Events

Drawing on Derrida's concept of hauntology and the "spectral turn" in the humanities (del Pilar Blanco & Pereen), this lecture explores the spectral dimension of literature in both original and translated texts. First, it presents a hauntological analytical framework specifically suited for literary fiction. This framework proposes five interrelated dimensions through which spectral elements in literature can be examined (and thus translated): textual, structural, thematic, narrative, and intertextual. As we will see, spectres can trascend the literal "white-sheet ghost" form to haunt literary texts in multiple ways.

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“What is World Poetry?” asks Stephen Owen (1990) in regard of a new anthology by the Chinese dissident poet Bei Dao. Owen criticized Bei Dao’s as “a poetry written to travel well,” a kind of international poetry that translates itself. It represents a specimen of a creature that never existed before: “world poetry,” detached from any national context and only accidentally written in one national language.

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How might cinema make revolution and mobilize the masses? Cinematic Guerrillas is a media history of Chinese film exhibition and reception that offers fresh insights into the powers and limits of propaganda. Drawing on a wealth of archives, memoirs, interviews, and ethnographic fieldwork, this book talk examines the media networks and environments, discourses and practices, experiences and memories of film projectionists and their grassroots audiences from the 1940s to the 1980s.

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