Solitude and Community in Contemporary Chinese Culture
Workshop: Solitude and Community in Contemporary Chinese Culture
The relationship between solitude and community resonates across the making of culture: creativity is often seeded in the tranquility of solitude; but it also blooms in spaces of community. In the aftermath of China’s strict Zero-COVID, policy, when millions of people were confined to their homes for months in states of isolation, questions about this intersection between being alone and being together are more pertinent than ever. This workshop focusses in particular on the insights their relationship offers into the ways in which seemingly disparate makers of culture navigate uncertainty in China and Hong Kong today. Placing the loneliness of the prison cell alongside solitary spectatorship of censored documentaries; linking online communities of transnational authors to the network of world-cities in which they live; and exploring the overlapping tensions between being singular and plural in contemporary poetry, this workshop shows how community and solitude, as multi-media and multi-scalar concepts, illuminate the bonds of sociality in uncertain times.
Federico Picerni (University of Bologna) ‘Solitude and Community, Singular and Plural, Poet and Class: Overlaps in Workers’ Poetry’
Margaret Hillenbrand (University of Oxford) ‘Digital Documentaries, Solitary Spectatorship’
Pang Laikwan (Chinese University of Hong Kong) ‘Writing Behind Bars: The Fandom That Queers Our Political Subjectivity’
Carwyn Morris (Leiden University) ‘In the Shadow of the World City: City Identity and Community in China’
Huang Qian (University of Groningen) ‘Chinese Female Transnational-Romance Content Creators’ Cautious Labor in Daily Production and Community Management’
Programme link: chinacentre.web.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/chinacentre/documents/media/workshop_on_solitude_and_community_in_contemporary_chinese_culture.pdf
Date:
15 May 2024, 10:00 (Wednesday, 4th week, Trinity 2024)
Venue:
Dickson Poon Building, Canterbury Road OX2 6LU
Venue Details:
Kin-ku Cheng Lecture Theatre (lower ground floor)
Speaker: Various Speakers
Organising department:
Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies
Organiser:
Professor Margaret Hillenbrand (University of Oxford)
Organiser contact email address:
information@chinese.ox.ac.uk
Host:
Professor Margaret Hillenbrand (University of Oxford)
Part of:
Visual Culture in Modern and Contemporary China
Booking required?:
Required
Booking email:
margaret.hillenbrand@chinese.ox.ac.uk
Cost:
Free
Audience:
Public
Editor:
Clare Orchard
