Wang Ping (English)
Behind the Gate: After the Flood of the Three Gorges Dam
New York City location: Teachers & Writers Collaborative, 520 Eighth Avenue.
Professor Wang Ping will discuss the benefits and dangers of the Three Gorges Dam — energy production, increased commerce, flood control, disruption of sewage and sediment drainage — through a series of photographs taken before and after the dam was completed. She will also talk about the personal stories of individuals displaced by the dam project and the environmental impact on the river ecosystem, its land and animal species.
She was born in Shanghai and grew up on a small island in the East China Sea. After three years spent farming in a mountain village commune, she attended Beijing University. In 1985 she left China to study in the United States, earning her Ph.D. from New York University. She is the acclaimed author of the short story collection American Visa, the novel Foreign Devil, two poetry collections: Of Flesh & Spirit and The Magic Whip, the cultural study Aching for Beauty: Footbinding in China, and her latest collection of fiction stories The Last Communist Virgin.
Visit these links to learn more about Wang Ping's work:
Oakland, California - Saturday, January 12
Lynn M. Hudson (History)
& Jane Rhodes (American Studies)
African American icons of the San Francisco Bay Area: from Mammy Pleasant to the Black Panthers
Nile Hall Auditorium, Preservation Park
[Directions]
Registration is now closed.
Professors Lynn M. Hudson (History) and Jane Rhodes (American Studies) will discuss two important African American icons whose influence still lingers in the Bay Area and across the United States.
Mary Ellen Pleasant arrived in Gold Rush-era San Francisco a free black woman with abolitionist convictions and a predilection for entrepreneurial success. Behind the convenient and trusted disguise of "Mammy," she transformed domestic labor into enterprise, amassed remarkable real estate, wealth, and power, and gained notoriety for her work in fighting Jim Crow. Pleasant's legacy is steeped in scandals and lore. Was she a voodoo queen who traded in sexual secrets? A madam? A murderer? Lynn M. Hudson will examine the folklore of Pleasant's real and imagined powers.
Jane Rhodes will examine the extraordinary staying power of the Black Panthers in the American imagination. She will discuss how the Panthers became adept at exploiting and manipulating the media and pop culture images attached to them and how they pioneered a sophisticated version of mass media activism. Paradoxically, the news media participated in the government campaign to eradicate the Panthers while simultaneously elevating them to a celebrity status that remains long after their demise.