College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Liberal Arts and Sciences Liberal Arts and Sciences

What can we learn from the concept and practice of environmental justice in China? Mainstream media in the U.S. often portray 21st-century China as the land of polluted air, untamed waters and rapacious development. This is only half the picture. This presentation examines the works of Beijing-based landscape architect Kongjian Yu and his firm Turenscape, whose projects of “sponge cities” and concept of “anti-planning” are informed by centuries-long practices of farming, dwelling and siting (feng shui). Instead of the vision of man-against-nature prevalent in Euro-America, premodern Chinese lives were rooted in an entirely different ecology of humans-in-nature.

This event is organized by Imagining Climate Change and the Sustainable Online Network for Global Cultural Studies (SONGS). This webinar is part of the Online Fall 2020 Symposium entitled “Global-Cultural Environmental Justice—Transdisciplinary and Transcultural Perspectives.”

Speaker: Dorothy Ko

Dorothy Ko is Professor of History and Women’s Studies at the Barnard College of Columbia University . As a historian of early modern China, her research interests have included Literature, Visual and Material culture; Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies; Science and Technology; Eco-Art History. She is author of numerous books, including The Social Life Of Inkstones. Artisans and Scholars in Early Qing China (2017); https://vimeo.com/372881205

Response by Anna Peterson, Professor in the Department of Religion at the University of Florida.