Undergraduate Library

(UGL)

Bernath Auditorium

Talk by keynote speaker Prof. Zhang, Ming

(Dept. of Chinese Language and Culture, Peking University)

Ming Zhang is a professor in the Department of Chinese Language and Culture at Peking University. His primary research interests include the poetics of the Song dynasty in the intellectual and cultural context, the literature on music and performance in the Tang and Song dynasties, and the interrelationship between literati everyday interests and the practice of literary writing.

(Space in Literature and Art   Thread #1)

Song Singing and listening, as the most popular cultural consumption and art activity that transcends the social class, became an urban social custom in the Song dynasty (960−1279). Based on historical records and descriptions in the song lyrics, this talk will restore the singing scene in Song dynasty cities represented by Bianjing and Lin’an, and reconstruct its popularity in the court, government offices, restaurants, markets, literati’s elegant gatherings, and households. It will analyze the singing forms, procedure as well as rules of performance, and the relationship among song lyricists, singers, and the audience. By discussing the text selection and transmission in the performance of song lyrics, I will further examine the cultural significance of this social custom.

UGL Community Room

Undergraduate Library

(UGL)

Bernath Auditorium

(Dept. of Linguistics and Germanic, Slavic, Asian, and African Languages Michigan State University)

Tze-lan Deborah Sang is Professor of Chinese at Michigan State University. Her teaching and research focus on modern Chinese literature, film, and urban culture. Among her major publications are The Emerging Lesbian: Female Same-Sex Desire in Modern China (Chicago, 2003) and Documenting Taiwan on Film: Issues and Methods in New Documentaries (Routledge, 2012).

(Politics and Space Thread #1)

In 2003, Chinese independent filmmaker Wang Bing came out with West of the Tracks, a documentary shot over two years that detailed the lives of the last workers in Shenyang’s declining Tiexi district, where numerous enterprises of heavy industry had concentrated during the socialist era (1949-1978). The film became an instant classic among documentary critics and lovers, for it captured a way of life on the verge of disappearance.

When one thinks about Harbin—also a former industrial powerhouse in northeastern China—which representation, visual or textual, is comparable to Wang’s film in capturing the city’s challenging transformation from an industrial city into a postindustrial one? Whose pen or camera has recorded ordinary workers’ anxieties and anger in the face of deindustrialization and market reforms? Who has given a voice to their despair and hope?

In this talk, I observe that Harbin’s local cultural elites have generally missed the opportunity to capture the working class’s anxieties and pains as the city underwent deindustrialization. Overlooking the city’s socialist industrial legacy, their writings have conspicuously focused on resuscitating a more distant past—Harbin’s history as a cosmopolitan international city during the early twentieth century. A selection of publications exemplifying what is known as “Old Harbin nostalgia” will be analyzed, especially essays by Acheng (Wang Acheng).

Mirroring Harbin writers’ marginalization of the city’s socialist industrial legacy is the lack of concerted effort in Harbin to preserve the architectural heritage of socialist industrial enterprises. To date Harbin has not established a significant museum of industrial heritage to bolster its memory as an industrial city, unlike Shenyang. Since the 1990s, Harbin’s place branding discourse has relied almost exclusively on its colonial legacy and its geographical location as the northernmost Chinese city. The divergence between Harbin and Shenyang alerts us to the heterogeneity of rustbelt cities and points to the complexity of negotiating socialist industrial heritage in postsocialist societies.

Manoogian Hall 408

Romanian Room

(Sun.)

Undergraduate Library

(UGL)

Bernath Auditorium

(Dean of The School of Physical Education, China Central Normal University)

Dr. Jian Wang is a professor in the school of physical education at Central China Normal University. His research focuses on physical education teacher education, physical activity intervention, sport facility management and the connection between urban sport environment and mass physical activity.

(Science and Space Thread #1)

The purpose of this lecture is to introduce the situation and environmental factors influencing physical activity participation in metropolitan areas in China. Using national data on activity space and plan of constructing common area in neighborhood, the strengths and weakness of the environmental condition for physical activity in urban China is analyzed. The future direction will also be discussed.

Undergraduate Library

(UGL)

Bernath Auditorium

(Mon.)

