China (2013), Shanghai Redemption (2015), and Becoming Inspector Chen (in French and Italian, 2016 and 2017) in the critically acclaimed, award-winning Inspector Chen series; a collection of linked stories Years of Red Dust (first serialized in Le Monde, 2010); three poetry translations, Treasury of Chinese Love Poems (2003), Evoking T’ang (2007) and 100 Classic Chinese Poems (2010); and his own poetry collections, Lines Around China (2003) and Poems of Inspector Chen (2016).

Qiu’s books have sold over two million copies worldwide and have been published in 20 languages. He currently lives in St. Louis with his wife and daughter.

The event will include readings by Qiu and a conversation with Nicholas Allen, Franklin Professor of English and director of the Willson Center. It is presented as the Department of Comparative Literature’s annual Betty Jean Craige Lecture. Betty Jean Craige is University Professor Emerita of Comparative Literature and a former director of the Willson Center.

The Global Georgia Initiative presents global problems in local context with a focus on how the arts and humanities can intervene. The series is made possible by the support of private individuals and the Willson Center Board of Friends.