Teaching East Asia

In his critically acclaimed film The Piano in a Factory (2010), an elegy for a bygone working-class community and a revisit to the (post)industrial reality in Northeast China, Zhang Meng presents a stunning eulogy of two gigantic smokestacks (now dysfunctional), regarding them as coordinates for residential locations and work units, testimonies of growing up memories, and tokens of forgotten friendship at a time of tumultuous transition. By contrast, in her phenomenal yet “ephemeral” documentary Under the Dome (2015), a belated ecocritical epiphany and allergy, Chai Jing compellingly brings to the limelight towering factory smokestacks, which were once regarded as an overwhelming sign and symbol of industrial development and socialist modernization, now are understood as a source of air pollution and environmental health risks. 

Sponsored by East Asian Languages and Cultures.

Zoom registration.

Teaching East Asia

In his critically acclaimed film The Piano in a Factory (2010), an elegy for a bygone working-class community and a revisit to the (post)industrial reality in Northeast China, Zhang Meng presents a stunning eulogy of two gigantic smokestacks (now dysfunctional), regarding them as coordinates for residential locations and work units, testimonies of growing up memories, and tokens of forgotten friendship at a time of tumultuous transition. By contrast, in her phenomenal yet “ephemeral” documentary Under the Dome (2015), a belated ecocritical epiphany and allergy, Chai Jing compellingly brings to the limelight towering factory smokestacks, which were once regarded as an overwhelming sign and symbol of industrial development and socialist modernization, now are understood as a source of air pollution and environmental health risks. 

Sponsored by East Asian Languages and Cultures.

Zoom registration.