Citizenship Lab Research Project: “Observing Degrowth and Biocultural Activism in Colombia”

The Humanities Research Center’s Citizenship Lab proudly funds Lucas Chacko and Cody Schmidt’s Signature Work project

Students: Lucas Chacko and Cody Schmidt

Mentor: Professor Robin Rodd

From a broad perspective, our project will focus on degrowth and biocultural movements in Colombia. We have a shared interest in such alternative forms of sustainable economics, particularly in the Global South with the region’s history of colonialism, extractivism, and exploitation by the Global North. Degrowth specifically focuses on challenging traditional conceptions of a country’s wealth and success, posing critical questions regarding the environmental degradation and social stratification that traditional economic relations create.  

Related to this is the idea of bioculturalism, focusing specifically on the intersection between the environment and society, and their subsequent coexistence. Colombia in particular has been a home to a number of social and political movements led by citizens advocating for environmental justice. Moreover, recent political developments in Colombia have placed such arguments and initiatives at the center of political conversation. We will spend one month in Colombia observing the ways in which this conversation takes place, with Chacko focusing on citizen mobilization and coordination, and Schmidt focusing on how current environmental policies are experienced. 

Citizenship Lab Research Project: “Women’s Political Empowerment in East Asia: Challenges Faced by Female Policymakers in South Korea”

The Humanities Research Center’s Citizenship Lab proudly funds Enkhkhuslen Bat-Erdene’s Signature Work project

Student: Enkhkhuslen Bat-Erdene, Class of 2025, Institutions and Governance / Public Policy

Mentor: Professor Annemieke van den Dool, Ph.D. (Public Policy)

In East Asia, economic powerhouses like China, Japan, and South Korea are experiencing a decline in fertility rates due to historical gender discrimination. Despite the growing presence of feminist movements within these nations, gender disparity remains a deeply rooted issue. According to the World Economic Forum’s 2023 Global Gender Gap Index, South Korea, China, and Japan rank 105th, 107th, and 125th, respectively, out of 146 countries, making them the East Asian countries with the most significant gender disparities. 

South Korea’s recent feminist movement, known as #MeToo, has brought about significant changes but also faced fierce opposition. The movement appears to have unintentionally exacerbated, rather than bridged, the gender gap in South Korean society. Consequently, this project seeks to explore the obstacles female leaders and policymakers face in South Korean politics and to uncover the underlying reasons for their exclusion from critical gender policy decisions. By shedding light on the persistence of gender disparities within the government, I aim to provide valuable insights into potential solutions to increase women’s involvement in policymaking. 

Superdeep Nighthawks Surprise! Thu Feb 8, 8:04pm

8:04pm | IB 1008

The Nighthawks are having their first Superdeep Surprise screening! Hints: recent animated serial sci-fi stuff– plenty philosophical! (…& plenty food & drink 😉 Thu Feb 8, 8:04pm IB 1008.

***

Superdeep Nighthawks meet on Thu eve (~8pm till late). For more info, or to submit proposals for the Nighthawks, follow this link; for info on Superdeep more generally, follow this one.

Superdeep is sponsored by DKU’s Humanities Research Center.

New Year’s Sacrifice | 祝福

Artist Yang Zhenzhong showing his video installation at DKU 
艺术家杨振中的录像装置作品在昆杜展出

The Humanities Research Center, The Division of Arts and Humanities, and dKunst Art on Campus proudly announce the exhibition of the world-leading conceptual artist Yang Zhenzhong’s 6-channel video installation “Disinfect” (2015).

On view: IB Innovation Building Lobby, Duke Kunshan University

Public program : please stay tuned!

curated by prof. Zairong Xiang, director of arts as part of the ongoing dKunst Art on Campus project

“The New Year’s Sacrifice”

“Everybody agreed that the Lu family had found a very good maidservant, who really got through more work than a hard-working man. At the end of the year she swept, mopped, killed chickens and geese and sat up to boil the sacrificial meat, single-handed, so the family did not have to hire extra help.”

“The New Year’s Sacrifice,” Lu Xun (1924)

To prepare for the lunar new year, every household would do a thorough cleaning, disinfecting the old and best-wishes the new.

In the 2015 multi-video installation work “Disinfect” by artist Yang Zhenzhong, eighteen people of different ages and walks of life make exaggerated movements in front of the camera. Slowed down tenfold, their postures appear like a dance, light and joyful. Meanwhile, they seem to be saying something. However, because of the muted sound, the audience cannot know. In fact, despite appearances of speaking auspicious words, each person is vehemently cursing. They are crying out their anger. It might even involve some profanity, which is not only inappropriate but also inauspicious in this festive moment of blessing. In everyday use in Chinese, cursing someone can be politely referred to as “greeting someone.” “Best regards,” therefore becomes “best regrets.” In this artwork, muting and reduced-speed render the specific content of the “blessing” unknown, suspended as pure actions, or even beautiful postures. If swearing has a sort of disinfecting effect, then in this silent observation and unattainable interpellation, what exactly has been disinfected?

Yang Zhenzhong “Disinfect” 6 channel video installation 15’ (2015)

祝福

  “人们都说鲁四爷家里雇了个女工,实在比勤快的男人还勤快。到年底,扫尘,洗地,杀鸡,宰鹅,彻夜的煮福礼,全是一人担当,竟没有添短工。”

鲁迅《祝福》1924

辞旧迎新的世界,家家户户都要大扫除,打扫消毒,为新的一年做好准备。

艺术家杨振中2015年的多视频装置作品《消毒》中十八位各行各业的男女老少对着屏幕做出各种夸张的动作,被放慢了十倍之后,他们姿态如舞,轻盈喜乐。他们似乎在说些什么? 不过,因为消音,观众不得而知。其实看似口吐莲花,每个人却都在破口大骂,发泄心中的怒火。大概是一些不堪入耳的污言秽语,不仅不登大雅之堂,大过年的日子里,恐怕实在是不吉利的。不过,在日常使用中,谩骂某某可以被礼貌地称为“问候某某”,“祝福”被礼貌地用来替代诅咒。作品中,通过消音和缓速,祝福的具体内容不得而知,被悬置成纯粹的动作,甚至美好的姿态。如果说破口大骂本事就有一种消毒作用,那么,在无声的观看和无法抵达的询唤中,被消的毒到底是什么呢?

——–

杨振中 《消毒》六通道录像装置,2015年 15分钟

Stills from the video (courtesy of the artist)
视频静帧 (艺术家惠允)

————————————–

The New Year’s Sacrifice
Lu Xun (1924)

New Year’s Eve of the old calendar1 seems after all more like the real New Year’s Eve; for, to say nothing of the villages and towns, even in the air there is a feeling that New Year is coming. From the pale, lowering evening clouds issue frequent flashes of lightning, followed by a rumbling sound of firecrackers celebrating the departure of the Hearth God; while, nearer by, the firecrackers explode even more violently, and before the deafening report dies away the air is filled with a faint smell of powder. It was on such a night that I returned to Luchen, my native place. Although I call it my native place, I had had no home there for some time, so I had to put up temporarily with a certain Mr. Lu, the fourth son of his family. He is a member of our clan, and belongs to the generation before mine, so I ought to call him “Fourth Uncle.” An old student of the imperial college2 who went in for Neo-Confucianism, I found him very little changed in any way, simply slightly older, but without any moustache as yet. When we met, after exchanging a few polite remarks he said I was fatter, and after saying that immediately started a violent attack on the revolutionaries. I knew this was not meant personally, because the object of the attack was still Kang Yu-wei.3 Nevertheless, conversation proved difficult, so that in a short time I found myself alone in the study.

The next day I got up very late, and after lunch went out to see some relatives and friends. The day after I did the same. None of them was greatly changed, simply slightly older; but every family was busy preparing for “the sacrifice.” This is the great end-of-year ceremony in Luchen, when people reverently welcome the God of Fortune and solicit good fortune for the coming year. They kill chickens and geese and buy pork, scouring and scrubbing until all the women’s arms turn red in the water. Some of them still wear twisted silver bracelets. After the meat is cooked some chopsticks are thrust into it at random, and this is called the “offering.” It is set out at dawn when incense and candles are lit, and they reverently invite the God of Fortune to come and partake of the offering. Only men can be worshippers, and after the sacrifice they naturally continue to let off firecrackers as before. This happens every year, in every family, provided they can afford to buy the offering and firecrackers; and this year they naturally followed the old custom.

The day grew overcast. In the afternoon it actually started to snow, the biggest snow-flakes as large as plum blossom petals fluttered about the sky; and this, combined with the smoke and air of activity, made Luchen appear in a ferment. When I returned to my uncle’s study the roof of the house was already white with snow. The room also appeared brighter, the great red rubbing hanging on the wall showing up very clearly the character for Longevity written by the Taoist saint Chen Tuan.4 One of a pair of scrolls had fallen down and was lying loosely rolled up on the long table, but the other was still hanging there, bearing the words: “By understanding reason we achieve tranquillity of mind.” Idly, I went to turn over the books on the table beneath the window, but all I could find was a pile of what looked like an incomplete set of Kang Hsi’s Dictionary,5a volume of Chiang Yung’s Notes to Chu Hsi’s Philosophical Writings. and a volume of Commentaries on the Four Books.6 At all events, I made up my mind to leave the next day.

