Author: lambrecht

lambrecht

Friday, March 6, 3:00-5:00PM in CEAS 319 (1155 E 60th St)
Ling Zhang (PhD Candidate in Cinema and Media Studies, University of Chicago)
“An Operatic and Poetic Atmosphere (kongqi): Female Voice-over and
Transmediality in Fei Mu’s Spring in a Small Town”

On Friday, March 6, the Art and Politics of East Asia Workshop will meet for a presentation by Ling Zhang, PhD candidate in the Department of Cinema and Media Studies, on a draft of a chapter from her dissertation. The chapter examines the idiosyncratic omniscient female voice-over and audiovisual aesthetic of Fei Mu’s film Spring in a Small Town (1948) in the context of the transmedial milieu of 1940s China, arguing that the voice-over and perspective not only draw inspirations from traditional Chinese opera (xiqu) and folk storytelling conventions, but also coincide with the prevailing trend of voice-over narration in 1940s American film noir and melodrama. The paper further argues that such transmedial and transcultural connections enrich and refresh our understanding of not only the audiovisual aesthetic of Spring in a Small Town, but also broader questions of female subjectivity and gender discourse and the intricate interplay between traditional and modernist art.

A draft of the paper will be available later today at this link. If you have not received the password for the post, please feel free to contact Nicholas Lambrecht at lambrecht at uchicago.edu. Light refreshments will be served at the workshop. We look forward to seeing you on Friday.

lambrecht
미몽 기사 동아일보 19360703 석간3면

Newspaper column on Sweet Dream (Lullaby of Death), 1936

Friday, February 27, 3:00-5:00PM in CEAS 319 (1155 E 60th St)
Hyunhee Park (PhD Candidate in EALC, University of Chicago)
“Enlightenment and Disenchantment: Sweet Dream,
Traffic Film, and Early Colonial Korean Cinema”

This Friday, February 27, the Art and Politics of East Asia Workshop will welcome Hyunhee Park for discussion of a draft chapter from her dissertation project on wartime propaganda film. The chapter explores Sweet Dream (1936) as the earliest extant example of enlightenment film production in colonial Korea. Departing from existing scholarship that treats Sweet Dream as a New Woman story, the chapter interprets Sweet Dream as “traffic film,” part of an enlightenment film genre–unique to Korea within the Japanese empire–that inherently entailed sensationalism and “the aesthetics of astonishment.” The paper further argues that the state’s utilization of cinema to forward colonial projects had a large influence on Korean cinema from its inception, creating a mutually beneficial mode of production between Korean filmmakers and the colonial government.

A draft of the paper is available at this link. If you have not received the password for the post, please feel free to contact Nicholas Lambrecht at lambrecht at uchicago.edu. Wine and light refreshments will be served at the workshop. We look forward to seeing you on Friday.

lambrecht

Friday, February 20, 12:30-2:30PM in CEAS 319 (1155 E 60th St)
Chun-yen Chen (Associate Professor of English, National Taiwan Normal University)
“(Re-)Mediating Word in the Age of Image”

This Friday, February 20, at 12:30 PM please join the Art and Politics of East Asia Workshop to discuss a paper by Chun-yen Chen, Associate Professor of English at National Taiwan Normal University. Professor Chen’s paper engages with conversations about the concept of mediation in current media theory and image studies by looking at the multimedia Glass Poetry initiative of an independent bookstore in a northern Taiwanese town; for further information, see this page or visit the rest of the 有河book website.

A draft of the paper is available via this link. Please do not circulate or cite this paper without the author’s permission, and please note the special time of this presentation. Light refreshments will be served at the workshop. We look forward to seeing you on Friday!

lambrecht

Satellite image of sandstorm over China

Friday, January 23, 3:00-5:00PM in CEAS 319 (1155 E 60th St)
Douglas Berman (Asst. Dean of Graduate Programs, University of Wisconsin-Madison)
“Chinese Ecocriticism: The Recent Past & Today–Cultural & Political Negotiations in China”

This Friday, January 23, please join the Art and Politics of East Asia Workshop to discuss a paper on trends in China’s ecocritical movement presented by Douglas Berman, Assistant Dean of Graduate Programs at the University of Wisconsin. After earning his PhD in English Language and Literature from the University of Wisconsin and a JD in Law from Indiana University, Dean Berman spent several years as a law associate in Hong Kong and Beijing before returning to Madison. His interests include modern Chinese literature and interdisciplinary approaches to law and literature.

A draft of the paper will be circulated on Monday via this link. Please do not circulate or cite this paper without the author’s permission. After the workshop we will be having a dinner in Hyde Park, and both graduate students and faculty are welcome to attend. Please contact Nicholas Lambrecht at lambrecht at uchicago.edu to RSVP for the dinner, if you need assistance in downloading the paper, or if you have concerns about accessibility. We look forward to seeing you on Friday.

lambrecht

Friday, December 5, 3:00-5:00PM in CEAS 319 (1155 E 60th St)
Katherine Alexander (PhD Candidate in EALC, University of Chicago)
“Reading for Women: Chinese Popular Religious Culture and Literature in the Late Qing”

On Friday, December 5, please join us in welcoming Katherine Alexander, who will present a chapter draft from her dissertation The Business of Being Good: Baojuan in Late Qing Jiangnan. Background reading materials and the chapter draft will be available here on Wednesday (please do not circulate or cite the draft).

Light refreshments will be served at this meeting of the workshop, which will be the last meeting of Art and Politics for the fall quarter. We’ll look forward to seeing you there, and please keep an eye on this space for the announcement of the APEA winter schedule.