Join us on Thursday 29 March for an early evening lecture by Prof Stephanie Donald whose talk focuses on field research into media memories of older people in PRC pre 1949.
LECTURE SYNOPSIS
The research is based on an earlier project in the 1960s/70s which considered the role of the political poster. Working with Renmin University and the Australian Research Council Prof Donald`s expanded the core premise to cover all forms of media, and all periods relevant to those born on or before the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949.
Focussing on key memories, influences, usage patterns, and trajectories, these local histories of media put contemporary debates on propaganda, soft power, creative industries, and people’s journalism into a longer-term perspective.
Likewise, the burgeoning interest from research students and established scholars into the purposes and practices of media in China is served by multiple points of departure and a variety of approaches to sophisticated and difficult questions of what one expects from media cultures and systems in a strong state, such as the PRC.
The wider public fascination with the workings of the Chinese state will be addressed as the talk presents verbatim accounts of how media creates and preserves meaning; how and where continuities exist between revolutionary and reform environments; and opens up questions on the future of the Chinese media for a new generation.
BIOGRAPHY
Professor Stephanie Hemelryk Donald is currently a Leverhulme Trust Visiting Professor at the Centre for World Cinemas at the University of Leeds. Following a first degree in Chinese from the University of Oxford and a DPhil on Chinese film at University of Sussex (1997), she emigrated to Australia, where she has worked ever since. Her research covers film, the media, and children’s experiences in the Asia-Pacific region, with a particular focus on visual culture. Previous positions held include Professor of Chinese Media Studies at the University of Sydney, and Foundation Dean of Media and Communication at RMIT University, Melbourne. She has recently been awarded a prestigious Future Fellowship by the Australian Research Council, which she will take up at the University of New South Wales in May 2012. Recent work is published by Theory, Culture and Society, New Formations, and MIA.
TALK DETAILS
VENUE: The Confucius Institute for Scotland, Abden House, 1 Marchhall Crescent, EH16 5HP
DATE: Thursday 29 March 2012
TIME: 1800-19.30 followed by a short drinks reception
BOOKING: please email info@confuciusinstitute.ac.uk or call the Institute on 0131 662 2180.