2014-15 LRCCS Event Videos

March 31, 2015 - Ronald Egan, Chair, East Asian Languages and Cultures, Stanford University

Hong Mai’s massive Yijian zhi has often been mined by scholars for what its thousands of stories reveal about Song dynasty popular religion and social history. But Yijian zhi has less frequently been studied on its own terms as tales of encounters with the “strange” that circulated in Hong Mai’s world and were filtered through his hands as he collected, wrote them down, and arranged to have them printed.

February 24, 2015 - Rebecca Nedostup, Associate Professor of History at Brown University

Viewed from the angle of social experience, the global and civil conflicts that enveloped China and Taiwan from the 1930s through the 1950s look less like discrete wars and revolutions, and more like continual warfare. Drawing on local materials, this talk describes this period as one of displacement and prolonged mobilization, with consequences for community and sovereignty on numerous levels. The result raises questions about the continued utility of Cold War historical frameworks.

November 11, 2014 - Ezra Vogel, Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences Emeritus, Harvard University

Deng Xiaoping was an extraordinary leader who set China on its current path, including opening, economic growth, and tight control over ideas.

LRCCS Symposium and Naming Ceremony Events--October 16, 2014

The inaugural naming event of the Kenneth G. Lieberthal and Richard H. Rogel Center for Chinese Studies.

September 30, 2014 - Martin Powers, Sally Michelson Davidson Professor of Chinese Arts and Cultures, U-M History of Art Department

Early modern English translations of Chinese terms and texts reveal a great deal about what Englishmen did and did not comprehend concerning rule of law as we now understand it. A close analysis of these translations suggests that much of what we learned in our Western Civilization textbooks was more fantasy than fact.

March 10, 2015 - Shui Yan Tang, Frances R. and John J. Duggan Professor in Public Administration, University of Southern California

This lecture highlights several key characteristics of the Chinese governance system that are in potential conflict with sound principles for formulating and enforcing rules.  The consequences of such conflicts are illustrated by examples in environmental regulation and compliance.

February 10 - Silvia Lindtner, Assistant Professor of Information, University of Michigan School of Information

In a 2013 State of the Union address president Barack Obama stated that open-source 3D printing and “making” will help guarantee “that the next revolution in manufacturing is made in America.” The US president, here, speaks to a growing interest in the potential impact of the so-called maker movement on technological innovation and economic development. Around the globe, governments, venture capitalists, and corporates are investing in the open hardware creations of makers including but not limited to wearable technologies, robotics, smart home devices and biotech.

November 4, 2014 - Aminda Smith, Associate Professor of History, Michigan State University

In the early 1950s, numerous eyewitness reports, in multiple languages, began describing the efforts of the Chinese Communists to transform the minds of ordinary people, from workers in Shanghai factories to POWs in Korean camps. Called “thought reform” (sixiang gaizao) in China and “brainwashing” in the U.S., the reeducation project may or may not have turned individuals into communists....

LRCCS Symposium and Naming Ceremony Events--October 16, 2014

Congratulatory message from the Honorable Cui Tiankai, Chinese Ambassador to the United States, on the occasion of the naming of the Kenneth G. Lieberthal and Richard H. Rogel Center for Chinese Studies

September 23, 2014 - Joseph Lam, Director of the Confucius Institute at U-M, Professor of Musicology, University of Michigan

Traditional China pairs up music (yue) and eroticism to inform on one another, generating many operatic shows and debates about its performance arts and gender relationships. A representative and entertaining one is, for example, the kunqu (classical Chinese opera) play entitled "Captured Alive," a drama that tells the ghost of Yan Poxi strangling Zhang Sanlang, her human lover, and taking him to hell to resume their illicit love affair. Critical analyses of the play underscore that kunqu performances multivalently portray Chinese men's desire for and anxiety about musically talented and sexually appealing women.