Besides, the very thought of my meeting with Hsiang Lin’s Wife the day before made me uncomfortable. It happened in the afternoon. I had been visiting a friend in the eastern part of the town. As I came out I met her by the river, and seeing the way she fastened her eyes on me I knew very well she meant to speak to me. Of all the people I had seen this time at Luchen none had changed as much as she: her hair, which had been streaked with white five years before, was now completely white, quite unlike someone in her forties. Her face was fearfully thin and dark in its sallowness, and had moreover lost its former expression of sadness, looking as if carved out of wood. Only an occasional flicker of her eyes showed she was still a living creature. In one hand she carried a wicker basket, in which was a broken bowl, empty; in the other she held a bamboo pole longer than herself, split at the bottom: it was clear she had become a beggar.

I stood still, waiting for her to come and ask for money.

“You have come back?” she asked me first.

“Yes.”

“That is very good. You are a scholar, and have travelled too and seen a lot. I just want to ask you something.” Her lustreless eyes suddenly gleamed.

I never guessed she would talk to me like this. I stood there taken by surprise.

“It is this.” She drew two paces nearer, and whispered very confidentially: “After a person dies, does he turn into a ghost or not?”

As she fixed her eyes on me I was seized with foreboding. A shiver ran down my spine and I felt more nervous than during an unexpected examination at school, when unfortunately the teacher stands by one’s side. Personally, I had never given the least thought to the question of the existence of spirits. In this emergency how should I answer her? Hesitating for a moment, I reflected: “It is the tradition here to believe in spirits, yet she seems to be sceptical—perhaps it would be better to say she hopes: hopes that there is immortality and yet hopes that there is not. Why increase the sufferings of the wretched? To give her something to look forward to, it would be better to say there is.”

“There may be, I think,” I told her hesitantly.

“Then, there must also be a Hell?”

“What, Hell?” Greatly startled, I could only try to evade the question. “Hell? According to reason there should be one too—but not necessarily. Who cares about it anyway? . . .”

“Then will all the people of one family who have died see each other again?”

“Well, as to whether they will see each other again or not. . . .” I realized now that I was a complete fool; for all my hesitation and reflection I had been unable to answer her three questions. Immediately I lost confidence and wanted to say the exact opposite of what I had previously said. “In this case . . . as a matter of fact, I am not sure. . . . Actually, regarding the question of ghosts, I am not sure either.”

In order to avoid further importunate questions, I walked off, and beat a hasty retreat to my uncle’s house, feeling exceedingly uncomfortable. I thought to myself: “I am afraid my answer will prove dangerous to her. Probably it is just that when other people are celebrating she feels lonely by herself, but could there be another reason? Could she have had some premonition? If there is another reason, and as a result something happens, then, through my answer, I shall be held responsible to a certain extent.” Finally, however, I ended by laughing at myself, thinking that such a chance meeting could have no great significance, and yet I was taking it so to heart; no wonder certain educationalists called me a neurotic. Moreover I had distinctly said, “I am not sure,” contradicting my previous answer; so that even if anything did happen, it would have nothing at all to do with me.

“I am not sure” is a most useful phrase.

Inexperienced and rash young men often take it upon themselves to solve people’s problems for them or choose doctors for them, and if by any chance things turn out badly, they are probably held to blame; but by simply concluding with this phrase “I am not sure,” one can free oneself of all responsibility. At this time I felt even more strongly the necessity for such a phrase, since even in speaking with a beggar woman there was no dispensing with it.

However, I continued to feel uncomfortable, and even after a night’s rest my mind kept running on this, as if I had a premonition of some untoward development. In that oppressive snowy weather, in the gloomy study, this discomfort increased. It would be better to leave: I should go back to town the next day. The boiled shark’s fins in the Fu Hsing Restaurant used to cost a dollar for a large portion, and I wondered if this cheap and delicious dish had increased in price or not. Although the friends who had accompanied me in the old days had scattered, even if I was alone the shark’s fins still had to be tasted. At all events, I made up my mind to leave the next day.

After experiencing many times that things which I hoped would not happen and felt should not happen invariably did happen, I was desperately afraid this would prove another such case. And, indeed, strange things did begin to happen. Towards evening I heard talking—it sounded like a discussion—in the inner room; but soon the conversation ended, and all I heard was my uncle saying loudly as he walked out: “Not earlier nor later, but just at this time—sure sign of a bad character!”

At first I felt astonished, then very uncomfortable, thinking these words must refer to me. I looked outside the door, but no one was there. I contained myself with difficulty till their servant came in before dinner to brew a pot of tea, when at last I had a chance to make some enquiries.

“With whom was Mr. Lu angry just now?” I asked.

“Why, still with Hsiang Lin’s Wife,” he replied briefly.

“Hsiang Lin’s Wife? How was that?” I asked again.

“She’s dead.”

“Dead?” My heart suddenly missed a beat. I started, and probably changed colour too. But since he did not raise his head, he was probably quite unaware of how I felt. Then I controlled myself, and asked:

“When did she die?”

“When? Last night, or else today, I’m not sure.”

“How did she die?”

“How did she die? Why, of poverty of course.” He answered placidly and, still without having raised his head to look at me, went out.

However, my agitation was only short-lived, for now that something I had felt imminent had already taken place, I no longer had to take refuge in my “I’m not sure,” or the servant’s expression “dying of poverty” for comfort. My heart already felt lighter. Only from time to time something still seemed to weigh on it. Dinner was served, and my uncle solemnly accompanied me. I wanted to ask about Hsiang Lin’s Wife, but knew that although he had read, “Ghosts and spirits are properties of Nature,”7 he had retained many superstitions, and on the eve of this sacrifice it was out of the question to mention anything like death or illness. In case of necessity one could use veiled allusions, but unfortunately I did not know how to, so although questions kept rising to the tip of my tongue, I had to bite them back. From his solemn expression I suddenly suspected that he looked on me as choosing not earlier nor later but just this time to come and trouble him, and that I was also a bad character; therefore to set his mind at rest I told him at once that I intended to leave Luchen the next day and go back to the city. He did not press me greatly to stay. So we quietly finished the meal.

In winter the days are short and, now that it was snowing, darkness already enveloped the whole town. Everybody was busy beneath the lamplight, but outside the windows it was very quiet. Snow-flakes fell on the thickly piled snow, as if they were whispering, making me feel even more lonely. I sat by myself under the yellow gleam of the vegetable oil lamp and thought, “This poor woman, abandoned by people in the dust as a tiresome and worn-out toy, once left her own imprint in the dust, and those who enjoy life must have wondered at her for wishing to prolong her existence; but now at least she has been swept clear by eternity. Whether spirits exist or not I do not know; but in the present world when a meaningless existence ends, so that someone whom others are tired of seeing is no longer seen, it is just as well, both for the individual concerned and for others.” I listened quietly to see if I could hear the snow falling outside the window, still pursuing this train of thought, until gradually I felt less ill at ease.

Fragments of her life, seen or heard before, now combined to form one whole.

She did not belong to Luchen. One year at the beginning of winter, when my uncle’s family wanted to change their maidservant, Old Mrs. Wei brought her in and introduced her. Her hair was tied with white bands, she wore a black skirt, blue jacket and pale green bodice, and was about twenty-six, with a pale skin but rosy cheeks. Old Mrs. Wei called her Hsiang Lin’s Wife, and said that she was a neighbour of her mother’s family, and because her husband was dead she wanted to go out to work. My uncle knitted his brows and my aunt immediately understood that he disapproved of her because she was a widow. She looked very suitable, though, with big strong feet and hands, and a meek expression; and she had said nothing but showed every sign of being tractable and hard-working. So my aunt paid no attention to my uncle’s frown, but kept her. During the period of probation she worked from morning till night, as if she found resting dull, and she was so strong that she could do a man’s work; accordingly on the third day it was settled, and each month she was to be paid five hundred cash.

Everybody called her Hsiang Lin’s Wife. They did not ask her her own name; but since she was introduced by someone from Wei Village who said she was a neighbour, presumably her name was also Wei. She was not very talkative, only answering when other people spoke to her, and her answers were brief. It was not until a dozen days or so had passed that they learned little by little that she still had a severe mother-in-law at home and a younger brother-in-law more than ten years old, who could cut wood. Her husband, who had been a woodcutter too, had died in the spring. He had been ten years younger than she. 8 This little was all that people learned from her.

The days passed quickly. She worked as hard as ever; she would eat anything, and did not spare herself. Everybody agreed that the Lu family had found a very good maidservant, who really got through more work than a hard-working man. At the end of the year she swept, mopped, killed chickens and geese and sat up to boil the sacrificial meat, single-handed, so the family did not have to hire extra help. Nevertheless she, on her side, was satisfied; gradually the trace of a smile appeared at the corner of her mouth. She became plumper and her skin whiter.

New Year was scarcely over when she came back from washing rice by the river looking pale, and said that in the distance she had just seen a man wandering on the opposite bank who looked very like her husband’s cousin, and probably he had come to look for her. My aunt, much alarmed, made detailed enquiries, but failed to get any further information. As soon as my uncle learned of it he frowned and said, “This is bad. She must have run away from her husband’s family.”

Before long this inference that she had run away was confirmed.

About a fortnight later, just as everybody was beginning to forget what had happened, Old Mrs. Wei suddenly called, bringing with her a woman in her thirties who, she said, was the maidservant’s mother-in-law. Although the woman looked like a villager, she behaved with great self-possession and had a ready tongue in her head. After the usual polite remarks she apologized for coming to take her daughter-in-law home, saying there was a great deal to be done at the beginning of spring, and since there were only old people and children at home they were short-handed. “Since it is her mother-in-law who wants her to go back, what is there to be said?” was my uncle’s comment.

Thereupon her wages were reckoned up. They amounted to one thousand seven hundred and fifty cash, all of which she had left with her mistress without using a single coin. My aunt gave the entire amount to her mother-in-law. The latter also took her clothes, thanked Mr. and Mrs. Lu and went out. By this time it was already noon.

