Events

CHAIRPERSON

Prof David Strand, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore 

ABSTRACT

Upon the end of the Cold War and the global spread of capitalism’s increasingly unsightly consequences, some influential poets have turned their backs on the monumental rhetoric of the sublime. In order to sidestep the lure of (neo)utopian aesthetic and historical imaginations, premodern poetic traditions as well as the paradoxes and ironies of contemporary life are explored for alternative articulations. In the poetic landscapes of Leung Ping-kwan (Hong Kong) and Xi Chuan (Beijing) two different ways to come to terms with the various legacies of western modernity can be traced: an attitude of dialogic, contemplative inclusion of the disparate in a poetics of the everyday on the one hand, and the estranged, puzzled observation of unruly, oxymoronic cultural entanglements on the other. We will first discuss the poetic image-traffic between an island and a continent by situating it in relation to Chinese blueprints of a sublime cultural modernity, and then attempt an analysis of the two poets’ post-sublime landscape aesthetics.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Andrea Riemenschnitter is Chair Professor of Modern Chinese Studies at the Institute of Asian and Oriental Studies, University of Zurich. Previously, she taught at the University of Heidelberg. She is currently Honorary Fellow at Lingnan University, Hong Kong, and has held visiting professor positions and visiting research fellowships at Beijing Normal University, the University of California, Berkeley and Tsinghua University, Beijing. She received her PhD in Chinese Studies at the University of Goettingen.

Born in Munich, Germany, she was trained in Chinese studies, German literature, musical studies and social sciences in Bonn, Goettingen, Munich and Taipei. Her books include The Visible and the Invisible: Poems Leung Ping-kwan (ed., 2012); Carnival of the Gods. Mythology, Modernity and the Nation in China’s 20th Century (in German, 2011); Jia Pingwa – Stories from Taibai Mountain (ed., in German, 2009); Diasporic Histories. Archives of Chinese Transnationalism (ed. with D. Madsen, 2009); Legends from the Swiss Alps – Ruishi A’erbeisishan de chuanshuo(with P.K. Leung, 2009); Explorations of Chinese Antiquity (ed. with R. Altenburger and M. Lehnert, in German, 2009); Gao Xingjian – Sleepwalking. Reflections on Theatre (tr. with M. Gieselmann and others, in German, 2000); China Between Heaven and Earth. Literary Cosmography and National Crisis in the 17th Century (in German, 1998). In her research, she focuses on modern and contemporary Chinese cultural history (late Ming to present), theories and methodology of cultural analysis, processes of cultural flow and exchange, Chinese transnational and translation studies, theories and mythologies of/in modernity, as well as theatre and performance studies. At ARI she is working on a book project on China’s environmental modernization from a cultural perspective.

REGISTRATION

Admission is free. We would greatly appreciate if you RSVP Mr Jonathan Lee via email: jonathan.lee@nus.edu.sg