Speaker: Magnus Fiskesjö, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, Cornell University

The official Chinese view of China’s history and national identity has been transformed in recent decades from a tale of revolutionary class struggle into a story of ancient and unbroken national and imperial glory. This shift can be discerned in both new and restored Chinese museums and memorial sites commemorating recent and past heroes. Magnus Fiskesjö will discuss the current boom in China’s “culture industry” and what it tells us about changes in Chinese conceptions of national and cultural identity.

Presented in collaboration with the Departments of Anthropology and Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University