Beginning Wednesday, Sept. 22, the University of Kentucky Alumni Association will partner with Crane House, The Asia Institute, Inc. located at 1244 S. Third Street, to present its fall enrichment series. Led by esteemed UK faculty members Denise Ho, Douglas Slaymaker and Liang Luo, the in-depth look into the Chinese Cultural Revolution, the Parisian experience of the Japanese in the interwar years and the cultures of the Cold War in China and East Germany will captivate guests. The lecture series, which is co-sponsored by the UK Alumni Association, begins at 6 p.m. each night and is free to the public. For more information or to RSVP, please contact Lonna Versluys at lversluys@cranehouse.org or call 502-635-2240.

Lecture Series

Considering Culture in the Chinese Cultural Revolution: The Case of Shanghai

Wednesday, Sept. 22 at 6 p.m.

University of Kentucky Department of History Assistant Professor and Harvard and Yale Educated Scholar Denise Ho will speak on Revolutionizing Antiquity: Shanghai Cultural Bureaucracy in the Cultural Revolution. Ho will examine the response of Shanghai’s cultural bureaucracy during the Attack on the Four Olds - the Red Guard repudiation of old culture launched in the early years of China’s Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). The lecture will focus on how local officials, acting in a space created by the Central Cultural Revolution Group and the Shanghai Revolutionary Committee, sought to control the damage wrought by the political campaign and justified their activities by adapting the rhetoric of revolution. This program will be presented at Crane House and is co-sponsored by the UK Alumni Association.

Paris and the Japanese Imagination

Thursday, Oct. 14 at 6 p.m.

University of Kentucky Associate Professor and former Director of Japanese Studies Program Douglas Slaymaker will present a fascinating look at the influence of the “lost generation” and the central role that Paris occupied in the Japanese imagination. Japanese artists travelled to Paris in the 1920s for the same reasons as others: it was the most exciting city in the world, it was a refuge from a constricting society at home and it was the city for art. Slaymaker will look to the imagery produced by painter Fujita Tsuguharu (1886-1968) and that of poet/painter Kaneko Mitsuharu (1895-1975) to reflect upon the Parisian experience of the Japanese in the interwar years. This program will be presented at Crane House and is co-sponsored by the University of Kentucky Alumni Association.

Cultures of the Cold War in China and East Germany

Thursday, Nov. 4 at 6 p.m.

University of Kentucky Assistant Professor of Chinese Literature and Culture and Harvard and Beijing Educated Scholar Liang Luo will discuss the rhetoric of identity “remolding” which occurred in composer Hanns Eisler, playwright Bertolt Brecht, Dutch filmmaker Joris Ivens and Chinese writer Tian Han. Similar to the trio of Ivens, Brecht and Eisler, who worked in East Germany in the 1950s, Chinese writer Tian Han was inside the Communist camp at the height of the Cold War in Beijing. On one hand, he, like his Germanic contemporaries, had denounced his formalistic past; on the other, both Ivens’ films and Tian’s operas produced at the height of the Cold War were poetic and lyrical and both follow their engagements with similar subjects in their previous works: the river as containers of life, culture, and movement; and the image of strong-willed and bodied women as social agents. This program will be presented at Crane House and is co-sponsored by the UK Alumni Association.

About the Crane House

Crane House, The Asia Institute, Inc., is located at 1244 S. Third Street in Old Louisville and was established in 1987 by Helen Lang. The organization focuses on sharing the culture and history of East Asia through its various educational programs, the Asia Gallery and an extensive library home to more than 3,000 books, publications and videos.

About the University of Kentucky Alumni Association

The UK Alumni Association is located at 400 Rose Street in Lexington, Ky. Its members directly support the University of Kentucky through scholarships, awards, student recruitment and activities and recognition of outstanding teachers. For more information, call the King Alumni House at (859) 257- 8905 or visit the UK Alumni web site at www.ukalumni.net.