Topic: Culture Reflection Through Trains: Modern Transportation, Literary Fashion and Cultural Evolution in China

Speaker: Prof. Chen Jianhua

Date:  Friday, April 26, 2019

Time: 19:00-21:00

Venue: Governing Board Meeting Room, Dao Yuan Building

Language: Chinese

Abstract:      

 At the beginning of the 20th century, trains, trams, horse-drawn carriages, rickshaws, and automobiles were introduced from abroad to China, affecting the country’s military dynamics, economic patterns, industrial production, and habits of thinking. This lecture looks at the relationship between transportation and urban space from a perspective of literature and images, and tries to discuss how transportation, sensory, fashion, and media together formed a flowing urban landscape. In addition, the speaker will explore how nationalism and cosmopolitanism were interwoven in literary production to reflect the power structure of race, class and gender as well as the authors’ anxiety of influence.

Speaker's Profile：

Professor Jianhua Chen is Zhiyuan Chair Professor of the School of Humanities of Shanghai Jiaotong University. He received his Ph.D. in Literature from Fudan University and Harvard University, and has taught at Oberlin College in the United States, the Division of Humanities of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and the Institute of Ancient Books Collation and Studies of Fudan University. His research specialties include Chinese poetics and hermeneutics, revolutionary discourse and translation theory, Yuan Ming and Qing dynasty literature, modern and popular literature and newspaper culture, Chinese literature and visual modernity, early Chinese film, modern newspapers and communication culture.

The publications of Professor Jianhua Chen include Social Consciousness and Literature in Zhejiang and Jiangsu Provinces from the Fourteenth to the Seventeenth Centuries, Between Modernity and Postmodernism - Interview with Professor Li Oufan (with Oufan Li), Crossing in Ancient and Modern: Research on Chinese Literature and Culture, and Culture Reflection Through Trains: A Brief Introduction to Trains in the Republic of China. In recent years, Professor Chen has published various papers such as “Popular Literature and Visual Culture in Early Modern China”, “The Linguistic Turns and Literary Fields in Twentieth-Century China”, “ Shoujuan Zhou's Love Stories and Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies Fiction”, and “World Revolution Knocking at the Heavenly Gate: Youwei Kang and His Use of Geming in 1898”.