Date/Time
Date(s) - 09/21/2017
3:00 pm - 4:30 pm
Location
3108 JKB
Category(ies)
Steve Riep, Asian & Near Eastern Languages and Humanities Center Fellow, will present for the Humanities Center’s Colloquium on Thursday, Sept. 21st at 3:00 PM in 4010 JFSB.
Title: “Rethinking War: Unofficial History, Missing Veterans, and ‘Concrete’ Images of (Dis)ability”
Fiction, poetry and films about the Anti-Japanese War (1937-1945) and the Chinese Civil War (1946-1949) played a key role in helping to construct national history in both the People’s Republic of China and in Taiwan. Echoing official accounts of the war, these works focused on the exploits of heroic, able-bodied soldiers and for the most part excluded wounded, disfigured, and disabled casualties and veterans that are also a product of the institution of war. Why are accounts of disabled soldiers so rare and exceptional? What role do they play in critiquing the institution of war? How do accounts of the wounded and impaired instrumentalize or objectify the very individuals they depict? This presentation will explore literary accounts of the Anti-Japanese War, the phenomenon of the absent veteran in Chinese literature and film, and the ways in which concrete poetry and monumental sculpture have utilized disabilities in their works.
Catering by The Happy Sumo
