Rethinking the Relationship between China and the West through a Focus on Literature and Aesthetics


Book Description

The multi-dimensional model of cross-cultural research was put forward as an alternative to the model of Sino-western dualism which sees China and the West as two entirely different entities. In order to break with this dualistic model, the spatial dimension should be separated from the temporal dimension, allowing the words “China” and “the West” to recover their original meaning of spatial dimensions. This, in turn, reconceptualises the equal relationship between China and the West, and seeks the possibilities and pathways of cross-cultural understanding and dialogue in a global context. This book is composed of two parts: the spatial dimension of cross-cultural research and the temporal dimension of cross-cultural research. The first discusses globalization and China’s cultural identity; cross-cultural literary research between China and the West; a circular model of cross-cultural research focusing on literary adaptations; integrating Chinese literature into world literature; appreciating Chinese poetry from a cross-cultural perspective; and the three models of nature appreciation. In part two, the book explores the Book of Changes (周易) from the perspective of modern aesthetics; original Confucianism, literary theory and aesthetics; the Han dynasty’s Confucianism, literary theory and aesthetics; New-Confucianism, literary theory and aesthetic; Beijing city’s culture; and China’s short film and socialistic cultural productions.




Controversy and Construction in Contemporary Aesthetics


Book Description

The inclusion of this volume in Brill's Transcultural Aesthetics, a book series devoted primarily to multidisciplinary Western and non-Western aesthetics, is indispensable to enrich the nature and scope of contemporary aesthetics. Time and again, many aesthetic controversies have not been adequately addressed, and this has become a common concern among scholars in contemporary aesthetics. This volume therefore seeks to contribute new perspectives to these controversies by shedding light on some of the fresh views among the leading theorists working in the field today.




Logos of Phenomenology and Phenomenology of the Logos. Book Five


Book Description

Having established in the ontopoiesis/phenomenology of life the creative function of the human being as the fulcrum of our beingness-in-becoming, let us now turn to investigate the creative logos. In this collection, the momentum of a gathering "creative brainstorm" leads to the vertiginous imaginative transformability of the creative logos as it ciphers through the aesthetic sense, the elements of experience – sensing, feeling, emotions, forming – in works of art, thus lifting human experience into spirit and culture.







Glorify the Empire


Book Description

In the 1930s and ’40s, Japanese rulers in Manchukuo enlisted writers and artists to promote imperial Japan’s modernization program. Ironically, the cultural producers chosen to spread the imperialist message were once left-wing politically in Japan, where their work strongly favoured modernist, even avant-garde, styles of expression. In Glorify the Empire, Annika A. Culver explores how these once anti-imperialist intellectuals produced avant-garde works celebrating the modernity of a fascist state and reflecting a complicated picture of complicity with, and ambivalence toward, Japan’s utopian project. Manchurian-themed cultural representations accelerated during the eruption of conflict with China, and later during the Second World War, when Manchukuo served as a template for Japanese-occupied areas in Southeast Asia. A groundbreaking work, Glorify the Empire magnifies the intersection between politics and art in a rarely examined period of Japanese history.




Aesthetics and Marxism


Book Description

Although Chinese Marxism—primarily represented by Maoism—is generally seen by Western intellectuals as monolithic, Liu Kang argues that its practices and projects are as diverse as those in Western Marxism, particularly in the area of aesthetics. In this comparative study of European and Chinese Marxist traditions, Liu reveals the extent to which Chinese Marxists incorporate ideas about aesthetics and culture in their theories and practices. In doing so, he constructs a wholly new understanding of Chinese Marxism. Far from being secondary considerations in Chinese Marxism, aesthetics and culture are in fact principal concerns. In this respect, such Marxists are similar to their Western counterparts, although Europeans have had little understanding of the Chinese experience. Liu traces the genealogy of aesthetic discourse in both modern China and the West since the era of classical German thought, showing where conceptual modifications and divergences have occurred in the two traditions. He examines the work of Mao Zedong, Lu Xun, Li Zehou, Qu Qiubai, and others in China, and from the West he discusses Kant, Schiller, Schopenhauer, and Marxist theorists including Horkheimer, Adorno, Benjamin, and Marcuse. While stressing the diversity of Marxist positions within China as well as in the West, Liu explains how ideas of culture and aesthetics have offered a constructive vision for a postrevolutionary society and have affected a wide field of issues involving the problems of modernity. Forcefully argued and theoretically sophisticated, this book will appeal to students and scholars of contemporary Marxism, cultural studies, aesthetics, and modern Chinese culture, politics, and ideology.




