A presentation by Michael Berry (UC Santa Barbara)
Michael Berry (Ph.D., Columbia University) is assistant professor of East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His areas of research include modern and contemporary Chinese literature, Chinese cinema, popular culture in modern China, fiction and drama of late imperial China, and translation studies. Berry's approach is transnational and his work addresses the richness and diversity of Chinese art and culture as it has manifested itself in mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and overseas Chinese communities. He is also the translator of several works of contemporary Chinese fiction.
Current projects include A History of Pain: Literary and Cinematic Mappings of Violence in Modern China, a full length manuscript exploring literary and cinematic representations of atrocity in twentieth century China. The project represents a critical examination of how incidents of mass violence and atrocity, such as the Nanjing Massacre, the February 28 Uprising, and the Cultural Revolution have been revisited, reimagined and reconstructed by filmmakers and novelists in the context of popular culture. He is also the author of a volume of interviews with contemporary Chinese filmmakers entitled Speaking in Images, which includes extended dialogues with leading directors including Hou Hsiao-hsien, Chen Kaige, Stanley Kwan, and Jia Zhangke. Berry's current literary translation projects include Wang Anyi's 1996 masterpiece The Song of Everlasting Sorrow (Chang hen ge), the modern martial arts novel The Last Swallow of Autumn (Xia yin), and Wu He (Dancing Crane)'s award-winning novel Remains of Life (Yu sheng), an exploration of the 1930 Musha Incident.
Date: Thursday, March 02, 2006
Time: 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM
243 Royce Hall
Los Angeles, CA 90095
United States
Department of Asian Languages & Cultures Tel: 1(310)206-8235
Sponsor(s): Asian Languages and Cultures
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