UC Berkeley Events - 2013 Podcasts

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UC Berkeley Events - 2013 Podcasts

Theatrical Engagements: Stan Lai in Conversation with Wen-hsin Yeh Influential playwright Stan Lai has stretched the boundaries of the theatrical experience in his native Taiwan, in China, and around the world. He has negotiated the fraught landscape between China and Taiwan through drama, and in recent years through active efforts to reshape the theatrical culture of China. In a wide-ranging conversation with Professor of Modern Chinese History Wen-hsin Yeh, Lai explores his work, his ideas, and his unique vision. Michael Rosen Discussing Dignity: Its History and Meaning, Berkeley Human Rights Seminar Political philosopher Michael Rosen (Harvard) discusses his book, Dignity: Its History and Meaning (Harvard, 2012) in conversation with UC Berkeley scholars Martin Jay (History), Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann (History), Zachary Manfredi (Rhetoric), and Hans Sluga (Philosophy). Exceptional and Chinese Sixty years ago, Francis L.K. Hsu in his Americans and Chinese: two ways of life (1953), described the people of both countries as culturally and psychologically exceptional. Today all the talk is about two powerful countries, exceptional now in a different world. Like the book, this lecture will focus on people. Were Chinese who left China exceptional, or exceptional only after they left? Did it matter if they moved not to the West but within the region? When they remained or became Chinese, was that what distinguished them outside China? For several centuries, more than 90 per cent of them lived, worked and settled in various parts of the Nanyang or Southeast Asia. What was exceptional and Chinese about them, and what happens when China now seeks to be exceptional anew?

This talk is part of the Institute of East Asian Studies Distinguished Speaker Series. Isabel Allende, "Maya's Notebook" Author Isabel Allende will be in conversation with Berkeley professor Beatriz Manz about her new novel, Maya's Notebook. In it, Allende narrates the…