‘From Mao to Yao: Culture, Media, and Black Life in China’ topic of next Modern China Lecture

The experience of Africans and African Americans in China during the Cold War and after will be discussed at the next Modern China Lecture at Cal State San Bernardino on Monday, Nov. 28

“‘From Mao to Yao: Culture, Media, and Black Life in China,” presented by Robeson Taj Frazier, an associate professor from the University of Southern California’s Anneberg School for Communication, will take place from noon to 2 p.m. at the John M. Pfau Library, room PL-4005. This event is a co-production of the China lecture series and the CSUSB History Club lecture series.

The program is free and open to the public; parking at CSUSB is $6.

In this talk, Frazier will explore the experiences and representations of several Black American and African people in Cold War and post-Cold War China.

Frazier, director of the Institute for Diversity and Empowerment at Annenberg, argues that these peoples' encounters, treatment, and narratives about China (as well as the ways and uses to which their images and narratives have been deployed by different Chinese stakeholders) are generative sites to consider the circulation of ideas and performances of race and blackness across international borders, and the complex and ever shifting conditions and contending ideologies of globalization.

Jeremy Murray, associate professor of history at CSUSB, has organized the China lecture series, and with Yvette Saavedra, assistant professor of history, is faculty adviser of the History Club. He said, “This event is exciting because it brings together a wide array of issues and intersecting cultures, and reflects the crucial lesson that the U.S.-China relationship is far more complex than simply the political interactions of Beijing and Washington.”

Angela Tate, the Sally Casanova Pre-Doctoral Scholar for CSUSB, who was instrumental in organizing Frazier’s visit, and said she invited him to the campus because of his “focus onAfro-Asian relations, black internationalism and hip-hop culture.”

Frazier’s research explores the experiences, intellectual history, and political and expressive cultures of the people of the African Diaspora in the United States and in 20th and 21st century China.

He is the author of “The East Is Black: Cold War China in the Black Radical Imagination” (Duke University Press, 2014), which will be available for purchase at the event at the discounted price of $19, and also at the bookstore for a week after the event.

Frazier is currently completing another book, “From Mao to Yao: Culture, Media, and Black Life in China.” He is also the co-producer of the forthcoming documentary film, “The World Is Yours,” and was on the Scholarship Steering Committee for the audio-visual and traveling art platform “Question Bridge: Black Males.”

The Modern China Lecture Series was initiated to promote awareness of important issues related to China for those on the CSUSB campus and in the community. In the series of more than 30 lectures, workshops, film screenings, and roundtable forums since January 2014, China scholars from UC San Diego, UC Riverside, the Claremont Colleges, UCLA, USC, UC Irvine and other institutions have visited the CSUSB campus to share their expertise and opinions. This event is also presented in conjunction with the CSUSB History Club lecture series, a student-run series that highlights diversity and related issues.

Speakers in the China lecture series and the History Club series have included specialists in history, economics, political science, philosophy, finance, security studies, literature, anthropology and other fields.

The Modern China Lecture Series is sponsored by the CSUSB Department of History, the History Club/Phi Alpha Theta, the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, the College of Extended Learning, the Center for Global Management/Jack H. Brown College of Business and Public Administration, the University Diversity Committee, John M. Pfau Library and the Intellectual Life Fund, with special thanks to Angela Tate, the Sally Casanova Pre-Doctoral Scholar for CSUSB for organizing the event.

For more information on the Nov. 28 event or the Modern China Lecture Series, contact Jeremy Murray, assistant professor of history, at (909) 537-5540 or jmurray@csusb.edu.