Friday, March 21, 2025 3:00pm
About this Event
230 S Bouquet St, Pittsburgh, PA 15213
For decades, tree planting has been at the heart of Chinese environmental endeavors, and forestry is pivotal to its environmentalism and green image more generally. During the Mao era, while forests were razed to fuel rapid increases in industrial production, the "Greening the Motherland" campaign also promoted conservationist tree-planting nationwide. Based on two chapters of his forthcoming book Contested Environmentalisms: Trees and the Making of Modern China (Stanford UP, 2025), this talk probes the seemingly contradictory rhetoric and desires of Chinese conservation in the Mao era.
About the Speaker:
Cheng Li is an assistant professor of Chinese studies at Carnegie Mellon University. He earned his PhD from Yale University in 2022, focusing on modern Chinese environmental literature, film, and history. His work has appeared in leading journals, and his forthcoming book, Contested Environmentalisms: Trees and the Making of Modern China (Stanford UP, 2025), received the Marston Anderson Prize for best dissertation at Yale.
Please let us know if you require an accommodation in order to participate in this event. Accommodations may include live captioning, ASL interpreters, and/or captioned media and accessible documents from recorded events. At least 5 days in advance is recommended.