Fairfield University in New York began its series, "China: Its People and Culture Lecture," on March 21, Its first series, Xi Zao (Shower) and Not One Less, two films shown at Bannow Science Center.
The second lecture series, Uncivil Urban Spaces in Post-Reform South China," will be presented by Dr. Helen Siu at DiMenna-Nyselius Library on April 14. Dr. Siu, Ph.D. Stanford 1981, is professor of anthropology, and former Chair of the Council on East Asian Studies at Yale University. Her teaching interests are political and historical anthropology, urban and global culture change. Since the 1970s, she has conducted fieldwork in South China, exploring the nature of the socialist state, the refashioning of identities through rituals, festivals, commerce and consumption. Lately, she focuses on the rural-urban divide in Chinese cities, civil society and the middle classes in Hong Kong. She was a member of the University Grants Committee (1992-2001) and the Research Grant's Council (1996-2001) in Hong Kong. In the U.S. she has served on the Committee for Advanced Study in China and the National Screening Committee for Fulbright awards in the U.S. In 2001, she established the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences to promote creative, interdisciplinary research. Her publications include two volumes on Chinese literature: Mao's Harvest: Voices of China's New Generation, co-editor Zelda Stern, Oxford 1983; Furrows: Peasants, Intellectuals and the State, Stanford 1990), a volume on history (co-editor David Faure), Down to Earth: The Territorial Bond in South China (Stanford 1995), and a monograph in anthropology, Agents and Victims in South China: Accomplices in Rural Revolution (Yale 1989). A forthcoming volume is entitled Empire at the Margins: Culture, Ethnicity and Frontier in Early Modern China (California, co-editors Pamela Crossley and Donald Sutton).
The series is conducted by Dr. Danke Li with a grant from The Li Educational Foundation.