“Oh, the rice! Didn’t Hsiang Lin’s Wife go to wash the rice?” my aunt exclaimed some time later. Probably she was rather hungry, so that she remembered lunch.

Thereupon everybody set about looking for the rice basket. My aunt went first to the kitchen, then to the hall, then to the bedroom; but not a trace of it was to be seen anywhere. My uncle went outside, but could not find it either; only when he went right down to the riverside did he see it, set down fair and square on the bank, with a bundle of vegetables beside it.

Some people there told him that a boat with a white awning had moored there in the morning, but since the awning covered the boat completely they did not know who was inside, and before this incident no one had paid any attention to it. But when Hsiang Lin’s Wife came to wash rice, two men looking like country people jumped off the boat just as she was kneeling down and seizing hold of her carried her on board. After several shouts and cries, Hsiang Lin’s Wife became silent: they had probably stopped her mouth. Then two women walked up, one of them a stranger and the other Old Mrs. Wei. When the people who told this story tried to peep into the boat they could not see very clearly, but Hsiang Lin’s Wife seemed to be lying bound on the floor of the boat.

“Disgraceful! Still …” said my uncle.

That day my aunt cooked the midday meal herself, and my cousin Ah Niu lit the fire.

After lunch Old Mrs. Wei came again.

“Disgraceful!” said my uncle.

“What is the meaning of this? How dare you come here again!” My aunt, who was washing dishes, started scolding as soon as she saw her. “You recommended her yourself, and then plotted to have her carried off, causing all this stir. What will people think? Are you trying to make a laughing-stock of our family?”

“Aiya, I was really taken in! Now I have come specially to clear up this business. When she asked me to find her work, how was I to know that she had left home without her mother-in-law’s consent? I am very sorry, Mr. Lu, Mrs. Lu. Because I am so old and foolish and careless, I have offended my patrons. However, it is lucky for me that your family is always so generous and kind, and unwilling to be hard on your inferiors. This time I promise to find you someone good to make up for my mistake.”

“Still . . .” said my uncle.

Thereupon the business of Hsiang Lin’s Wife was concluded, and before long it was also forgotten.

Only my aunt, because the maidservants taken on afterwards were all lazy or fond of stealing food, or else both lazy and fond of stealing food, with not a good one in the lot, still often spoke of Hsiang Lin’s Wife. On such occasions she would always say to herself, “I wonder what has become of her now?” meaning that she would like to have her back. But by the following New Year she too gave up hope.

The New Year’s holiday was nearly over when Old Mrs. Wei, already half tipsy, came to pay her respects, and said it was because she had been back to Wei Village to visit her mother’s family and stayed a few days that she had come late. During the course of conversation they naturally came to speak of Hsiang Lin’s Wife.

“She?” said Mrs. Wei cheerfully. “She is in luck now. When her mother-in-law dragged her home, she had already promised her to the sixth son of the Ho family in Ho Village. Not long after she reached home they put her in the bridal chair and sent her off.”

“Aiya! What a mother-in-law!” exclaimed my aunt in amazement.

“Ah, madam, you really talk like a great lady! We country folk, poor women, think nothing of that. She still had a younger brother-in-law who had to be married. And if they hadn’t found her a husband, where would they have found the money for his wedding? But her mother-in-law is a clever and capable woman, who knows how to drive a good bargain, so she married her off into the mountains. If she had married her to someone in the same village, she wouldn’t have got so much money; but since very few women are willing to marry someone living deep in the mountains, she got eighty thousand cash. Now the second son is married, the presents only cost her fifty thousand, and after paying the wedding expenses she still has over ten thousand left. Just think, doesn’t this show she knows how to drive a good bargain? . . .”

“But was Hsiang Lin’s Wife willing?”

“It wasn’t a question of being willing or not. Of course anyone would have protested. They just tied her up with a rope, stuffed her into the bridal chair, carried her to the man’s house, put on the bridal headdress, performed the ceremony in the hall and locked them in their room; and that was that. But Hsiang Lin’s Wife is quite a character. I heard she really put up a great struggle, and everybody said she was different from other people because she had worked in a scholar’s family. We go-betweens, madam, see a great deal. When widows remarry, some cry and shout, some threaten to commit suicide, some when they have been carried to the man’s house won’t go through the ceremony, and some even smash the wedding candlesticks. But Hsiang Lin’s Wife was different from the rest. They said she shouted and cursed all the way, so that by the time they had carried her to Ho Village she was completely hoarse. When they dragged her out of the chair, although the two chairbearers and her young brother-in-law used all their strength, they couldn’t force her to go through the ceremony. The moment they were careless enough to loosen their grip—gracious Buddha!—she threw herself against a corner of the table and knocked a big hole in her head. The blood poured out; and although they used two handfuls of incense ashes and bandaged her with two pieces of red cloth, they still couldn’t stop the bleeding. Finally it took all of them together to get her shut up with her husband in the bridal chamber, where she went on cursing. Oh, it was really dreadful!” She shook her head, cast down her eyes and said no more.

“And after that what happened?” asked my aunt.

“They said the next day she still didn’t get up,” said Old Mrs. Wei, raising her eyes.

“And after?”

“After? She got up. At the end of the year she had a baby, a boy, who was two this New Year.9 These few days when I was at home some people went to Ho Village, and when they came back they said they had seen her and her son, and that both mother and baby are fat. There is no mother-in-law over her, the man is a strong fellow who can earn a living, and the house is their own. Well, well, she is really in luck.”

After this even my aunt gave up talking of Hsiang Lin’s Wife.

But one autumn, two New Years after they heard how lucky Hsiang Lin’s Wife had been, she actually reappeared on the threshold of my uncle’s house. On the table she placed a round bulb-shaped basket, and under the eaves a small roll of bedding. Her hair was still wrapped in white bands, and she wore a black skirt, blue jacket and pale green bodice. But her skin was sallow and her cheeks had lost their colour; she kept her eyes downcast, and her eyes, with their tear-stained rims, were no longer bright. Just as before, it was Old Mrs. Wei, looking very benevolent, who brought her in, and who explained at length to my aunt:

“It was really a bolt from the blue. Her husband was so strong, nobody could have guessed that a young fellow like that would die of typhoid fever. First he seemed better, but then he ate a bowl of cold rice and the sickness came back. Luckily she had the boy, and she can work, whether it is chopping wood, picking tea-leaves or raising silkworms; so at first she was able to carry on. Then who could believe that the child, too, would be carried off by a wolf? Although it was nearly the end of spring, still wolves came to the village—how could anyone have guessed that? Now she is all on her own. Her brother-in-law came to take the house, and turned her out; so she has really no way open to her but to come and ask help from her former mistress. Luckily this time there is nobody to stop her, and you happen to be wanting a new servant, so I have brought her here. I think someone who is used to your ways is much better than a new hand. . . .”

“I was really stupid, really . . .” Hsiang Lin’s Wife raised her listless eyes to say. “I only knew that when it snows the wild beasts in the glen have nothing to eat and may come to the villages; I didn’t know that in spring they came too. I got up at dawn and opened the door, filled a small basket with beans and called our Ah Mao to go and sit on the threshold and shell the beans. He was very obedient and always did as I told him: he went out. Then I chopped wood at the back of the house and washed the rice, and when the rice was in the pan and I wanted to boil the beans I called Ah Mao, but there was no answer; and when I went our to look, all I could see was beans scattered on the ground, but no Ah Mao. He never went to other families to play; and in fact at each place where I went to ask, there was no sign of him. I became desperate, and begged people to go to look for him. Only in the afternoon, after looking everywhere else, did they go to look in the glen and see one of his little shoes caught on a bramble. ‘That’s bad,’ they said, ‘he must have met a wolf.’ And sure enough when they went further in there he was, lying in the wolf’s lair, with all his entrails eaten away, his hand still tightly clutching that little basket. . . .” At this point she started crying, and was unable to complete the sentence.

My aunt had been undecided at first, but by the end of this story the rims of her eyes were rather red. After thinking for a moment she told her to take the round basket and bedding into the servants’ quarters. Old Mrs. Wei heaved a long sigh as if relieved of a great burden. Hsiang Lin’s Wife looked a little more at ease than when she first came and, without having to be told the way, quietly took away her bedding. From this time on she worked again as a maidservant in Luchen.

Everybody still called her Hsiang Lin’s Wife.

However, she had changed a great deal. She had not been there more than three days before her master and mistress realized that she was not as quick as before. Since her memory was much worse, and her impassive face never showed the least trace of a smile, my aunt already expressed herself very far from satisfied. When the woman first arrived, although my uncle frowned as before, because they invariably had such difficulty in finding servants he did not object very strongly, only secretly warned my aunt that while such people may seem very pitiful they exert a bad moral influence. Thus although it would be all right for her to do ordinary work she must not join in the preparations for sacrifice; they would have to prepare all the dishes themselves, for otherwise they would be unclean and the ancestors would not accept them.

The most important event in my uncle’s household was the ancestral sacrifice, and formerly this had been the busiest time for Hsiang Lin’s Wife; but now she had very little to do. When the table was placed in the centre of the hall and the curtain fastened, she still remembered how to set out the winecups and chopsticks in the old way.

“Hsiang Lin’s Wife, put those down!” said my aunt hastily.

She sheepishly withdrew her hand and went to get the candlesticks.

“Hsiang Lin’s Wife, put those down!” cried my aunt hastily again. “I’ll fetch them.”

After walking round several times without finding anything to do, Hsiang Lin’s Wife could only go hesitantly away. All she did that day was to sit by the stove and feed the fire.

