Postdoctoral Fellows Seminar


Thursday, November 5, 2009 4:15 pm

Cartographies of Revolution:
Space, Politics, and Cultural Representation in Modern China
Enhua Zhang, An Wang Doctoral Fellow

Professor Zhang will demonstrate how revolution as a spatial practice works through literature and culture in modern China. These processes are articulated through both texts and social practices ranging from literary works and visual images to demographic movements and techniques of the body. The main focus of her talk will be on cultural representations associated with four spatially significant revolutions: the 1920s land reform, the Long March (1934-1936), the mainland-Taiwan split in 1949, and the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). These events reconstruct three modalities of space in China: physical, social, and symbolic.

Enhua Zhang is assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, currently continuing her research at the Fairbank Center. She graduated from Columbia University with a PhD in modern Chinese literature and culture in 2007. Her interdisciplinary interests are in modern China and trans-cultural studies, including modern Chinese literature, Chinese cinema, popular culture, and modern China in trans-cultural contexts. She has published on the history and literature of the Long March as well as "red" tourism in contemporary China. During the fellowship year at the Fairbank Center, she is completing a book manuscript on spatial construction and configuration in modern China through an examination of cultural representation of revolution.

Location: CGIS South, Room S153
1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, MA
Contact: lkluz@fas.harvard.edu