MCLC: Red Classics symposium funding

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: Li Peters <Li.Peters at du.edu>
Subject: Red Classics symposium funding
***********************************************************

CALL FOR APPLICATIONS FROM CURRENT DOCTORAL AND EARLY CAREER POSTDOCTORAL
SCHOLARS WORKING IN THE AREA OF CHINA’S ‘RED CLASSICS’ FOR BURSARY TO
ATTEND JULY 18-20TH  2014 SYMPOSIUM AT UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND, AUSTRALIA

A symposium on the topic ‘The Making and Remaking of China’s “Red
Classics”: Politics, Aesthetics and Mass Culture in Literary Icons of
Socialism and their Contemporary Remakes’ will be held at the School of
Languages and Comparative Cultural Studies at the University of
Queensland, Brisbane, Australia as part of a research project involving
scholars from Australia, Canada, China, Germany, Taiwan and the US.
Thanks to generous funding support from the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation,
bursaries have just been made available for 3 doctoral students/early
career researchers to attend the symposium as well as participate in a
masterclass at which they can discuss their projects with international
experts in the field including Prof Li Yang, Prof Richard King, Prof Kuiyi
Shen, Prof Chen Xiaomei and Prof Barbara Mittler. More details of the
symposium can be found below.

The successful applicants will receive 4 nights accommodation in Brisbane
and assistance with airfares: US$500 for Australian and New Zealand
applicants and US$1500-2,000 for other international applicants dependent
on relative costs of air travel.

Applicants should send a CV, abstract of current research, letter of
endorsement from supervisor and brief statement of why they wish to attend
by email to rosemary.roberts at uq.edu.au or li.peters at du.edu by June 24 and
will  be notified of the result as soon as possible after that.

For further information about the symposium please contact pro Dr.
Rosemary Roberts (University of Queensland) or Dr. Li Li Peters
(University of Denver) at the email addresses given above.

The symposium is part of a larger project that is bringing together 14
highly qualified scholars from Taiwan, PRC, the US, Canada, Germany and
Australia to collaborate in producing the first collection of
critical/research essays examining the original making and subsequent
multiple re-makings of mainland China’s ‘red classics’: a term that has
recently come to refer to the major works of literature, film, and other
cultural products that were first produced and rose to national prominence
during the early period of communist rule. The workshop will allow the 14
scholars who are contributing chapters to the book to present and discuss
their chapters, thereby promoting international scholarly collaboration
across nations and enhancing the quality of the book project. Our
application also includes funding for bursaries to enable 2-4 postgraduate
students to attend the workshop and an associated master class, thereby
providing a unique learning and networking opportunity for the next
generation of researchers in the field. Description of the Project “Red
Classics” in post-Mao Chinese cultural discourse refers to the major
literary and visual texts produced in the seventeen years from 1949, the
year of the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), to
1966, the year Mao launched the Cultural Revolution; hence they are also
called literature/film of “the Seventeen Years,” or “socialist
literature/culture.” This body of literary and visual texts as a whole
reflects the results of a nationwide, state-sanctioned literary practice
of constructing revolutionary myth in order to legitimize and secure the
rule of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in mainland China. At the same
time the works created models of the socialist new person offering a
vision of how the individual and collective should function in a more
egalitarian, socially considerate and selfless manner. While the thematic
and stylistic potential initially demonstrated in the original sources of
many such texts were rich and diverse, as the political climate in China
changed, works were progressively made to fit into the CCP’s increasingly
homogenized and extremist ideological system through a complex process of
appropriations and revisions. This process reached its extreme in the
Cultural Revolution (1966-76) during which the nation’s cultural landscape
shrank into a single narrow ideological mold dominated by class struggle
and typified by the famous Revolutionary Model Operas (Yangbanxi) whose
ranks included remakes of red classics including Tracks in the Snowy
Forest and The Red Lantern. It is no surprise that after the end of the
Cultural Revolution, this body of ‘socialist realist’ literature was
quickly abandoned, together with Maoist ideology, as the Chinese people
embraced the new era of reforms. The ensuing 1980s saw a rapid economic
expansion, a surge of new modes of literary and artistic experiments, and
quickly shifting literary trends from modernism to postmodernism. In the
1990s and continuing into the new millennium, however, as the country’s
economic reforms continued to expand, new problems emerged including the
ever- greater disparity between rich and poor, and rampant official
corruption. Paralleling this, a significant change occurred in China’s
cultural landscape— a change ironically marked by the return of the
literary and cultural products of “the Seventeen Years,” now elevated to
the status of “Red Classics.” The novels and short stories first published
in “the Seventeen Years” were put back onto the shelves of the now
privately owned bookstores; old films about revolutionary heroes and
heroines were remade into better images and sound-tracks, with Blue Ray
definition, playing in showrooms right next to those playing Batman. Old
revolutionary stories were adapted into household television dramas,
played by stars of kung fu films; and Red songs could be heard from the
government’s conference halls to restaurants to Karaoke houses, and even
in public parks. The reappearance of the Red Classics at multiple points
in China’s recent history attests to their importance as a cultural
phenomenon. This project aims to critically investigate the changing
significance of the red classics at each point of their (re/)emergence in
three key areas: their socio-political and ideological import, their
aesthetic significance and their function as mass cultural phenomenon.