The people in the town still called her Hsiang Lin’s Wife, but in a different tone from before; and although they talked to her still, their manner was colder. She did not mind this in the least, only, looking straight in front of her, she would tell everybody her story, which night or day was never out of her mind.

“I was really stupid, really,” she would say. “I only knew that when it snows the wild beasts in the glen have nothing to eat and may come to the villages; I didn’t know that in spring they came too. I got up at dawn and opened the door, filled a small basket with beans and called our Ah Mao to go and sit on the threshold and shell them. He was very obedient and always did as I told him: he went out. Then I chopped wood at the back of the house and washed the rice, and when the rice was in the pan and I wanted to boil the beans I called Ah Mao, but there was no answer; and when I went out to look, all I could see was beans scattered on the ground, but no Ah Mao. He never went to other families to play; and in fact at each place where I went to ask, there was no sign of him. I became desperate, and begged people to go to look for him. Only in the afternoon, after looking everywhere else, did they go to look in the glen and see one of his little shoes caught on a bramble. ‘That’s bad,’ they said, ‘he must have met a wolf.’ And sure enough when they went further in there he was, lying in the wolf’s lair, with all his entrails eaten away, his hand still tightly clutching that small basket. . . .” At this point she would start crying and her voice would trail away.

This story was rather effective, and when men heard it they often stopped smiling and walked away disconcerted, while the women not only seemed to forgive her but their faces immediately lost their contemptuous look and they added their tears to hers. There were some old women who had not heard her speaking in the street, who went specially to look for her, to hear her sad tale. When her voice trailed away and she started to cry, they joined in, shedding the tears which had gathered in their eyes. Then they sighed, and went away satisfied, exchanging comments.

She asked nothing better than to tell her sad story over and over again, often gathering three or four hearers. But before long everybody knew it by heart, until even in the eyes of the most kindly, Buddha fearing old ladies not a trace of tears could be seen. In the end, almost everyone in the town could recite her tale, and it bored and exasperated them to hear it.

“I was really stupid, really . . .” she would begin.

“Yes, you only knew that in snowy weather the wild beasts in the mountains had nothing to eat and might come down to the villages.” Promptly cutting short her recital, they walked away.

She would stand there open-mouthed, looking at them with a dazed expression, and then go away too, as if she also felt disconcerted. But she still brooded over it, hoping from other topics such as small baskets, beans and other people’s children, to lead up to the story of her Ah Mao. If she saw a child of two or three, she would say, “Oh dear, if my Ah Mao were still alive, he would be just as big. . . .”

Children seeing the look in her eyes would take fright and, clutching the hems of their mothers’ clothes, try to tug them away. Thereupon she would be left by herself again, and finally walk away disconcerted. Later everybody knew what she was like, and it only needed a child present for them to ask her with an artificial smile, “Hsiang Lin’s Wife, if your Ah Mao were alive, wouldn’t he be just as big as that?”

She probably did not realize that her story, after having been turned over and tasted by people for so many days, had long since become stale, only exciting disgust and contempt; but from the way people smiled she seemed to know that they were cold and sarcastic, and that there was no need for her to say any more. She would simply look at them, not answering a word.

In Luchen people celebrate New Year in a big way: preparations start from the twentieth day of the twelfth month onwards. That year my uncle’s household found it necessary to hire a temporary manservant, but since there was still a great deal to do they also called in another maidservant, Liu Ma, to help. Chickens and geese had to be killed; but Liu Ma was a devout woman who abstained from meat, did not kill living things, and would only wash the sacrificial dishes. Hsiang Lin’s Wife had nothing to do but feed the fire. She sat there, resting, watching Liu Ma as she washed the sacrificial dishes. A light snow began to fall.

“Dear me, I was really stupid,” began Hsiang Lin’s Wife, as if to herself, looking at the sky and sighing.

“Hsiang Lin’s Wife, there you go again,” said Liu Ma, looking at her impatiently. “I ask you: that wound on your forehead, wasn’t it then you got it?”

“Uh, huh,” she answered vaguely.

“Let me ask you: what made you willing after all?”

“Me?”

“Yes. What I think is, you must have been willing; otherwise. . . .”

“Oh dear, you don’t know how strong he was.

“I don’t believe it. I don’t believe he was so strong that you really couldn’t keep him off. You must have been willing, only you put the blame on his being so strong.”

“Oh dear, you . . . you try for yourself and see.” She smiled.

Liu Ma’s lined face broke into a smile too, making it wrinkled like a walnut; her small beady eyes swept Hsiang Lin’s Wife’s forehead and fastened on her eyes. As if rather embarrassed, Hsiang Lin’s Wife immediately stopped smiling, averted her eyes and looked at the snow-flakes.

“Hsiang Lin’s Wife, that was really a bad bargain,” continued Liu Ma mysteriously. “If you had held out longer or knocked yourself to death, it would have been better. As it is, after living with your second husband for less than two years, you are guilty of a great crime. Just think: when you go down to the lower world in future, these two men’s ghosts will fight over you. To which will you go? The King of Hell will have no choice but to cut you in two and divide you between them. I think, really. . . . .”

Then terror showed in her face. This was something she had never heard in the mountains.

“I think you had better take precautions beforehand. Go to the Tutelary God’s Temple and buy a threshold to be your substitute, so that thousands of people can walk over it and trample on it, in order to atone for your sins in this life and avoid torment after death.”

At the time Hsiang Lin’s Wife said nothing, but she must have taken this to heart, for the next morning when she got up there were dark circles beneath her eyes. After breakfast she went to the Tutelary God’s Temple at the west end of the village, and asked to buy a threshold. The temple priests would not agree at first, and only when she shed tears did they give a grudging consent. The price was twelve thousand cash.

She had long since given up talking to people, because Ah Mao’s story was received with such contempt; but news of her conversation with Liu Ma that day spread, and many people took a fresh interest in her and came again to tease her into talking. As for the subject, that had naturally changed to deal with the wound on her forehead.

“Hsiang Lin’s Wife, I ask you: what made you willing after all that time?” one would cry.

“Oh, what a pity, to have had this knock for nothing,” another looking at her scar would agree.

Probably she knew from their smiles and tone of voice that they were making fun of her, for she always looked steadily at them without saying a word, and finally did not even turn her head. All day long she kept her lips tightly closed, bearing. on her head the scar which everyone considered a mark of shame, silently shopping, sweeping the floor, washing vegetables, preparing rice. Only after nearly a year did she take from my aunt her wages which had accumulated. She changed them for twelve silver dollars, and asking for leave went to the west end of the town. In less time than it takes for a meal she was back again, looking much comforted, and with an unaccustomed light in her eyes. She told my aunt happily that she had bought a threshold in the Tutelary God’s Temple.

When the time came for the ancestral sacrifice at the winter equinox, she worked harder than ever, and seeing my aunt take out the sacrificial utensils and with Ah Niu carry the table into the middle of the hall, she went confidently to fetch the winecups and chopsticks.

“Put those down, Hsiang Lin’s Wife!” my aunt called out hastily.

She withdrew her hand as if scorched, her face turned ashen-grey, and instead of fetching the candlesticks she just stood there dazed. Only when my uncle came to burn incense and told her to go, did she walk away. This time the change in her was very great, for the next day not only were her eyes sunken, but even her spirit seemed broken. Moreover she became very timid, not only afraid of the dark and shadows, but also of the sight of anyone. Even her own master or mistress made her look as frightened as a little mouse that has come out of its hole in the daytime. For the rest, she would sit stupidly, like a wooden statue. In less than half a year her hair began to turn grey, and her memory became much worse, reaching a point when she was constantly forgetting to go and prepare the rice.

“What has come over Hsiang Lin’s Wife? It would really have been better not to have kept her that time.” My aunt would sometimes speak like this in front of her, as if to warn her.

However, she remained this way, so that it was impossible to see any hope of her improving. They finally decided to get rid of her and tell her to go back to Old Mrs. Wei. While I was at Luchen they were still only talking of this; but judging by what happened later, it is evident that this was what they must have done. Whether after leaving my uncle’s household she became a beggar, or whether she went first to Old Mrs. Wei’s house and later became a beggar, I do not know.

I was woken up by firecrackers exploding noisily close at hand, saw the glow of the yellow oil lamp as large as a bean, and heard the splutter of fireworks as my uncle’s household celebrated the sacrifice. I knew that it was nearly dawn. I felt bewildered, hearing as in a dream the confused continuous sound of distant crackers which seemed to form one dense cloud of noise in the sky, joining the whirling snow-flakes to envelop the whole town. Wrapped in this medley of sound, relaxed and at ease, the doubt which had preyed on me from dawn to early night was swept clean away by the atmosphere of celebration, and I felt only that the saints of heaven and earth had accepted the sacrifice and incense and were all reeling with intoxication in the sky, preparing to give the people of Luchen boundless good fortune.

[courtesy of Marxists Internet Archive]


Notes

1. The Chinese lunar calendar.

2. The highest institute of learning in the Ching dynasty.

3. A famous reformist who lived from 1858 to 1927 and advocated constitutional monarchy.

4. A hermit at the beginning of the tenth century.

5. A Chinese dictionary compiled under the auspices of Emperor Kang Hsi who reigned from 1662 to 1722.

6. Confucian classics.

7. A Confucian saying.

8. In old China it used to be common in country districts for young women to be married to boys of ten or eleven. The bride’s labour could then he exploited hy her husband’s family.

9. It was the custom in China to reckon a child as one year old at birth, and to add another year to his age as New Year.

