The department of East Asian languages and civilizations will feature experts on Chinese and Taiwanese literature as part of two ongoing series, "Beauty and Its Discontents," and the Chinese Writer/Artist and Literary Critics Speaker Series II.
The presentations will be on April 21 at 3:30 p.m. and 5:30 p.m.
David Knechtges, professor of Chinese literature and chair of the department of Asian languages and literatures at the University of Washington will present a talk titled, "Have You Not Seen the Beauty of the Large? Court Aesthetic in Early Imperial China," at 3:30 p.m. in Hellems Arts and Sciences, room 196.
Knechtges is editor and translator of the important sixth-century anthology "Wen xuan or Selections of Refined Literature," and is the author of many other books and articles about medieval Chinese literature.
Knechteges' presentation is sponsored by the Center for Humanities and the Arts. A reception will follow also in Hellems, room 196.
The second talk will be at 5:30 p.m. in the Clare Arts and Sciences Building, room 207. Chu Tien-wen, an award winning female writer from Taiwan and a graduate of the English department of Danjang University in Taiwan, will give a symposium on her recent novel, and ways of reading and writing. "A View from Afar" will be given in Chinese with English interpretation.
Chu's book, "Notes of a Desolate Man," chronicles a gay man's life in fin-de-siecle Taiwan. It transcends geographical boundaries and ponders such universal questions as life and death, homosexual and heterosexual love and the threats of AIDS.
The novel, written in the form of personal notes, challenges the traditional form of novelistic writing, according to Minglang Zhou, assistant professor in East Asian languages.
"It raises the issues of seeing, reading and writing," he said. "That is, how does one see and write about the experiences of love and death? How should we read, as literary critics or as amateurs? How does one's own position affect the process of reading this novel in particular?"
A booksigning is scheduled after the talk and copies of the "Notes of a Desolate Man" will be available.
Chu's presentation is sponsored by the President's Fund for the Humanities, the Center for Asian Studies, the Center for the Humanities and the Arts and East Asian languages and civilizations.
During the past six years more than 100 students have earned bachelor's degrees in Chinese or Japanese, plus an additional two dozen in Asian studies, through the department of East Asian languages and civilizations. Its programs are one-of-a-kind in Colorado and its mission is central to the internationalization of the university.