Monday, October 8, 2018

A MALAS Co-Sponsored Event Featuring Adam Brookes and Jeffrey Wasserstrom | "Big Brother States in Fact and Fiction: Thoughts on China and Other Places"

Please join us for a special event sponsored by the Center for Asian & Pacific Studies, the School of Journalism and Media Studies, MALAS, and the Departments of History and Political Science.  At 4pm on Wednesday October 17th spy novelist and former BBC foreign correspondent Adam Brookes, and China Historian Jeffrey Wasserstrom from UC Irvine will give a joint talk titled "Big Brother States in Fact and Fiction: Thoughts on China and Other Places."  This presentation will take the form of a public conversation in which the speakers will focus on issues of surveillance and control in not just China, but also other parts of the world where elements of the future George Orwell conjured up in Nineteen Eighty-Four may be found. Please let your students know about this timely event.  You'll find the details below, and on the attached flyer.  

                            Thanks and best regards, 

                             Kate Edgerton-Tarpley 
                             Department of History 
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PUBLIC TALK:  4:00pm on Wednesday October 17th, in International Student Center 
"Big Brother States in Fact and Fiction: Thoughts on China and Other Places"
This presentation will take the form of a public conversation in which the speakers will focus on issues of surveillance and control in not just China but also other parts of the world where some commentators claim that elements of the dark future George Orwell conjured up in Nineteen Eighty-Four can be found.  How can concepts like that of the "Big Brother State" help or hinder efforts to make sense of the current era, when new technologies of communication have become so powerful in both efforts to challenge and efforts to assert authoritarian control?  Are there other dystopian visions that are equally or more useful for thinking about authoritarian states and authoritarian trends in democracy societies?  Do new technologies of surveillance make old genres, such as the Cold War era spy novel, obsolete or open new possibilities for their reinvention?  These are the kinds of questions that the speakers will pose to one another before opening the discussion to for questions from the audience.    

Adam Brookes studied Chinese at the University of London, then worked as a foreign correspondent for the BBC (based in Indonesia, China and the United States), before switching gears to write a trio of acclaimed novels of international intrigue: Night Heron, Spy Games, and The Spy's Daughter.  NPR selected his first book as its "must-read thriller of the year"; the Washington Post called it 'outstanding'; Kirkus Reviews said of his second that "a smarter or more exciting mystery likely won't be released this year"; while The Sun said of his third that it cemented his "reputation as a superb spy novelist" who draws comparisons to "espionage heavyweights including John le Carré."  
                                 
Jeffrey Wasserstrom spent much of the first part of his teaching career at Indiana University but is now Chancellor's Professor of History at UC Irvine, where he also serves as the Historical Writing Mentor for the Literary Journalism Program.  He is the author or co-author of five books, including most recently the third edition of China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford, 2018).  He edited the The Oxford Illustrated History of Modern China (Oxford, 2016), often writes for newspapers, magazines, and online publications, such as the Los Angeles Review of Books and its associated "China Channel," and has been interviewed by both NPR and the BBC.

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