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Prof. Dorinne Kondo, Professor of Anthropology and American Studies at the University of Southern California, U.S., will visit Hong Kong in October as visiting scholar of the Public Lecture Series on Gender Studies 2010, organized by the Gender Studies Programme of The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) and sponsored by the Lee Hysan Foundation. Members of the public are welcome to register for the public lectures at http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/gender/publiclecture.htm.

Professor Kondo is the author of Crafting Selves: Power, Gender, and Discourses of Identity in a Japanese Workplace (1990), the winner of the J.I. Staley Prize for its impact on the field of anthropology. Her second book About Face: Performing Race in Fashion and Theatre (Routledge, 1997) won the Cultural and Literary Studies Award from the Association for Asian American Studies. Professor Kondo is also a playwright and dramaturge. Her first play Dis)graceful(l) Conduct received a national comedy playwriting award.

Professor Kondo will give two public lectures during her stay in Hong Kong. In the first lecture titled ‘Gender-, Race- and Genre-bending in Contemporary U.S. Theatre’, she will focus on the work of contemporary artists of color, African American playwright-actress Anna Deavere Smith and playwright David Henry Hwang, and analyze the ways their work destabilizes, and inevitably reinscribes, theatrical convention.

In the second lecture entitled ‘Seamless: A Play Reading with Commentary’, Professor Kondo will present selected scenes from her play Seamless, analyzing the dilemmas of gender and racial representation she faces, and the implications of her position as an anthropologist ‘going native’ as a playwright in the world of theatre.

Apart from the two public lectures, Professor Kondo will also hold a postgraduate seminar titled ‘Gender, Race and the Trope of Performance in Anthropology and Cultural Studies’, and a faculty roundtable on ‘Gender, Race, and Corporeal Epistemologies’.

For enquiries, please call 2696 1026 or e-mail to genderstudiesPLS@cuhk.edu.hk.

Public Lecture (1)
Gender-, Race- and Genre-bending in Contemporary U.S. Theatre
Date: 25 October 2010 (Monday)
Time: 4:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Venue: Lecture Theatre B6, Ho Tim Building, CUHK
Language: English (Discussion in English and Cantonese)

Public Lecture (2)
Seamless: A Play Reading with Commentary
Date: 27 October 2010 (Wednesday)
Time: 7:30 p.m. – 9:30 p.m.
Venue: Room 202, Duke of Windsor Social Service Building, 15 Hennessy Road, Wan Chai, HK [Wan Chai MTR Exit A2]
Language: English (Discussion in English and Cantonese)