Superdeep Nighthawks: Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (Fleischer Camp 2021) | Feb 29, 8:04pm

8:04pm  |  IB 1008

Week 7, Signature Work products about to be due…wouldn’t some kind of protective shell be nice now! Luckily the  Nighthawks have got you covered Superdeep — with Dean Fleischer Camp‘s 2021 Marcel the Shell with Shoes On ( …& food & drink). Thu Feb 29, 8:04pm IB 1008.

***

Superdeep Nighthawks meet on Thu eve (~8pm till late); more info here. To propose events or screenings, follow this link; for info on Superdeep generally, follow this one.

Superdeep is sponsored by DKU’s Humanities Research Center.

The Spirit of Space Exploration in China and the West: Conference Program

Please note that this is a draft program subject to change.

Thursday, June 6, 2024

0900 Welcome and Introduction from the Organizers (James Miller and Ben Van Overmeire)

0910 Welcome and Introduction from the ASU Space Intersections Conference (Jack Traphagan)

0930-1030 Keynote 1: Jeff Kripal

Jeffrey Kripal holds the J. Newton Rayzor Chair in Philosophy and Religious Thought at Rice University. He is the author of many books, including Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion and The Serpent’s Gift: Gnostic Reflections on the Study of Religion. he is known worldwide as a leading theorist of religion, the paranormal, and the impossible.

1030-1100 Coffee

1100-1230 Panel 1: Sincizing Outer Space

Alexander C.T. Geppert and Lu LiuThe Face of Space: Qian Xuesen and Chinese Astroculture

Tonio Savina“Sinicizing” the Moon: the Promotion of Chinese Astroculture through Lunar Nomenclature

Evander PriceChinese Perspectives on the NASA Voyager Golden Record

1230-1400 Lunch

1400-1600  Panel 2: Comparative Perspectives

Brad TabasThe Question Concerning Technology in Outer Space

Olga DubrovinaDreaming of Space in the USSR

Vladimir BrljakDark Space in NewSpace: Jeff Bezos’s “Great Inversion,” William Shatner’s “Black Ugliness,” and the History of the Cosmological Imagination

Thore BjørnvigTranscendence of Time and Space: Outer Space Religion as a Trans-Cultural Phenomenon

1600-1630 Coffee

1630-1730 Keynote 2: Su Meng

Su Meng, founder and chief scientist of Origin Space is one of the world’s leading space scientists. Professor Su received his BSc from Peking University and his PhD in astrophysics from Harvard University. He received a Pappalardo fellowship from MIT, an Einstein fellowship from NASA (now part of the NASA Hubble Fellowship Program), and was the co-winner of the 2014 Bruno Rossi prize for high-energy astrophysics for the discovery of the bubble structure of the Milky Way.

1800-20:00 Dinner

Friday, June 7

0930-1030 Keynote 3:  Mary-Jane Rubinstein

Mary-Jane Rubenstein is a philosopher of science and religion and author, most notably, of Astrotopia: The Dangerous Religion of the Corporate Space Race. Her work offers a vision of exploring space without reproducing the atrocities of earthly colonialism, and encourages stories that put cosmic caretaking over corporate profiteering.

1030-1100 Coffee Break

1100-1230 Panel 3: Vision, Technology and Media

Kiu-wai Chu – Native Soil Goes to Space: Chinese Planetary Fictions in the Anthropocene

Ting Zheng – Technoecological Eyes: The Compound Eyes in Space and Nature

Saskia Abrahms-Kavunenko – On Star work and Dharma: Contemporary Buddhist Visioning of the Universal and the Universe

Lukáš LikavčanElemental Mediality of Light: Infrared Waves in Cosmic Information Ecologies

1230-1400 Lunch

1400-1530 Space Research At DKU: Scientific Perspectives

  • Kai Huang
  • Changcheng Zheng
  • Marcus Werner

1530-1600 Coffee Break

1600-1730 Space Research at DKU: Interdisciplinary Perspectives

Travis Wilkerson, Ding Ma, and Erin WilkersonGaia Theory as a Cosmological Investigation of Buddhist Dharma

1800 Dinner

1930-2130 Film Screening and Discussion with Travis Wilkerson and Erin Wilkerson

  • A Long Day’s Journey into Night (Bi Gan, 2018)
  • Pluto Declaration (Travis Wilkerson, 2011)

Saturday, June 8

0930-1100 Panel 4: Philosophy and Outer Space

Mohamed ZreikBridging Traditions: The Confluence of Eastern Philosophies and Space Exploration in China’s Contemporary Astroculture

Ujjwal Kumar and Haoqin ZhongExploring the Philosophical Underpinnings: Buddhism and the Possibility of Extraterrestrial (=Alien) Life

Lance Gharavi – The New Transcendence Narrative for U.S. Space Exploration

1100-1130 Coffee Break

1130-1230 Keynote 4: Chen Qiufan

Chen Qiufan (aka Stanley Chan) is one of China’s leading science fiction authors, and a translator, creative producer, and curator. He is a Berggruen Institute Fellow and a Yale University research scholar, and  co-author, with former Google China president Kai-Fu Lee, of AI 2041: Ten Visions for our Future.

1230-1300 Closing Ceremony and Photograph

Questions

Please contact James Miller <jem122@duke.edu> or Ben Van Overmeire <ben.van.overmeire@dukekunshan.edu.cn> if you have any questions.

Abstracts

The Face of Space: Qian Xuesen and Chinese Astroculture
Alexander C.T. Geppert and Lu Liu
Qian Xuesen (1911–2009), widely recognized as the Chinese ‘father of spaceflight,’ is a household name within China but remains relatively obscure on the international stage. Trained at the California Institute of Technology, he co-founded the Jet Propulsion Laboratory before returning to China in 1955, where he became instrumental in the space program and missile industry. Interrogating the discrepancy, this article investigates the social, cultural, and political rationale behind the making of a space persona. Utilizing digital visualization and reading methods, it charts the transformation of Qian from an aeronautical engineer known only within expert circles to China’s foremost rocket star. The analysis deconstructs key facets of Qian’s public image and explores forces and paradoxes that underlie the ongoing construction of this image. Transforming Qian into the face of space plays a crucial role in popularizing spaceflight activities, rendering outer space a conceivable frontier, and producing a Chinese astroculture. Examining a comprehensive body of visual materials, media reports, over 150 biographies, and posthumous memorialization activities reveals the celebrification of Qian as a carefully orchestrated transmedial project braiding together efforts of the state, science and education institutes, private publishers, professional and amateur writers, and the general public.

“Sinicizing” the Moon: the Promotion of Chinese Astroculture through Lunar Nomenclature
Tonio Savina
During the last decade, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) paid particular attention to the denomination of the topographical features on the Moon, submitting proposals of names ‘with Chinese characteristics’ to the International Astronomical Union (IAU), which is responsible for the official lunar nomenclature. For example, after the successful mission Chang’e-4, launched in 2018, a cluster of lunar sites was assigned with Chinese names, such as Statio Tianhe for the landing area and Zhinyu, Hegu, and Tianjin for three small craters around it. In trying to interpret the PRC’s interest in “sinicizing” the Moon, this paper looks at a corpus of Chinese names approved by the IAU between 2010 and 2021 as a sign of Beijing’s search for a national astroculture, a set of space-related practices used to promote national cohesion and to enhance the country’s soft power. The assignation of names to the Moon’s terrain is put in the context of the revival of tradition in contemporary China, showing how this operation is, in fact, the enactment of a practice deeply rooted in Chinese culture – the so-called “art of naming”. In doing so, the paper will also discuss how naming the Moon is an exercise of national power that seems to contradict, symbolically at least, the PRC’s rhetoric against the US, accused of claiming territories on the Earth’s satellite in the context of the alleged “New Moon Race”.

Chinese Perspectives on the NASA Voyager Golden Record
Evander Price, CUHK
What message should China send into space? What is the best face to show the cosmos? At the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, I introduce my students to the Golden Record, a literal LP—made of gold—strapped to the Voyagers 1 and 2, launched into space in 1977. The Golden Record contains images, greetings, and most importantly, music, all meant as a collective snapshot of humankind to whoever (aliens maybe?) might retrieve one or the other of these golden gifts in some distant future. Safe in the erosionless vacuum of space, these golden records might very well be the most lasting vestige of humankind into eternity. Such an object is rife with mythical and religious interpretations. As an exercise, I ask my (mostly) Chinese students to propose what they think is missing from the Golden Record and make an argument for what they might add. The actual Golden Record contains only one piece of music from China,“流水”. In this paper, I analyze my students’responses to this strange, far-flung object, and consider what it means to them to make a Chinese Gen-Z Golden Record.

The Question Concerning Technology in Outer Space
Brad Tabas
In 1961, Heidegger proclaimed the dawning of a new era. He called it the “Rocket Age”(2000, 577). He thought Sputnik ruptured the fabric of history, meaning that rockets were not merely a new technology but that they brought a new cosmology. He felt they had so radically changed the relationship between the earth and the celestial sphere that the fundamental distinctions underwriting occidental metaphysics were shattered. That implied that the very relationship between words and world, the poetically generated sense of the order and place of the human with respect to what might be called the whole, were annihilated. As he himself put it: “There is neither ‘earth’ nor ‘heaven’ in the sense of man’s poetic dwelling on this earth. What the rocket’s orbit achieves is the technical realization of what since three centuries has always more exclusively and decisively been framed as Nature and which now stands as a universal, interstellar, standing reserve. The rocket’s orbit pushes ‘earth and heaven’ into oblivion” (2020, 157). The question thus arises: after the loss of heaven and earth, what remains? Moreover, is this cosmological deconstruction planetary, affecting not only western metaphysics but all terrestrial aesthetic orders, including Chinese thought? Is it a catastrophe after all and for all, or merely a re-articulation and an opening? This paper will pursue these questions, foundational for thinking critically about contemporary astroculture, in conversation with Yuk Hui’s presentation of what he calls Chinese “cosmotechnics” (Hui 2016, 2020).

