Academic Lecture by the School of Foreign Languages
Lecture Time: March 17, 2025 (Monday) 14:30 - 16:30
Lecture Venue: Conference Room 208, Chongyuan Building
Lecture Topic: Postmodern Literary Ethics Criticism Theory and Practice
Speaker: Professor Chen Shidan
Lecture Abstract:
Ethics always develops along with social changes. Postmodern Western ethics deconstructs and criticizes modernity and modern western ethics, reestablishes the value system of postmodern morality, reconstructs the moral relation that Self respects the Other and Nature, emphasizes that Self should shoulder absolute responsibility for the Other, proposes humanism of the Other, and brings and is bringing into play distinctly important effect to guiding the behavior of the people and human community and promoting harmony of the whole society and even international community. From the perspective of postmodern western ethics, the postmodern literary ethical criticism interprets postmodernist literary texts, discusses the postmodern ethical ideas expressed in the literary works, reveals the changes of postmodern ethic relations and the moral orders and all kinds of problems incurred by them and different consequences caused by them, represented through invented people and society in the literary texts, and provides experiences and edifications for the progress of postmodern human civilization. Moreover, postmodern literary ethical criticism also discusses the forms of postmodern ethical narrative characterized by carnivalization and intertextuality that represents the ideas and values of postmodern ethics in postmodernist literature.
Speaker Biography:
Professor Chen Shidan, a member of the Communist Party of China, earned a joint Ph.D. in Literature from Xiamen University and Harvard University (1999–2002). Since July 2002, he has been a Full Professor at Renmin University of China, serving as a doctoral supervisor and postdoctoral advisor in the fields of English and American Literature, as well as Western Literary Theory. He is the Vice President of The National Association for the Study of British Literature, an Executive Director of China Association for the Study of American Literature, an Executive Director of The International Association for Ethical Literary Criticism, and an Executive Director of Chinese Higher Education Association The Specialized Committee for Foreign Literature. He has led and successfully completed three projects funded by the National Social Science Funds of China: “Thematic and Artistic Techniques in American Postmodern Novels” (97CWW004), “A Study of American Writer Kurt Vonnegut” (06BWW017), and “A Study on the Art of Doctorow’s Novels” (13BWW038). He has also led and completed two major projects funded by Renmin University of China: “A General Study of Western Postmodernist Novels” (16XNLG01) and “A Comparative Study of Postmodern Literary Ethics in China and the West” (22XNL017). Professor Chen has published 16 academic monographs, including A Study of American Postmodernist Fiction (2002), A Study of Postmodern Left-wing American Writer Doctorow (2021), and Postmodernist Fiction (2023). He has also edited seven textbooks, including A History of American Literature (English Edition, Volumes I & II, 2013, 2019), Essentials Main Ideas of Contemporary Western Literary Critical Theories (2017, 2023), and Selected Readings of Contemporary Western Critical Theories (2021). Professor Chen has published over 100 academic papers in core journals, including “On the Existence of Postmodernist Fictions” (2005), “Narrative Techniques of Postmodern Ethics in David Lodge’s Novel Nice Work” (2018), “The Essence of Postmodern Literary Ethics Criticism” (2020), and “Posthumanism: Reflecting on the Position of Man in the World” (2021).
We warmly welcome all faculty and students to attend!
School of Foreign Languages