Manoogian Hall 408

Romanian Room

Light Snack

(Dept. of Classical and Modern Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, Wayne State University)

Alina Cherry is Associate Professor of French at Wayne State University. Her research focuses on contemporary French and Francophone literature, and addresses questions of space, place, and mobility. She is currently working on a book project titled Planetary Journeys: Mobilities, Spaces, Crossings, which explores the impact of globalization on postindustrial societies through the lens of contemporary world literature written in French.

(Space in Literature and Art   Thread #2)

In this talk I first discuss several philosophical approaches (proposed by French philosophers and anthropologists such as Gilles Deleuze, Michel de Certeau, March Augé, and Paul Virilio, among others) that theorize the space of the city, highlighting what distinguishes urban space from other types of space. In the second part of the talk I look at representations of Detroit in film (Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive) and literature (Tanguy Viel’s The Disappearance of Jim Sullivan) and explore how the city is portrayed and (re)defined in our contemporary imagination.

(Mon.)

Manoogian Hall 408

Romanian Room

(Dept. of Classical and Modern Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, Wayne State University)

Alina Cherry is Associate Professor of French at Wayne State University. Her research focuses on contemporary French and Francophone literature, and addresses questions of space, place, and mobility. She is currently working on a book project titled Planetary Journeys: Mobilities, Spaces, Crossings, which explores the impact of globalization on postindustrial societies through the lens of contemporary world literature written in French.

(Space in Literature and Art   Thread #2)

In this talk I first discuss several philosophical approaches (proposed by French philosophers and anthropologists such as Gilles Deleuze, Michel de Certeau, March Augé, and Paul Virilio, among others) that theorize the space of the city, highlighting what distinguishes urban space from other types of space. In the second part of the talk I look at representations of Detroit in film (Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive) and literature (Tanguy Viel’s The Disappearance of Jim Sullivan) and explore how the city is portrayed and (re)defined in our contemporary imagination.

(Tue.)

Manoogian Hall 408

Romanian Room

(Division of Kinesiology, Health, and Sport Studies, College of Education, Wayne State University)

Dr. Bo Shen is a Professor in the Division of Kinesiology, Health, and Sport Studies at Wayne State University. His research focuses on students’ motivation and instruction in physical education and physical activity interventions. Much of his research has been conducted in urban school settings to improve urban school health environments through comprehensive, school-wide strategies that include an array of interventions from curriculum development, policy reform, infrastructure development, and after-school programming.

(Science and Space Thread #2)

Detroit consistently ranks among the most obese cities in the USA. Detroiters have disproportionally high rates of overweight/obesity, and this disparity is evident as early as childhood. Similarly, Shenyang has also entered the era of obesity. The speed of obesity growth is shocking, with overall rates of obesity greater than 20%. Physical inactivity has been found to be a major reason leading to the obesity.

Although intrapersonal interventions have been effective, behavior change is more likely to occur and be sustained when the space or physical environments are supportive of physically active lifestyles. Environmental approaches for improving health acknowledge that the public must recognize the importance of changing behavior and that behavior change must be supported by a person’s physical and social space. There have been calls from multiple sources to develop and evaluate environmental approaches to increasing physical activity. Studies have employed environmental strategies for increasing physical activity with promising results. The purpose of this lecture is to examine the connection between living in the two cities and health by understanding how space and environment exert an independent effect on children’s obesity.

(Wed.)

DIA

Katherine Kasdorf is Associate Curator of Arts of Asia and the Islamic World at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Most recently, she collaborated with colleagues on the reinstallation of the Asian collection, opening new galleries of Chinese, Korean, Japanese, South & Southeast Asian, and Buddhist art in November 2018. Prior to joining the DIA in May 2017, she held a Wieler-Mellon Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellowship at the Walters Art Museum, where her work focused primarily on the Tibetan, Nepalese, and South & Southeast Asian collections. She received her Ph.D. in South Asian art history from Columbia University in 2013.