Dreaming of Space in the USSR
Olga Dubrovina
It is generally accepted among Cold War historians that space exploration on both the Soviet and American sides is primarily related to the goal of achieving military-strategic priority. Thus, in the USSR, enormous financial, scientific, and human resources were spent on the intercontinental missile project starting in the mid-1940s. However, it was not only the interest in state security that drove the space exploration process. The key figures who were directly involved in the development and production of space technology were driven not only by the desire to prove the superiority of communism over capitalism. These Soviet engineers and scientists at the dawn of the space age regarded space as the main source of energy that fuelled their boundless enthusiasm. The latter was not backed by hopes of world fame (due to the secrecy of the entire sector), nor by material benefits in their Western sense, nor by guarantees of personal safety (just remember the purges of the 1930s). So, what drove these pioneers of Soviet space? Based on their memoirs, as well as biographies written by their relatives, contemporaries, and historians, I will try to reconstruct the ideas about space that guided the space explorers in the USSR at the early stage of the Cold War.

Dark Space in NewSpace: Jeff Bezos’s “Great Inversion,” William Shatner’s “Black Ugliness,” and the History of the Cosmological Imagination
Vladimir Brljak
On 13 October 2021, the second crewed flight by Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin company included the actor William Shatner, famous for his role in the original Star Trek series of 1966–69. One of few civilians to witness stratospheric descent in daytime, Shatner singled out the experience in a widely reported post-flight statement, notable for its emphatically negative response to space: ‘[E]verybody in the world needs to do this. […] To see the blue colour whip by you, and now you’re staring into blackness’, ‘black ugliness’, and ‘death’. Drawn from a larger project titled When Did Space Turn Dark?, the paper discusses Shatner’s statement, along with the ‘NewSpace’ moment more generally, as episodes in the long shift from bright to dark space in the Western cosmological imagination. Analysis of the statement reveals it as a carefully coached performance, promoting not only Bezos’s space tourism venture but also his concept of the ‘Great Inversion’: a model of space colonization influenced by the work of Gerard O’Neill, where heavy industry is moved off-Earth, preserving the planet as humanity’s ‘national park’. The paper situates these developments within broader perspectives on the perceived colour of space and its complex cultural and political dynamics.

Transcendence of Time and Space: Outer Space Religion as a Trans-Cultural Phenomenon
Thore Bjørnvig
The idea that imaginings of outer space exploration and religion are intertwined has been gaining traction during the last 10 years. Before this it was common to argue that UFOs and religion are connected, just as it was common to point out the religious dimensions of what I call “psycho-occult” ways of exploring outer space and the encounter with extraterrestrial beings. Likewise is has been pointed out that the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence displays spiritual dimensions. The appearance of religious sentiments in these areas indicates that a common spiritual ground unites them. This common ground might be termed “outer space religion” and its mythos can be uncovered by studying science fiction. Stipulating that sci-fi is apocalyptic in nature, apocalypticism is the key to unlocking the religious underpinnings of both space exploration, SETI, the UFO-phenomenon (when seen as origination from outer space) and psycho-occult experiences of outer space. Theoretical in nature this paper explores the possibility that a common outer space religious mythos unites the aforementioned areas across cultures, from the West to the East, the latter exemplified by science fiction movies such as the Indian Koi… Mil Gaya (2003) and the Chinese Wandering Earth (2019).

Native Soil Goes to Space: Chinese Planetary Fictions in the Anthropocene
Kiu-wai Chu
Focusing on the new Chinese science fiction wave in the literary, cinematic and visual art scenes, this presentation offers an ecocritical examination of recent fictional narratives that center on space travel, and discuss how they could foster transcalar perspectives and tackle ecological concerns across local, global, and planetary scales. Drawing from examples such as Chen Qiufan’s short story “Space Leek”(2019) and Liu Chuang’s multi-screen video art installation “Lithium Lake and the Lonely Island of Polyphony” (2023), this presentation explores how Chinese “planetary fictions” navigate the intricate balance between local/regional and global planetary concerns. Do we see a revival of the spirit of “native soil” (xiangtu) and hometown writing that characterized the 20th century modern Chinese literature in recent works about space travel and exploration? How do they expand the notion of “home” in the Anthropocene present and the post-Anthropocene future? This presentation argues for a need to develop a comparative, pluralistic ecocritical paradigm that is built upon concepts such as eco-cosmopolitanism (Heise 2008); cosmopolitics/ cosmotechnics (Hui 2017,2021); and classical Daoist and Confucian thoughts, in order to examine the interplay between technology and religion, modernity and tradition, when facing the environmental challenges in the Anthropocene epoch.

Technoecological Eyes: The Compound Eyes in Space and Nature
Ting Zheng
In 2018, China started constructing a new radar system called “China’s Compound Eye” to observe asteroids and Earth-like planets for planetary defense. Inspired by insects’ compound eyes, this system employs an array of smaller radars to extend its reach into deeper space, overcoming the constraints of traditional centralized aperture radar systems. Similarly named, Wu Mingyi’s ecofiction The Man with the Compound Eyes portrays a natural environment inundated with the detritus of modern material civilization from a non-anthropocentric perspective. Thinking with Latour’s actor–network theory, this paper juxtaposes this space exploration radar system with this ecofiction to explore the relationship between human, animal, nature, and space. Focusing on the concept of compound eyes, this paper studies the plural form of vision and the extended vision, investigating how multifaceted perspectives can lead to a comprehensive understanding of complex systems, and how this extended cognition/perception can shape our relationship with environment and space. By drawing a parallel between the planetary defense purpose of “China’s Compound Eyes” and the allegorical “man with compound eyes” Wu’s fiction—an anthropomorphization of nature/a mosaic vision of nature—this paper argues that how scientific and artistic expressions offer dialectical insights into the dynamic between technology, human, the Earth and beyond.

Elemental Mediality of Light: Infrared Waves in Cosmic Information Ecologies
Lukáš Likavčan
Situated within the nascent field of outer space humanities, this contribution brings together recent scholarship focused on exploration of media affordances of waves (Greenspan 2023, Helmreich 2023) with the concept of elemental media (Peters 2015, Schuppli 2020), while applying these theoretical elaborations to the context of contemporary space exploration, mostly in the field of exoplanet astronomy (Turrini 2022). By doing so, it poses two key questions: What does exoplanet research tell us about the nature of mediation and information on cosmic scales? How are these insights relevant for conceptualizing human condition in the Anthropocene? Answering these questions, the first part of this contribution introduces research of exoplanet atmospheres using analysis of emission and absorption spectra of infrared light waves (Seager 2010), and it theorizes these light waves as cosmic information infrastructure if sorts, using the vocabulary of elemental media (Jue and Ruiz 2021). The second part of the paper then turns the focus to the discussion of waves as both metaphors and media phenomena, elaborating especially on Anna Greenspan’s unique synthesis of media theory with Chinese thinking. The paper then concludes with addressing the human condition in Anthropocene through concepts of human mediality (Likavčan 2023) and cosmic media ecologies.

Gaia Theory as a Cosmological Investigation of Buddhist Dharma
Travis Wilkerson, Ding Ma, and Erin Wilkerson
Gaia theory, developed by chemist James Lovelock and microbiologist Lynn Margulis, is a hypothesis that the Earth is a self-regulating and complex system of entanglement of matter that works towards the homeostasis necessary to maintain life, questioning the western binary between organic and inorganic and their perceived sentience, or lack thereof. This work was expanded by biologist and anthropologist Donna Haraway’s work on “sympoiesis,” wherein multispecies entanglement, or the diversity of species working in collaboration, is described as essential for the prevention of mass extinction. Some of these relationships are currently understood, such as lichen as a composite organism of fungi and algae, and the inseparability of rocks and the carbon cycle, but many of these relationships, in regards to microscopic organisms and other scales beyond human visibility, remain unknown, making the extractive policies of the Anthropocene, and accompanying climate change, particularly troublesome. Buddhist dharma’s cosmic law provides an opportunity to explore Gaia theory in an expanded scale, looking out towards the cosmos. This can be read alongside physicist and posthumanist theorist Karen Barad’s “agential realism” and her investigation of the materiality of nothingness, wherein she describes void as anything but empty. Utilizing Graeme L. Sullivan’s practice-led research methodology of collaborative cross-disciplinary invention, this panel will also function as sympoietic inquiry.

Bridging Traditions: The Confluence of Eastern Philosophies and Space Exploration in China’s Contemporary Astroculture
Mohamed Zreik
This paper aims to explore the intersection of Eastern philosophical and religious traditions with contemporary space exploration efforts in China, drawing a contrast with Western narratives in astroculture. China’s burgeoning space program, reflecting its rich cultural and scientific heritage, offers a distinct perspective on outer space, diverging from the dominant Western narratives often influenced by Christian ideology and the notion of space as a frontier to conquer. By examining the philosophical and religious underpinnings of China’s space endeavours, the paper seeks to uncover how traditional Eastern thought, particularly Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism, interplays with the nation’s aspirations and ethos in space exploration. This analysis will highlight how these age-old philosophies might inform and shape China’s approach to extra-terrestrial exploration, ethical considerations in encountering alien life, and the broader implications for global space norms. The paper will contribute to the dialogue on global astroculture by providing an alternative viewpoint, one rooted in Asian cosmologies and ethical systems, thereby enriching the discourse on humanity’s place in the universe and our collective responsibility towards our home planet in the face of space exploration.

