MCLC: Socialist Culture Reconsidered

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: Xiaobing Max Tang <maxtang at umich.edu>
Subject: Socialist Culture Reconsidered
***********************************************************

Socialist Culture in China Reconsidered
October 25 & 26, 2013
The Founders Rooms of the U-M Alumni Center
200 Fletcher Street, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109
Website: 

http://www.ii.umich.edu/ccs/eventsprograms/conferences/socialistcultureinch
inareconsidered

The second event since the inception of the CCS Annual Conference in 2012,
this international conference will provide a platform for scholars to
examine multiple dimensions of socialist cultural production in
twentieth-century China.  It is organized by Xiaobing Tang, Helmut F.
Stern Professor in Modern Chinese Studies and a faculty member of CCS.

Participants from across the US, China, Canada, Germany as well as New
Zealand will present their current research on many topics and objects,
ranging from film to dance to literature and visual arts.  They will look
into the various institutions, theories, practices, models, and global
connections that sustained cultural production of the socialist era, a
time period far more extended than the decade of the Cultural Revolution.
The goal is to gain a better understanding of not only a highly complex
and experimental period of history, but also the competing forces shaping
contemporary Chinese society and culture.

The event is open and free to the public.

Program

Friday, October 25 

9:00 - 9:30        Opening remarks

9:30 - 11:30      Panel One: On and Off the Silver Screen

Lingzhen Wang (Brown University): Women's Cinema in Socialist China:
Institutional Practice, Feminist Culture, and Contingent Authorship.
Jason McGrath (University of Minnesota - Twin Cities): Creating a
Socialist Cinema: The Address of the Audience in Mao-Era Films
Paul Clark (University of Auckland, New Zealand): Projecting the New: Film
Careers in Socialist China
Discussion led by Wang Zheng (University of Michigan)
   

11:30 - 1:00       Lunch break

1:00 - 2:30         Panel Two: New Subjects, New Realities

Li Yang (Peking University): The Aura of Yan’an: New Cultural Forms,
Historical Consciousness, and New Peasants
Luo Gang (East China Normal University): On the Rich Ambiguity of
Socialist Cultural Politics: “A Young Man Comes to the Organizational
Department" and the 1950s
Discussion led by Xiaobing Tang (University of Michigan)
     

2:30 - 3:00         Coffee break

3:00 - 4:30         Panel Three: In Search of Modern Dance

Eva S. Chou (CUNY, Baruch College):  Ballet in the Socialist Era: Swan
Lake and New Year’s Sacrifice
Emily Wilcox (University of Michigan): Creating a National Dance:
Socialist Performance Culture in the 1950s
Discussion led by Clare Croft (University of Michigan)
   

Saturday, October 26

10:00 - 12:00     Panel Four: Artistic Visions and Practices

Juliane Noth (Freie Universität Berlin, Germany): The Conception of
Socialist Landscape Painting in the Work of Shi Lu, 1958–1962
Christine Ho (Stanford University): Art of the Collective, Collectivity as
Art
Xiaobing Tang (University of Michigan): How Was Socialist Visual Culture
Created
Discussion led by Martin Powers (University of Michigan)

    
12:00 - 1:30      Lunch break

1:30 - 3:00        Panel Five: To a World Cinema
                          and Literature

Krista Van Fleit Hang (University of South Carolina): An Indian Outcast in
China: Global Socialism and National Forms in 1950s Asian Cinema
Paola Iovene (University of Chicago): Translation Zones: World Literature
in the Chinese Literary Economy
Discussion led by Ban Wang (Stanford University)

    
3:00 - 3:30         Coffee break

3:30 - 5:00         Panel Six: Film as Communal Experience

Tina Mai Chen (University of Manitoba, Canada): Village Projections: Rural
Film Practices and Socialist Subjectivity
Nicole Huang (University of Wisconsin - Madison): Vocal Passing: Radio and
Communal Film Culture in the 1970s
Discussion led by Paul Clark (University of Auckland, New Zealand)

   
5:00                  Concluding remarks