Manoogian Hall 408

Romanian Room

(Dept. of Classical and Modern Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, Wayne State University)

Yunshuang Zhang is an assistant professor in the Department of Classical and Modern Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at Wayne State University. Her research interests center on the literature and literati culture during Middle Period China (800–1400). She is now working on her book project, entitled “Porous Privacy: The Literati Studio and Spatiality in Song China.” This project examines the privacy of the studio space and the way by which it works as a medium for the reproduction of literati culture.

(Space in Literature and Art   Thread #3)

This talk will discuss the significance and the process of naming a space, via the case study of naming a studio in the Song era (960−1279). It was not until the Song that the naming of studios became popular. In addition to naming studios, Song literati were enthusiastic about penning interpretations of studio names, to demonstrate a direct connection between these names and their own lives. Take a step further, literati grew interests in referring to themselves by directly using their studio names as sobriquets. Thus, this talk will analyze how this process of “double naming” became an indispensable part of life for Song literati and how naming worked as a stage for the performance of self-identity.

(Thurs.)

Manoogian Hall 408

Romanian Room

(School of Social Work, Wayne State University)

Dr. Tam E. Perry is an associate professor at Wayne State University School of Social Work. Her research addresses urban aging from a life course perspective, focusing on how underserved older adults navigate their social and built environments in times of instability and change. She conducts translational research projects that address older adults’ well-being in urban communities such as the Flint water crisis, and older adults experiences of gentrification in Detroit, particularly examining the relationship of older adults to their homes.

She is also co-principal investigator of a project entitled, “Older Adults’ Experiences and Understandings of the Flint Water Crisis,” which focuses on the intersection between housing and health.  This project received the Betty J. Cleckley Minority Issues Research Award from the Aging and Public Health Section of American Public Health Association for this research. Lastly, she co-directs the Community Liaison and Recruitment Core of the Michigan Center for Urban African American Aging Research (MCUAAAR).

She serves as research chair and vice-chair of strategic planning of a multi-agency coalition, Senior Housing Preservation-Detroit.

(Politics and Space Thread #2)

This presentation will offer insights from interviews with seniors displaced from HUD housing when their government housing went market rate.  The presentation will also discuss a coalition, Senior Housing Preservation-Detroit, created to advocate on behalf of seniors to preserve low income housing in the city.

Manoogian Hall

Romanian Room

(Dept. of Criminal Justice, Wayne State University)

Yuning Wu is an associate professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at Wayne State University. She currently conducts research on public perceptions of crime and justice, policing, victimization, and comparative criminal justice.

(Politics and Space Thread #3)

This talk will focus on a comparison between the conditions of crime and strategies of policing in Detroit and Shenyang. It will describe the different types and patterns of crimes that challenge the two cities and discuss common as well as distinct policing and other crime control strategies and measures used in the two cities. To contextualize the findings, the broader social, political, economic, and cultural structure and process of the two countries will also be discussed.

Manoogian Hall 385 (Japan Learning Center)

FLTC

(Sat.)

Undergraduate Library

(UGL)

Bernath Auditorium

(Dept. Sociology and Global Urban Studies, Michigan State University)

Xuefei Ren is is Associate Professor of Sociology and Global Urban Studies at Michigan State University. She is the author of Building Globalization: Transnational Architecture Production in Urban China (2011, Univ. of Chicago Press), and Urban China (2013, Polity Press). Her work focuses on urban development in China, India, Brazil and the U.S. Having recently completed a book manuscript on urban governance in China and India (under review by Princeton University Press), she is currently working on a new project examining culture-led revitalization in Detroit and Harbin.

(Politics and Space Thread #4)

Chinese cities have witnessed a boom of newtown development in recent years. Most research to date has focused on newtowns in top-tier cities such as Beijing and Shanghai. This talk discusses a different type of newtown development taking place in China’s rustbelt (i.e., the northeast region). In spite of the sluggish economy, many newtowns in China’s northeast region have been steadily attracting residents, and some have even become desirable neighborhoods to live in. This talk examines the logic of newtown development in China’s rust-belt, drawing upon comparisons with revitalization efforts in Detroit.

Student volunteer needed for monitoring

The Masonic Temple

500 Temple St, Detroit, MI 48201

Michael Boettcher received his Master of Urban Planning degree from WSU in 2003 and has been in the field for more than 20 years, working currently for Macomb County. He has been a freelance Detroit tour guide for almost as long, creating unique themed tours showcasing Detroit’s rich history and built environment.

