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November 6–8, 2009

Set the Record Straight Co-Sponsored a Remarkable Symposium
at University of California, Berkeley

“REDISCOVERING CHINA’S CULTURAL REVOLUTION: Art and Politics, Lived Experience, Legacies of Liberation”

This symposium, the second of its kind (the first was held in New York in 2008), was a powerful and moving rebuke to the dominant and distorted narrative of the Cultural Revolution as “mass persecution and madness,” and opened up new space for contesting this narrative and reaching broader audiences. Set the Record Straight contributed to the report on the symposium in Revolution newspaper.

Want to know what revolutionary socialism was really like? From people who lived it—and loved it? Hear from youth who went to the countryside to work and learn from the peasants...artists who set out to create revolutionary art...women who struggled against feudal tradition...people who look back at this period as some of the best years of their lives. And learn from scholars whose work brings to life a crucial and vital legacy of liberation.

Sessions and panelists are listed below.

**NEW—AUDIO AND VIDEO OF SYMPOSIUM**

Video documentation of the panels:

Panel 1: Art and Politics in the Cultural Revolution

Bai Di, Ban Wang, Lincoln Cushing (see biographies, below)
Length of this segment is 99 minutes.

Panel 1: Question and Answer

Panel 2: International Impact and Historical Significance of the Cultural Revolution

Dongping Han, Raymond Lotta, Ann Tompkins, Robert Weil (see biographies, below)
(It may take a minute before video starts; please be patient.) Length of this segment is 2 hours, 7 minutes.

Panel 2: Question and Answer

Length of this segment is 37 minutes.

Book Event: The Unknown Cultural Revolution: Life and Change in a Chinese Village with author Dongping Han

Book Event: Question and Answer

CSpan-Book TV video of this book event.

Sessions:

Poster Art of the Cultural Revolution
Art opening and guided tour. View slide show.
Book Event
The Unknown Cultural Revolution: Life and Change in a Chinese Village with author Dongping Han
Art and Politics in the Cultural Revolution
The International Impact and Historical Significance of the Cultural Revolution
The Cultural Revolution on Film
The Red Detachment of Women (revolutionary ballet, 1970). Watch online
Barefoot Doctors of Rural China (documentary, 1975)

Panelists:

Lincoln Cushing—Historian and archivist of social and political graphics, co-author Chinese Posters: Art from the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution
Bai Di—Director of Chinese and Asian Studies, Drew University; co-editor of Some of Us: Chinese Women Growing Up During the Mao Era
Dongping Han—Professor of History, Warren Wilson College; author of The Unknown Cultural Revolution: Life and Change in a Chinese Village; farmer and manager of a collective village factory during the Cultural Revolution
Raymond Lotta—Set the Record Straight Project; Maoist political economist; writer for Revolution newspaper; author of America in Decline; editor Maoist Economics and the Revolutionary Road to Communism
Ann Tompkins—lived and worked in Beijing during the Cultural Revolution; co-author Chinese Posters: Art from the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution
Ban Wang—Professor of Chinese Literature and Culture, Stanford University; author, Illuminations from the Past: Trauma, Memory, and History in Modern China (Cultural Memory in the Present)
Robert Weil—Senior Fellow at the Oakland Institute; author, Red Cat, White Cat: China and the Contradictions of “Market Socialism”

Media Coverage:

KPFA San Francisco radio show “Guns and Butter” audio of book event with Dongping Han here.
KPFK Los Angeles radio show “The Michael Slate Show” interview with panelist Bai Di here.
Two reports in The China Press (Taiwan), here, and here.
China’s Cultural Revolution a Human Disaster? Not According to Symposium Participants: Reader Commentary in The Berkeley Daily Planet, 11/12/2009

Symposium Announcement in Chinese.


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