Congratulations to Professor Wendy Larson on the excellent review of her book Zhang Yimou: Globalization and the Subject of Culture by the Journal of Asian Studies.
The review states:
“Wendy Larson’s landmark analysis is definitely not a survey of Zhang Yimou as a praised or vilified Chinese film director who often provokes heated debates and discussions domestically and internationally. Rather, Larson delves into nine of Zhang’s films, either controversial or understudied, to argue strongly that these films ‘center on the significance, potential, and limitations” of the cultural in “postsocialist China’ … her research is sustained by astute textual analysis and invigorated by a deep and comprehensive theoretical knowledge. … While Larson’s study has greatly contributed to the field of cultural studies through its critical analysis of a controversial director’s films, it also opens up conversations about studies on gender, the visual, postsocialism, and globalization. Larson adopts a new approach to the study of contemporary China that extends the significance and contribution of this book to a larger scale. Larson’s wide-ranging theoretical knowledge and the ambitious articulation of the often slippery idea of culture will attract a large academic readership in cultural studies, Chinese studies, film studies, and history. Her detailed, concrete, and brilliant close readings of the nine films also serve as a rich and useful pedagogical resource for a Chinese film course or a Chinese culture course.”
This book is in the Cambria Sinophone World Series headed by Victor H. Mair (University of Pennsylvania) and the Cambria Global Performing Arts Series headed by John M. Clum (Duke University).
Like Cambria Press on Facebook and
follow Cambria Press on Twitter to stay posted.