"From Museum of Obsolete Technology to Runaway Train"
Visions of China in the Writings of Western Social Theorists
In this lecture, Professor Louis Greenspan will present several Western accounts of China, including the work of John Stuart Mill and Max Weber, contemporary commentaries by Fukuyama and Bellah (with a few words about Kissinger), and even Hollywood visions like the ones embodied by the famous detective Charlie Chan. Greenspan will use these accounts to reflect on current debates on Orientalism – a concept that claims to uncover the not-so-hidden motives behind Western depictions of Asia
Louis Greenspan completed his doctorate at Brandeis University, and began his academic career at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada. He was one of the founding members of the Department of Religious Studies at McMaster, and assisted in the development of the Religion and Social Sciences sections of the department. In the early 1980s, Greenspan helped establish the McMaster Arts and Science programme, and in the late ’80s became the Director of the Bertrand Russell Editorial Project. The project had a mandate to publish materials from the vast Bertrand Russell archive that McMaster had acquired in the late 1960s. He has taught courses in theories of Religion in the Social Sciences, Judaism in the contemporary world and the basic ideas of Western Modernity. He comes to China annually to visit his daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren, and has lectured in Shanghai, Nanjing and Jinan.
Members will have priority booking until 13th May 2012.