BookonChina'sCulturalRevolution

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"A Continuous Revolution – Making Sense of Cultural Revolution Culture" is a new book by Prof. Barbara Mittler. The sinologist examines the popularity of propaganda art in modern and contemporary China, and shows that this art is in fact deeply transcultural and neither the product of a xenophobic nor an iconoclastic age. The book was introduced on February 7, 2013, at the Karl Jaspers Centre.
Cultural Revolution Culture, often denigrated as nothing but propaganda, not only was liked in its heyday but continues to be enjoyed today. The book sets out to explain its legacy. By considering Cultural Revolution propaganda art in music, stage works, prints and posters, comics, and literature, from the point of view of its longue durée, Prof. Barbara Mittler suggests that Cultural Revolution propaganda art was able to build on a tradition of earlier art works. This allowed for its sedimentation in cultural memory and its continuing proliferation in contemporary China.
Taking the aesthetic experience of the Cultural Revolution as her base, Prof. Mittler juxtaposes close readings and analyses of cultural products from the period with impressions given in a series of personal interviews conducted in the early 2000s with Chinese from diverse class and generational backgrounds. By including much testimony from these original voices, Prof. Mittler illustrates the extremely multifaceted and contradictory nature of the Cultural Revolution, both in terms of artistic production and cultural experience.
The book is accompanied by an online exhibition and database including images, films and sounds of Cultural Revolution propaganda art, its predecessors and its parodies. The database was programmed by Christian Straube, with support by the Cluster’s Heidelberg Research Architecture.
Prof. Barbara Mittler is Co-Director of the Cluster of Excellence "Asia and Europe in a Global Context". She has published widely on Chinese New Music and the early Chinese press.
The book presentation was organised by the Confucius Institute at Heidelberg University. It took place on February 7, at the Karl Japers Centre for Advanced Transcultural Studies.
Further information
Book announcement by Harvard University Press 
Press Release by Heidelberg University (only in German) 
Database "A Continuous Revolution"
原文地址：http://www.asia-europe.uni-heide ... ral-revolution.html