Thursday April 6 | 4 PM | Oakes Mural Room
Wang Ning is Professor of English and Comparative Literature and Director of the Institute for Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies at Beijing Language and Culture University, where he is also head of the Center for European Studies. Nationally, he directs China’s National Research Institute for Postmodern Studies. A leading scholar in literary and cultural studies in China, his work centers on postmodern and postcolonial studies. Among his numerous Chinese-language publications are Comparative Literature and Contemporary Chinese Literature (1992), The Influence of Chinese Culture in Europe (1999), and Comparative Studies of 20th Century Western Literature (2000). Wang Ning has been a central figure in the encounter between contemporary Chinese and European and North American literary and cultural critics. He has organized several international conferences, such as “Postmodernism and Contemporary Chinese Literature” (1993), “Cultural Studies: China and the West” (1995), and “The Future of Literary Theory: China and the World” (2000). His talk at UCSC will discuss issues such as the relationship between traditional Chinese learning (guoxue) and Western learning, modernity and postmodernity in the Chinese context, and “cultural colonization” and “decolonization” in Chinese critical discourse.