(Mon.)

Romanian Room

(Division of Teacher Education, College of Education, Wayne State University)

Min Yu is an Assistant Professor in the College of Education at Wayne State University. Her research focuses on how changing social and political conditions affect the education of children from migrant and immigrant families and communities. Her ongoing line of inquiry explores the relationships between home, school, and community with attention to historical and contemporary contexts of transnational migration. She is the author of the book The Politics, Practices, and Possibilities of Migrant Children Schools in Contemporary China (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), and her work appears in journals such as The China Quarterly, Comparative Education Review, Review of Research in Education, and Diaspora, Indigenous, and Minority Education.

(Politics and Space Thread #5)

This talk explores how migration change social, political, and educational spaces in cities across different contexts, such as Detroit and Shenyang, and how family and community practices influence the education of children from immigrant and migrant families in transnational contexts. The unit of analysis consists of parents who have migrated and family members who stay behind. It seeks to “examine migration and the left behind in an integrated manner” by looking comparatively at the educational experiences of children and the struggles and resilience of families in different locations.

Manoogian Hall 385 (Japan Learning Center)

FLTC

(Tue.)

Manoogian Hall 408

Romanian Room

(Dept. of Classical and Modern Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, Wayne State University)

Prof. Liu’s research interests and publication areas include Chinese syntax, acquisition, and pedagogy. He is the coordinator of Chinese and director of Linguistics at Wayne State

(Space in Literature and Art   Thread #4)

Time and space are the most important elements in human language. Every language has mechanisms for time reference, but space and direction have special functions as well. For example, every language has a way to express the direction of an action; some languages even mark whether the action is uphill or downhill or an even more complicated direction reference system. Although past time reference is frequently used in counterfactual expressions, some languages create an alternative space to realize actions that are other-worldly. Also, the distance between and location of a lexical item and the core predicate of a sentence determines the interpretation or ambiguity of the utterance.

Manoogian Hall 385 (Japan Learning Center)

FLTC

(Wed.)

Manoogian Hall 408

Romanian Room

(Political Science, Wayne State University)

Yumin Sheng’s current research focuses on the resilience of single-party authoritarianism, with a focus on contemporary China. He is the author of Economic Openness and Territorial Politics in China (Cambridge University Press, 2010).

(Politics and Space Thread #6)

China is a territorially vast country with long borders and large, diverse regions. Selecting reliable and trustworthy agents to oversee the defense of these regions and maintenance of domestic order is no easy task for the national leaders of the single ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP). This study examines the regional-level determinants (such as economic and political importance, political stability, and security vulnerability) of the choice of different types of military generals, based on either their institutional loyalty to the central government or their personal loyalty to the national party leaders, to lead the country’s sub-national units of military administration during the reform era.

(Fri.)

Undergraduate Library

(UGL)

Bernath Auditorium

(Dept. of Art History, UCLA)

Professor, Department of Art History, University of California, Los Angeles

Hui-shu Lee is a specialist in Chinese art history.  She received her doctorate degree from Yale University in 1994 after first studying at National Taiwan University and working in the National Palace Museum. Her field of specialization is Chinese painting and visual culture, with a particular focus on gender issues.  These include imperial female agency of the Song dynasty (960-1279) and dimensions of gender-crossing in late imperial China. Other areas of research are the cultural mapping of Hangzhou and its representation from the Southern Song (1127-1279), courtesan culture of Ming-Qing dynastic transition, the seventeenth-century individualist painter Bada Shanren (1626 -1705), and a number of modern and contemporary artists. She has received a number of awards and fellowships, including a Getty postdoctoral grant and a Getty Foundation grant for publication. Among her publications are Exquisite Moments: West Lake & Southern Song Art (New York: China Institute, 2001) and Empresses, Art, and Agency in Song Dynasty China (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2010). Currently, she is working on two book projects: Shifting gender persona in visual art and the representation of a place. In addition, extended from her research on Song art and culture she has also taken on “Poetics of Song Gardens” as another book plan, as well as a newly initiated research and exhibition project on the cliff inscriptions along the ancient “Shudao, or Roads to Shu.”

