Banner for To Have Theory in a Pandemic, or Not to? Pandemic Storytelling and the Wuhan Lockdown

To Have Theory in a Pandemic, or Not to? Pandemic Storytelling and the Wuhan Lockdown

by

Lecture

Tue, Feb 20, 2024

4:30 PM – 6 PM EST (GMT-5)

Please select a time slot

Jones Hall, Room 202

Princeton, NJ 08544, United States

Details

Flyer for To Have Theory in a Pandemic, or Not to? Pandemic Storytelling and the Wuhan Lockdown
The lockdown of Wuhan in 2020 was an extraordinary historical event in modern world history. One of its remarkable features was that residents in Wuhan documented their everyday experiences in diaries and shared their stories on social media. Guobin Yang’s book "The Wuhan Lockdown" recounts the drama of the lockdown by drawing on these diaries. Prioritizing the voices of ordinary people, "The Wuhan Lockdown" presents a galaxy of scenes and characters against broader social and historical contexts. To narrate a pandemic that was still unfolding poses multiple challenges. To have theory in a pandemic, or not to? How to have theory, or how not to? This talk introduces the book, discusses its narrative strategies, and reflects on the meaning of social science representation in times of a public health crisis and global geopolitical conflicts.

Speakers

Guobin Yang's profile photo

Guobin Yang

Guobin Yang is the Grace Lee Boggs Professor of Communication and Sociology at the Annenberg School for Communication and the Department of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, where he directs the Center on Digital Culture and Society and serves as deputy director of the Center for the Study of Contemporary China. He is the author of The Power of the Internet in China: Citizen Activism Online (2009), The Red Guard Generation and Political Activism in China (2016), and The Wuhan Lockdown (2022). His 2-volume Dragon-Carving and the Literary Mind (2003) is an annotated English translation of the 6th-century Chinese classic of rhetoric and literary theory Wenxin Diaolong. He has edited or co-edited seven books, the most recent being Pandemic Crossings: Digital Technology, Everyday Experience, and Governance in the COVID-19 Crisis (2024, with Bingchun Meng and Elaine Yuan).


Sponsors

Paul and Marcia Wythes Center on Contemporary China. No image description provided

Hosted By

Center on Contemporary China | View More Events
Co-hosted with: Princeton Institute for International & Regional Studies, Center on Contemporary China (OWNER)