China Studies Centre, the University of Sydney
Time: 2:00pm – 4:00pm, Wednesday, 29 May 2019
Location: Room 708, Jane Foss Russell Building, University of Sydney Registration: https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/visualizing-oceanic-infrastructure-a-workshop-on-the-aesthetics-of-island-building-tickets-61406396184
This workshop in the environmental humanities is designed to introduce methods useful for the study of islands as they confront the epochal changes wrought by climate change, habitat loss, and pollution. It uses China’s island building project in the South China Sea as a case study for developing humanistic and post-humanistic approaches to sites that are more generally the focus of social scientists and military strategists.
Speaker
Dr Corey Byrnes is an assistant professor of Modern Chinese culture at Northwestern University, where he teaches courses in Chinese literature, visual culture, and the environmental humanities. He received a PhD in Chinese Literature from the University of California at Berkeley in 2013. His book, Fixing Landscape: A Techno-Poetic History of China’s Three Gorges approaches the 2500-year-long representational tradition inspired by the Three Gorges region of southwestern China from the perspective of the recently completed Three Gorges Dam, which displaced well over one million people and radically transformed the ecology and culture of the upper Yangzi River.