Institute for Chinese Studies presents its inaugural lecture in the "China and the International Mediasphere" Lecture Series
"Why Science Leads to Democracy: The Views of Fang Lizhi"
Professor Perry Link
Dept. of Comparative Literature and East Asian Languages, U.C. Riverside
Emeritus Professor, East Asian Studies, Princeton University
Abstract:
Fang Lizhi, the distinguished Chinese astrophysicist who was hand-picked to work on China’s atomic bomb in the 1950s but ended three decades later as an “enemy of the state,” expelled from the Chinese Communist Party and forced into exile, writes in his autobiography how it was primarily the principles of science, not political theory or foreign influences, that caused the transformation. Fang explains, step by step, how his pursuit of science and his faith in Marxism came into conflict and how one eventually deconstructed the other.
Bio:
Perry Link, emeritus professor of Asian Studies at Princeton University, now teaches at the University of California at Riverside. Bestowed the inaugural Chancellorial Chair for Teaching Across Disciplines at the Riverside campus, Professor Link writes and teaches about Chinese language, literature, popular culture, and politics. His latest book is An Anatomy of Chinese: Rhythm, Metaphor, Politics (Harvard, 2013). His translation of Fang Lizhi's autobiography, The Most Wanted Man in China: My Journey from Science to Enemy of the State, will be published by Henry Holt & Co. in February, 2016.
Co-sponsors:
East Asian Studies Center (EASC)
Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures (DEALL)
Graduate Association of Chinese Linguistics (GACL)
Graduate Students of East Asian Languages and Literatures (GREALL)
This event is sponsored in part by a U.S. Department of Education Title VI grant for The Ohio State University East Asian Studies Center.