(Space in Literature and Art   Thread #5)

The Chinese garden is timeless and universal. As the word paradise denoted for the Persians and Greeks, (paradaida for Persian and paradisos for the Greeks), the aim of the Chinese garden, since its inception over two thousand years ago, has been to create an otherworldly space for the immortals and sanctuary/utopia for human dwellers. Numerous gardens, large and small, have been created by powerful emperors and cultural elites over Chinese history and celebrated in writings and visual presentations.  In all regards, the Chinese garden is a microcosmic recreation of a macrocosmic universe and the full embodiment of Chinese art and culture in philosophy, aesthetics, literature and architecture.

Traversing across time and space, one can now witness the many intriguing creations in China and beyond that reflected on the essential notion and archetype of Chinese garden in a kaleidoscopic way. From the adaption and recreation of a classical Suzhou garden in the indoor space of the Astor Court at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, to the pastiche of many eminent garden elements at the Huntington Chinese Garden in California, I would like to eventually focus on the compelling modern and post-modern rendering and implement of Chinese gardens by the two Pritzker Award Architects: I. M. Pei (b. 1917) and Wang Shu (b. 1963).

(Sat.)

Undergraduate Library

(UGL)

Bernath Auditorium

(Dept. of Anthropology, Wayne State University)

Krysta Ryzewski (PhD, Brown 2008) is a historical archaeologist and an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Wayne State University in Detroit, where she co-leads the Anthropology of the City initiative. Her research in North America and the Caribbean explores the consequences of disruptive socio-environmental pressures on past landscapes, communities, and material culture production. She also has professional backgrounds in heritage management and the materials science sub-field of engineering. Her research involves collaboration with non-academic community partners and is funded by multiple federal and private agencies. Her publications include Contemporary Archaeology and the City: Creativity, Ruination, and Political Action (Oxford University Press, with L. McAtackney). Ryzewski is the 2017 recipient of the Society for Historical Archaeology’s John L. Cotter Award, the most prestigious recognition for a junior scholar in the field. She currently serves as an appointee to Michigan’s State Historic Preservation Review Board.

(Politics and Space Thread #7)

Urban historical archaeology has been practiced in Detroit by professionals for over 60 years, resulting in the location and documentation of hundreds of sites associated with the city’s past residents. This presentation uses historical archaeological data a– historic maps, artifacts, oral histories, photographs, and archival records – to reconstruct life in neighborhoods once associated with vibrant ethnic, largely working-class communities in 19^th and 20^th century. These neighborhoods, including the city’s two prior Chinatowns and parts of Corktown, were targeted for erasure by city officials in the name of civic improvement, displacing residents in the process. Historical archaeology bring to light the forgotten, often unwritten histories of the everyday people who lived, worked, and formed communities in these neighborhoods.

UGL Community Room

Undergraduate Library

(UGL)

Bernath Auditorium

(Dept. of Physics, Wayne State University)

Prof. Morgan has done theoretical research in condensed matter physics, including work on magnetism, electronic structure, and defects and dynamic processes in semiconductors.  Most recently she has been collaborating on theoretical investigations of the interaction of positrons with biological molecules.  Prof. Morgan has spent most of her career at Wayne State University, with many sabbaticals and summers at the Fritz-Haber-Institut der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft. She retired in 2017, and is currently Professor Emerita at Wayne State.

(Science and Space Thread #3)

Einstein’s Theory of Relativity radically changed our understanding of space and time, and also made possible the GPS, which has changed how we move through space in a very practical way.  Quantum mechanics has shown us that very small particles move through space in ways that are totally unexpected, and has made it possible to study the processes of life at a much smaller scale than ever before.

At the other end of the length scale, advances in physics have allowed us to view our neighbors in the solar system and beyond more closely than ever, and have fueled advances in communication which have expanded our human “neighborhood” to include countries on the other side of the Earth.  Now that science and technology have made the mechanics of international communication convenient and practically instantaneous, it is more important than ever to focus on the other essentials for authentic connection and understanding: bridging the gaps of language and culture.