Exploring the Philosophical Underpinnings: Buddhism and the Possibility of Extraterrestrial (=Alien) Life
Ujjwal Kumar and Haoqin Zhong
The concept of extraterrestrial life and its relation to Buddhism sparks contemplation regarding the existence of beings beyond our planet. Buddhism, primarily focused on understanding suffering and the nature of existence, does not put much emphasis on the existence of aliens, though the mahabodhisattvas and devas in Trāyastriṃśa (Pāli Tāvatiṃsa; thirty-three heavens) might have reminded us of the modern concept of extraterrestrial life. Moreover, its philosophical perspectives offer intriguing parallels and considerations when pondering the idea of extraterrestrial life. This paper will explore the intersection between Buddhism and the concept of aliens, emphasizing the multiplicity of worlds in Buddhist cosmology and its implications for contemplating the existence of extraterrestrial beings.

On Star work and Dharma: Contemporary Buddhist Visioning of the Universal and the Universe
Saskia Abrahms-Kavunenko
For many people around the world the experience of the night is heavily mediated by the presence of electric lighting which, whilst illuminating building interiors and city streets, simultaneously conceals the night sky. Yet, as the heavens recede behind artificial lighting and smog, there is a new wave of ambition for travelling into outer space. This talk will look at a Buddhist community in Western Australia for whom the contemplative practices of absorption animate an expansive vision of the Earth’s place in the solar system, while other practices such as Star Work encourage an experiential mode of exploring the cosmos. Within Buddhism light, and its capacity to illuminate, is often seen in opposition to darkness and ignorance. Electric lights are frequently used to enhance the revelry of Buddhist festivals, yet the night time can provide a space for quietude and reflection. Buddhist practitioners frequently sit in dimly lit rooms, reading mantras, practicing meditation and carrying out rituals before dawn. Buddhist astrologers interpret the stars, and the lucent glow of the full Moon is auspicious, marking important ritual dates and the renewal of calendars. This talk will offer an exploration of the dynamic tensions between the partial divorce with the cosmos attendant to obscuration, the vertiginous immersion of an unobstructed night sky and modernist imaginaries of intergalactic travel from a Buddhist perspective.

The New Transcendence Narrative for U.S. Space Exploration

Lance Gharavi

Since its genesis in the Kennedy administration, the dominant story driving U.S. space exploration has been the frontier narrative. With roots deeply embedded in U.S. history, mythology, and the religious concept of Manifest Destiny, this narrative has been used to sell U.S. space exploration and, to this day, organizes the thinking of many scientists, engineers, and others directly involved in designing and building space futures.

This narrative has been the target of much critique in recent decades for its colonialist framework, yet no new narrative has arisen to compete with it. Until recently.

In the 21st century, a new narrative of space exploration has emerged that I will tentatively refer to as the Transcendence Narrative. This narrative—associated with a set of philosophies and social movements including transhumanism, Effective Altruism, Longtermism, and others—is an explicitly apocalyptic vision of the future.

In this presentation, I will briefly discuss the narrative and philosophical characteristics of this story, its social connections, and the significance of where it is (and is not) found.

Biographies of Presenters

Thore Bjørnvig
Thore Bjørnvig is a historian of religion based in Copenhagen. His research focuses on religious aspects of spaceflight, SETI and science fiction. He has contributed to two volumes on European astroculture, edited by Alexander Geppert, and co-edited a special issue of Astropolitics on spaceflight and religion together with Roger Launius and Virgiliu Pop. Thore Bjørnvig’s most recent article is ‘Leaving the Cradle: Apocalypse, Transcendence and Childhood’s End, ’in Andrew M. Butler and Paul March-Russel, eds., Rendezvous with Arthur C. Clarke: Centenary Essays (2022).

Vladimir Brljak
Vladimir Brljak is Associate Professor in the Department of English Studies at Durham University, UK. In addition to his primary specialization in English and comparative literary history, he also works on the literary and cultural history of outer space. His main current project in this field, When Did Space Turn Dark?, examines the shift from bright to dark space in the Western cosmological imagination. He has given invited presentations on this research, including at the NYU Space Talks, and several publications emerging from it are now nearing completion. The project was also the focus of his recent Frances A. Yates Long-Term Fellowship at the Warburg Institute (2022–23), during which he co organized the conference Space in Time: From the Heavens from Outer Space, exploring long perspectives on the subject across the humanities and social sciences. He has held the Thole Research Fellowship at Trinity Hall, Cambridge (2015–18), as well as visiting fellowships and research grants at the Bodleian Library (2017), Huntington Library (2018), and Durham University (2022).

Olga Dubrovina
Olga Dubrovina (olga.dubrovina@unipd.it  ), PhD in Humanities (2015, Modena and Reggio Emilia University) and PhD in Contemporary History (2017, Moscow State University Lomonosov). In 2015-2018 she was an adjunct professor at Modena and Reggio Emilia University where she lectured Russian history and culture. In 2020-2021 she participated in Horizon 2020 project InsSciDE (Inventing a shared Science Diplomacy for Europe) with the case study on Russian Science Diplomacy throughout the Space race during the Cold War. Her current position is Research Fellow at Department of Political Science, Law and International Studies (SPGI), University of Padua. She also lectures on History of international relations at the State University of Milan. Among the latest publications Space diplomacy in the Cold War context: How it worked on the Soviet side, in Mays, Laborie et Griset (eds.), Inventing a Shared Science Diplomacy for Europe: Interdisciplinary Case Studies to Think with History, Zenodo, 2022, pp. 243-250; Russia’s space diplomacy: why we should look back to the Soviet Years, in Histoire, Europe et relations internationales, vol. 2, no. 2, 2022, pp. 39-51; Gorbachev’s policy in the aerospace sector: from stars to earth, in L’Artico e lo Spazio. Le rotte del nuovo Millennio tra storia e innovazione scientifica, Passerino Editore, 2022, pp. 119-152. 

Alexander C.T. Geppert
Alexander Geppert is Associate Professor of History and European Studies, and Global Network Associate Professor at New York University, with a joint appointment at NYU New York and NYU Shanghai. From 2010 to 2016 he directed the Emmy Noether research group ‘The Future in the Stars: European Astroculture and Extraterrestrial Life in the Twentieth Century’ at Freie Universität Berlin. He has held the Charles A. Lindbergh Chair in Aerospace History at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC, served as the Eleanor Searle Visiting Professor of History at the California Institute of Technology in Los Angeles, and is currently Scholar-in-Residence at the Deutsches Museum in Munich. Alexander Geppert’s space-related book publications include a trilogy on European astroculture, consisting of Imagining Outer Space: European Astroculture in the Twentieth Century (22018, ed.), Limiting Outer Space: Astroculture after Apollo (2018, ed.), Militarizing Outer Space: Astroculture and Dystopia and the Cold War (22023, co-ed.). Together with the members of his Global Astroculture research group, he is currently at work on a special journal issue on “rocket stars” in the Global Space Age and two monographs, Astroculture: Europe in the Age of Space, and a sequel, Planetizing Earth: An Extra-Terrestrial History of the Global Present. He also runs the ‘NYU Space Talks: History, Politics, Astroculture’ lecture series (space-talks.com).

Ujjwal Kumar
Dr. Ujjwal Kumar, born in 1980, is a distinguished scholar whose academic journey has traversed prestigious institutions, leading to a remarkable career in the field of Pali and Buddhist Studies. He embarked on his educational voyage at Banaras Hindu University, Savitri Bai Phule Pune University (formerly known as Pune University), and the University of Hong Kong. He has authored a total of thirty-four articles, one Occasional Paper, and nine books, each offering valuable insights into various aspects of Pali language and literature. Dr. Ujjwal Kumar is presently involved in a significant research endeavor focused on translating the Aṅguttaranikāya from Pāli to English. This collaborative project is funded by the Department of Religious Affairs, Ministry of Culture, Government of Thailand, and it commenced on June 2, 2022, continuing up to the present day. In addition to his ongoing project, Dr. Kumar is deeply engrossed in researching Pāli Cosmological Literature. In recognition of his outstanding contributions to the field of Pāli, Dr. Kumar received the Maharṣi Bādarāyāna Vyāsa Sammāna in 2016 from the President of India.

Lukáš Likavčan
Lukáš Likavčan is a philosopher. His research focuses on philosophy of science & technology and environmental philosophy. He is a Global Perspectives on Society Postdoctoral Fellow at NYU Shanghai, and a guest researcher at Astronomy & Society Group, Leiden University. Likavčan is an author of Introduction to Comparative Planetology (2019) and a member of More-than-Planet Working Group at Waag Futurelab. More info at likavcan.com.

Lu Liu
Dr. Lu Liu (Ph.D. 2019, University of Wisconsin-Madison) has been an Assistant Professor of Chinese at the School of Modern Languages, Georgia Tech since 2021, after two years as a visiting Assistant Professor. A scholar of modern Chinese literature and media, her research examines the interplay of science, technology, and medicine with media and visual cultures. Her first book project, Pestering Modern China: Animal, Socialist Subjectivity, and Biosocial Abjection, theorizes the pivotal role of the “pest” in shaping critical issues such as trans-species relationships, public health, and nation-building in modern Chinese history. Her second book project, Viral Cinema: Virology and the Body in Modern China, examines how virological knowledge constitutes the imagination of a Chinese body from the 1930s to the COVID-19 pandemic. She is also developing a collaborative project on China’s space endeavors and the making of Qian Xuesen, the father of Chinese spaceflight.

