The Great Wall is one of the most common symbols of China
and is often invoked to describe other barriers around the world. Yet
its historical
significance - even its very existence - is a matter of controversy.
On October 20 through 23, 2005, over thirty scholars from China and
North America will converge on the University at Buffalo and Albright-Knox
Art Galleries to examine the historical and aesthetic significance
of the so-called Great Wall and many other Chinese boundaries, both
physical and
metaphorical, in their global contexts. This multidisciplinary
research conference, titled "The Roles and Representations
of Walls in the Reshaping
of Chinese Modernity," will focus on the changing functions
and
understandings of walls in China, especially since the inauguration
of the
policy of "reform" and "opening" in the People's
Republic in the 1980s.
Presentations at the conference, which will be followed by question
and
answer sessions, will be free and open to the public. They
will include an
opening keynote address by Professor Arthur Waldron, author of the
influential The Great Wall of China: From History
to Myth, on Thursday, October
20 at 4:30 p.m. at the UB Center for the Arts. Eight panels over
the next three days will address urban, cultural, and legal walls
and will discuss their artistic, literary, and cinematic depictions.
The conference will conclude on October 23 at 3:00 p.m. at the Albright-Knox
Art Gallery with a closing keynote address by Professor Minglu Gao,
curator of an accompanying exhibition of contemporary Chinese art
from the People's Republic of China,
titled "The Wall: Reshaping Contemporary Chinese Art." This
major selection of recent painting, rubbings,
performances, and installations, will be the largest from the People's
Republic ever exhibited outside China.
The conference is co-sponsored by the University at Buffalo Art
Galleries,
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, WLS Spencer Foundation, Baldy Center for
Law and Social Policy, College of Arts and Sciences, Asian Studies
Program, Department of History, Department of Art History, Department
of Art, Julian Park Chair in Comparative Literature, and Mentholatum
Company, Inc.
Conference Organizers
Further details are available from the Asian Studies Program (contact
Mary Ann Lang at mal@buffalo.edu)
or contact members of
the organizing committee, including Thomas Burkman burkman@buffalo.edu,
Roger Des Forges rvd@buffalo.edu, and Sandra Olsen sholsen@buffalo.edu.
Program
Download program 
- Thursday, October 20, University at Buffalo Center for the
Arts
- 4:30 pm - 5:00 pm Screening Room
- Welcome and Opening Remarks
Uday
Sukhatme, Dean, College of Arts and Sciences
Sandra
Olsen, Director, UB Art Galleries
Louis Grachos,
Director, Albright Knox Art Gallery.
- 5:00 pm - 6:00 pm Screening Room
- Opening Keynote Address Arthur
Waldron, History, University of Pennsylvania “The Great Wall
of China: An Author’s Reflections after Fifteen Years”
- 5:00 pm - 7:30 pm Art Gallery
- Public Reception
- 7:00 pm - 7:15 pm Atrium
- Chen Qiulin Performance: “I
Eat, I Consume, I am Happy”
- Friday, October 21, University at Buffalo Center for the Arts
Screening Room
- 9:00 am - 11:30 pm
- Session I “City Walls in Time
and Space, Ming Through People’s Republic.”
Chair: Roger Des Forges, History, UB
Roger Des Forges,
History, UB, “Tales and Images of Three City Walls: Kaifeng,
Guide, and Zhengzhou, Ming to Present”
Timothy Billings, History,
Middlebury College “The Great City of China: the ‘Long Wall’
in Early European Texts”
Desmond Cheung, History, University
of British Columbia “Writing on Walls and Building Histories
in China”
Niu Jianqiang, History, Henan University “The
Functions and Influence of Village Walls in Shanxi and Henan
Provinces During the Late Ming and Late Qing”
Yue Zhang, Politics, Princeton University “From
Demolition to Restoration: The Story of the Old City Walls of
Beijing, 1949-2005”
- 1:30 pm - 4:00 pm
- Session II “Cultural Walls:
Minorities, Diasporas, Westerners, and the World.”
Chair: Liu
Chiao-mei, History, National Taiwan University 2
Magnus Fiskesjo,
Anthropology, Cornell University “Internalized Boundaries:
Anti-Barbarian Walls Central to China”
Millie Chen, Art,
UB “Near Far: Dispersion, Relocation, Mobility”
Liu
Chiao-mei, History, National Taiwan University “Writing
on the Wall: Brice Marden’s Chinese Works and Modernism”
Luo
Xu, History, SUNY College at Cortland “Bypass the Walls:
Reconstructing World History in China Since the 1980s”
- 7:00 pm - 8:45 pm
- Session III “Artists and Art
Critics Talk About Walls.”
Chair: Bingyi Huang, Art History, UB
Eugene Yuejin Wang, Art History, Harvard
University “The Spectral Head on the Wall: Zhang Dali’s ‘Graffiti” in Beijing”
Chen Qiulin, Artist, Beijing “Farewell My Concubine, on the Three Gorges Dam”
Xu Hong, National Art Museum, Beijing “Feminist Art in China Today”
Shui Tianzhong, Art Critic, Beijing “’Nationalism’ in Chinese Aesthetics Today”
Bingyi Huang, Art History, UB “Self-referentiality and Yang Fudong’s Estranged
Paradise”
- 8:45 pm - 9:45 pm
- Discussion Facilitators: Haun Saussy, Comparative Literature,
Yale University
Kuiyi Shen, Art History, University of California
at San Diego
- Saturday, October 22, University at Buffalo Anderson Art Gallery,
Museum Studies Room
- 9:00 am - 11:30 am
- Session IV “Laws and/as Walls.”
Chair: Shubha Ghosh, Law,
UB
Tahirih Lee, Law, Florida State University “A Maze of Jurisdictional
Walls: The Legal Systems of Republican-Era Shanghai”
Shubha Ghosh,
Law School, UB “Walls, Boundaries, and the Global Public Domain”
Junhao Hong, Communication, UB “Realizing the Four Modernizations
with a New ‘Great Wall:’ The ‘Big Fire Wall’ and China’s Control
of the Internet”
Qiang Fang, History, UB “The Evolution of the
Complaint System in China, 1979 to the Present”
Margaret Y. K.
Woo, Law, Northeastern University “Borders Without Walls: Emerging
Rights Consciousness in China”
- 2:00 pm - 4:30 pm
- Session V “Literary and Cinematic
Representations of Walls.”
Chair: Tsan Huang, Linguistics, UB
Jonathan Stalling, English,
UB “"Breaking Down the Wall between Self and Other in Daoist
Poetics”
Xiaoping Lin, Art, Queen’s College, City University
of New York “Wang Chao’s Anyang Orphan: A Troubled Socialist
State, a Broken Traditional Family”
Ming Fang Zheng, Chinese
Literature, University of British Columbia “The City Wall in
Jia Pingwa’s Three Novels of the 1990s”
Keyang
Tang, Harvard
Design School “Anne Frank’s House vs. Chang-An’s Maze Wall: A
New Perspective on Chinese Spatial Perceptions”
- Sunday, October 23 Albright-Knox Art Gallery
- 9:00 am - 11:00 am Clifton Hall
- Session VI “Boundaries in Motion:
Family, Society, Nation, and World.”
Chair: Thomas Burkman, Asian Studies, UB
Driving Directions & Parking
Driving directions and information about parking on UB's North Campus
can be found here.
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Baldy Center For Law & Social Policy
511 O'Brian Hall, University at Buffalo Law School
Buffalo, NY 14260
716.645.2102
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