18. September 10 am to 12 (room 1482-105):

Open Lecture: Barbara Mittler (Heidelberg), ‘Mao wherever you go: Popular Propaganda in Revolutionary and Contemporary China’

How come that model works and revolutionary songs from the Cultural Revolution are rather popular in contemporary China? Why is it that this propaganda art reappears in Karaoke Bars, on Home-Videos? Why is it that for a while in the early 2000s, Mao’s portrait dangled in almost every taxi and that it is part and parcel, today, in high-market as well as popular accessoires? Why are there numerous Chinese websites featuring memories of Cultural Revolution propaganda art? Why do people get married in “Cultural Revolution Style” today? Why, after all, do people appreciate the products of a period in Chinese history which has been known for its radical politics and the horrors it inflicted, especially, if by no means only on intellectuals? These are some of the questions Barbara Mittler addresses in her presentation and in her recently published book, A Continuous Revolution: Making Sense of Cultural Revolution Culture and in her presentation.  

Followed by a research seminar, (1 pm to 3 pm in room 1467-316) for programme members on ‘Feeling Matters: Forms, Materials & Colours of Love and Life in China’

How do beauties touch their men and when and where does this become visible? Put differently: How does feeling matter and what shapes does it take both textually and visually? Does it make a difference whether the depicted is a film star or a commoner, a revolutionary or a bourgeois? And how are these depictions read by the contemporary audience? Does it matter what this audience remembers to have seen, touched, experienced somewhere before? Surveying women’s magazines and other entertainment media published throughout China’s long 20^th century, this paper discusses the politics of feeling. It will show how form, material and color take on ever-changing meanings and continually reshape the ways in which beauty and intimacy can be played out visually and textually and thus experienced and touched by the audiences reading these publications. The paper will thus trace textual and visual evidence for dominant and prescribed as well as subdued and subversive modes of seeing, touching and feeling and reflect on the importance of intertextual and intervisual memory-making in this process.

Participation in the research seminar is open and free for staff and graduate students, but please register your participation by sending an e-mail to Andreas Steen, ostas@hum.au.dk, by Monday 16. September.