Ding Ma
Ding Ma’s broad research interests are climate variability, weather extremes, and atmospheric dynamics. The essential motivation for his research is to better understand and predict the behavior of the climate system, which has led to his focus on the variability of the large-scale atmospheric circulation and the related weather extremes. His teaching interests at Duke Kunshan include environmental science and physics. He has had papers published in leading academic journals including Nature Communications, Journal of Climate, and Journal of Atmospheric Sciences. He is a member of American Geophysical Union and American Meteorological Society. Ma has a B.A. in physics for Peking University and a Ph.D. in climate dynamics from Harvard University. After receiving his Ph.D., he joined Columbia University as an Earth Institute Fellow.

Evander Price
Evander Price is assistant professor teaching environmental humanities at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He received his PhD in American Studies from Harvard University in 2019 and was the postdoctoral fellow from 2020-2022 at the Center for Religion and the Human at Indiana University, Blooomington.

Tonio Savina
Tonio Savina, PhD in “Civilizations of Asia and Africa” at Sapienza University, Rome, with a thesis on The Chinese Space Program in Perspective: Domestic and International Narratives (2022). He is currently a Post- doc Fellow at the University of Siena, Italy. In 2023 he was selected as a MOFA Taiwan Fellow for a visiting research period at Academia Sinica, Taipei, and in 2022 he received a Post-doc Research Grant in History from the European Space Agency (ESA). During his PhD studies, he carried out research at the main libraries in Mainland China and Taiwan, where he was also a visiting PhD Candidate at National Chengchi University. He is a member of the Italian Association for Chinese Studies (AISC) and of the European Society for the History of Science (ESHS). His research interests include the history of Chinese space exploration, Chinese astroculture, narrative theories, space diplomacy, and the international relations of the PRC. On these topics he published several essays and two monographs in Italian: I rapportitra Cina e Stati Uniti dagli anni Settanta agli anni Duemila: una prospettiva astropolitica (2020) [trans. US-China Astropolitical Relations (1970s-2000s)] and Tra storia e narrazione: il programma spaziale della Repubblica Popolare Cinese (2023) [trans. The Chinese Space Program: Between History and Narrative].

Brad Tabas
Brad Tabas is a philosopher. He is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Social and Human Sciences at the ENSTA, a grande école for engineers located in Brest, France. His recent work has particularly focused on the question of historicizing outer space, and in particular thinking critically about how the dawning of the Space Age challenges inherited conceptual categories, above all those relating to ideas about secularity, language, place, life, and the future. His recent work has appeared in Terrain, Cosmos and History, Society + Space, and elsewhere.

Erin Wilkerson
Guerilla gardener, turned guerilla filmmaker, Erin Wilkerson is interested in anti-colonial ecologies, as an expansion of early professional work in landscape architecture, which instilled in her a passion to fight for the natural world. Her solo films have screened at Prismatic Ground (New York), INTERSECCION (Spain), FICUNAM and Untra Cine (Mexico), and DOKUFEST (Kosovo). Since 2010, she has worked collaboratively as Creative Agitation, with her partner, filmmaker Travis Wilkerson, best known for their co-directed and co-written film, Nuclear Family¸ which documents a 2019 road trip to nuclear missile silos of the American West, that premiered at the Berlin Forum, was awarded Mencion Especial at Mar del Plata IFF, and went on to screen at 20+ festivals including the Viennale. She is also known for her mixed media art which was featured in the Slovenian Pavilion of the Venice Biennale (2014). She has published critical texts and poetry, and as the Managing Editor of the online newsreel, NOW Journal, has curated programs on urgent praxis, in response to world events. She is currently working towards a PhD in Research and Practice from Liverpool John Moores University, in partnership with the TransArt Institute, on expanding ideas of Invasive Species, alongside an accompanying film, Strange Flower (little sister to the poor).

Travis Wilkerson
A chance meeting in Havana with the legendary Cuban filmmaker Santiago Alvarez changed the course of Travis Wilkerson’s life. His internationally recognized body of filmmaking crosses boundaries with documentary and fiction, performance, and activism. At the epicenter of his work is the ongoing search for meeting points of aesthetic eloquence and political engagement, produced with an absolute modesty of material resources, as self-sufficiently as possible. In 2015, Sight & Sound called Wilkerson “the political conscience of American cinema.” His films have screened at hundreds of venues and festivals worldwide, including Berlin, Sundance, Toronto, and Locarno. The New Yorker called Did You Wonder Who Fired the Gun? one of the “Sixty-Two Films That Shaped the Art of Documentary Filmmaking.” An Injury to One, was named one of the best avant-garde films of the decade by Film Comment and a “political-cinema landmark” by the LA Times. His latest work, Through the Graves the Wind is Blowing, is a tribute to the Yugoslavian Black Wave. His writings on film have appeared in Cineaste, Kino!, and Senses of Cinema. He is Associate Professor of Documentary Practice, Duke Kunshan University.

Haoqin Zhong
Haoqin Zhong got her Ph.D. at the Center of Buddhist Studies at the University of Hong Kong. She received her BS and MS in China from Peking University and Tsinghua University, respectively. Her research interests include Buddhist narrative literature, Feminist Buddhism, Chinese Buddhism, early Buddhism, Vinaya Studies, and comparative religions etc.

Mohamad Zreik
Mohamad Zreik, a Postdoctoral Fellow at Sun Yat-sen University, is a recognized scholar in International Relations, specializing in China’s Arab-region foreign policy. His recent work in soft power diplomacy compares China’s methods in the Middle East and East Asia. His extensive knowledge spans Middle Eastern Studies, China-Arab relations, East Asian and Asian Affairs, Eurasian geopolitics, and Political Economy, providing him a unique viewpoint in his field. Dr. Zreik is a proud recipient of a PhD from Central China Normal University (Wuhan). He’s written numerous acclaimed papers, many focusing on China’s Belt and Road Initiative and its Arab-region impact. His ground-breaking research has established him as a leading expert in his field. Presently, he furthers his research on China’s soft power diplomacy tactics at Sun Yat-sen University. His significant contributions make him a crucial figure in understanding contemporary international relations.

Superdeep Nighthawks: “Central do Brasil” (Salles 1998) | Thu Feb 1, 8:04pm

8:04pm | IB 1008

The Nighthawks are doubling down on beautiful Superdeep heartbreakers: this week with Walter Salles‘s 1998 Central do Brasil (…& food & drink). Thu Feb 1, 8:04pm IB 1008.

The screening is our second collaboration with the DKU Latino Club.

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Superdeep Nighthawks meet on Thu eve (~8pm till late). For more info, or to submit proposals for the Nighthawks, follow this link; for info on Superdeep more generally, follow this one.

Superdeep is sponsored by DKU’s Humanities Research Center.

Superdeep Nighthawks: “The Banshees of Inisherin” (McDonagh 2022) | Jan 25, 8:04pm

8:04pm | IB 1008

The Nighthawks are continuing to crush your beautiful hearts in beautiful ways to Superdeep pieces. This week with Martin McDonagh‘s 2022 The Banshees of Inisherin (…& food & drink). Thu Jan 25, 8:04pm IB 1008.

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Superdeep Nighthawks meet on Thu eve (~8pm till late). For more info, or to submit proposals for the Nighthawks, follow this link; for info on Superdeep more generally, follow this one.

Superdeep is sponsored by DKU’s Humanities Research Center.

Superdeep Space

What’s deeper than space or even deep space? Indeed: Superdeep Space – a Superdeep format of activities planned & executed entirely by our students. Superdeep Space explorations happen ~weekly, at various times & places and involving various activities. Reach out to learn more.

Student Report on the Screening of ‘Blurring The Color Line’

By Anjini Mani

On November 30th, 2023, DKU hosted award-winning filmmaker Crystal Kwok to share her film “Blurring the Color Line” (2022). Sponsored by UG Studies and the Humanities Research Center (Freedom Lab, Doc Lab, and co-host SuperDeep), the screening was followed by a Q&A session, and a filmmaker and storyteller salon the next day.

Over 150 students and faculty attended the film screening, packing the DKU theater. The short film captivated and touched the audience in different ways. Through the lens of her own family, Kwok narrates race relations in the United States between Chinese Americans and African Americans living in Augusta, Georgia, in the US South. The period revolves around the Jim Crow era, a period of American history that divided, disadvantaged, and discriminated against African Americans in social and legal systems. Kwok draws these stories to the present, illustrating a progression and a greater understanding connecting two worlds, but also systemic racial oppression left behind in the past proliferating still in our communities. The narrative was hard-hitting and emotional, putting in the light an understudied history, forgotten by our high school textbooks. Coming to terms with an uncomfortable past one would rather not face was difficult but important for the young generation to learn, remember, and most of all, understand the present day.

Students and faculty raised intelligent questions in the Q&A section, with curiosity fueled by a deeply introspective film experience. Many felt connected to different parts of the film within their own lives, sharing their unique experiences with the group. Kwok shared the internal dialogue she had in the course of making the film, explaining how the journey of interviewing and storytelling profoundly molded her own views and perspectives on life and family.

Following the screening and Q&A the next day was a filmmaker and storyteller salon in the water pavilion. In a smaller, more intimate group of students, together with Professor Selina Lai-Henderson, Kwok elaborated further on the filmmaking process, taking students on a deep dive of the art of storytelling. The discussion ranged from the more technical parts of filmmaking to the more human side of sharing lives and experiences in the form of art. Students talked about personal experiences of racism and observations of race relations in their own countries and cultures. The intersection of feminism and race relations was a particularly interesting topic; the group discussed the implications of modern feminism and its connection with the erasure of important stories and perspectives.

A heartfelt thank you to all participants for contributing to meaningful dialogues in this event. We trust that it has ignited discussions, introspection, and curiosity in your lives, as it has in ours. Despite its challenges, acknowledging history is vital – the past shapes the present, and the present shapes the future.