Yomi Braester, "From Scroll to Virtual Reality: Navigating Urban Space in China"

The Fairbank Center hosts Yomi Braester as he examines recent visual media practices, from traditional painting scrolls to state-of-the-art digital screens, and shows their collusion in the commodification of Chinaʼs cityscapes.

In the twenty-first century, the boundaries between public spaces and virtual reality are getting increasingly blurred. Braester examines recent visual media practices, from traditional painting scrolls to state-of-the-art digital screens, and shows their collusion in the commodification of China?s cityscapes.

Yomi Braester is professor of comparative literature and cinema studies at the University of Washington in Seattle. He has published extensively on modern Chinese literature, film, and visual culture, as well as on architecture, the politics of memory, and Israeli cinema. Among his publications are the books Witness Against History: Literature, Film, and Public Discourse in Twentieth-Century China (2003) and Painting the City Red: Chinese Cinema and the Urban Contract (2010), which received the Levenson book prize in 2012. His current book projects include “Cinephilia Besieged: Cinematic Experience and Public Discourse in the People's Republic of China” and ”Screen City: Chinese New Media and Beijing's Politics of Emergence.” Braester received his PhD from Yale University. In 2013, he was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship.

Cosponsored by the CCK Foundation Inter-University Center for Sinology, Department of East Asian Languages and Civility, Harvard University, and the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies