Sponsored by Yale Council on East Asian Studies, Yale Center Beijing, and International Center for Critical Theory at Peking University.

Event Time

Saturday, December 23, 2023

Location

Yale Center Beijing 
36th Floor Tower B of IFC Building 8 Jianguomenwai Avenue Chaoyang District, Beijing (Yong'anli Subway Station, Exit C) 

The Event

The workshop, “Reform/Gaige/Perestroika: Text, Theory, Aesthetics,” aims to bridge the existing gaps between East Asianists in the United States and scholars of post-Maoist Chinese culture in China. Historically, the narrative of the 1980s in the U.S. has been constrained by narrow historiographical lenses, largely influenced by the intellectual traditions and imaginations of the Cold War era. Conversely, in China, the 1980s are heralded as a beginning of new horizons; the end of the Cultural Revolution ignited fresh aspirations and perspectives. This era laid the groundwork for the subsequent economic upsurge and social stratification of the 1990s and 2000s. Given the divergent cultural and geopolitical lenses through which China and the U.S. interpret history, it is paramount to scrutinize these disparities through academic discourse, facilitating a bilateral dialogue. Our workshop endeavors to contextualize the 1980s within the expansive tapestry of global history, shedding light on the decade as a period marked by the introduction of western commodities and cultures, and the emergence of an aesthetic of reform as manifested in new literary, cinematic, artistic, and media genres that reverberated worldwide.

The Organizer

Jinyi Chu
Assistant Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Yale University

Participants

Xudong Zhang
Professor of Comparative Literature & East Asian Studies, and Director of the International Center for Critical Theory (ICCT), New York University

Xiangjing Chen
Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and Cross-Cultural Studies, Tsinghua University

Ke Cui
Research Fellow in the Institute of Marxist Literary Theory, Chinese National Academy of Arts

Dakun Sun
Lecturer in Contemporary Chinese Literature, Wuhan University

Naixi Feng
Assistant Professor in the Institute for Advanced Study in Humanities and Social Sciences, Tsinghua University

Huaxin Gao
Editor, Institute of Foreign Literatures, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

Weichao Li
Director of the Center for Academic Research, Executive Editor-in-Chief of Modern Chinese Literature Studies, National Museum of Modern Chinese Literature

Yalin Luo
Editor, Institute of Literature, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

Jun Xie
Associate Professor of Contemporary Chinese Literature, Central Academy of Drama

Cheng Xing
Assistant Professor of Modern Chinese Literature, Zhejiang University

Xiaodi Zhang
Lecturer in Fine Arts, Beijing Film Academy