The Figure of the Monster in Global Theatre


Book Description

Bringing together international perspectives on the figure of the “monster” in performance, this edited collection builds on discussions in the fields of posthumanism, bioethics, and performance studies. The collection aims to redefine “monstrosity” to describe the cultural processes by which certain identities or bodies are configured to be threateningly deviant, whether by race, gender, sexuality, nationality, immigration status, or physical or psychological extraordinariness. The book explores themes of race, white supremacy, and migration with the aim of investigating how the figure of the monster has been used to explore representations of race and identity. To these, we add discussions on gender, queer identities, and how the figure of the “monster” has been used to explore the gendered body to finally understand how monstrosity intersects with contemporary issues of technology and the natural world. Navigating the fields of disability studies, performance-centered monster studies, and representation in performance, editors Michael M. Chemers and Analola Santana have brought together perspectives on the figure of the “monster” from across a variety of fields that intersect with performance studies. This book is essential reading for Theatre and Performance students of all levels as well as scholars. It will also be an enlightening text for those interested in monstrosity and Cultural Studies more broadly.




Diasporic Poetics


Book Description

This book advances a new concept of the "Asian diaspora" that creates links between Asian American, Asian Canadian, and Asian Australian identities. Drawing from comparable studies of the black diaspora, it traces the histories of colonialism, immigration, and exclusion shared by these three populations. The work of Asian poets in each of these three countries offers a rich terrain for understanding how Asian identities emerge at the intersection of national and transnational flows, with the poets' thematic and formal choices reflecting the varied pressures of social and cultural histories, as well as the influence of Asian writers in other national locations. Diasporic Poetics argues that racialized and nationally bounded "Asian" identities often emerge from transnational political solidarities, from "Third World" struggles against colonialism to the global influence of the American civil rights movement. Indeed, this volume shows that Asian writers disclaim national belonging as often as they claim it, placing Asian diasporic writers at a critical distance from the national spaces within which they write. As the first full-length study to compare Asian American, Asian Canadian, and Asian Australian writers, the book offers the historical and cultural contexts necessary to understand the distinctive development of Asian writing in each country, while also offering close analysis of the work of writers such as Janice Mirikitani, Fred Wah, Ouyang Yu, Myung Mi Kim, and Cathy Park Hong.




PROCEEDINGS OF THE SECOND INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON GLOBALIZATION: CHALLENGES FOR TRANSLATORS AND INTERPRETERS


Book Description

This two-volume book contains the refereed proceedings of The Second International Conference on Globalization: Challenges for Translators and Interpreters organized by the School of Translation Studies, Jinan University (China) on its Zhuhai campus, October 27-29, 2016. The interrelation between translation and globalization is essential reading for not only scholars and educators, but also anyone with an interest in translation and interpreting studies, or a concern for the future of our world’s languages and cultures. The past decade or so, in particular, has witnessed remarkable progress concerning research on issues related to this topic. Given this dynamic, The Second International Conference on Globalization: Challenges for Translators and Interpreters organized by the School of Translation Studies, Jinan University (China) organized by the School of Translation Studies, Jinan University (China), was held at the Zhuhai campus of Jinan University on October 27-29, 2016. This conference attracts a large number of translators, interpreters and researchers, providing a rare opportunity for academic exchange in this field. The 135 full papers accepted for the proceedings of The Second International Conference on Globalization: Challenges for Translators and Interpreters organized by the School of Translation Studies, Jinan University (China) were selected from 350 submissions. For each paper, the authors were shepherded by an experienced researcher. Generally, all of the submitted papers went through a rigorous peer-review process.