Days 263-264: Shanghai University Lecture and Prep

Thursday I was mainly focused on giving a lecture at Shanghai University. Friday I also did some prep work (Power Points, grading, filled out form for Taozhen), but nothing spectacular happened, so I don't really have much to say about that.  Therefore, I'm going to just talk about my Thursday lecture here.

The title of my lecture was "'Frederick Douglass is being recognized more and more: Donald Trump and the State of African American Literature in the Contemporary United States." I went over the lecture a couple times, got dressed up in a suit, and I was out the door around 1:50 pm for the 4 pm lecture. Long ride on the subway--14 stops. 6 on line 3, then 8 on line 7 to Nan Chen Road. I called Rajiv, the hosting professor, when I got the exit 2 for Nan Chen Road. It had started to rain, unfortunately. He sent a student to pick me up, and the student brought an umbrella, but unfortunately his English wasn't very good at all, so we didn't have much to say to each other. And it was a looooooooong walk--directly at the other end of the satellite campus. Fortunately, the building was modern and did have an elevator. The room I lectured in was a conference-style table. I had about 20 attendees. Rajiv had them introduce themselves; they were from all over the world: countries such as Cambodia, Vietnam, Yemen, Turkey, and Egypt. I was impressed and glad that Rajiv gave me time during his class to talk about something unfairly unrelated (his class is on international relations).

The lecture went pretty well. I talked for about an hour and then I had questions for about an hour afterwards from both students and professors. Most of the questions were about concepts of whiteness in China and America, which I addressed in my lecture. One person did ask why Frederick Douglass didn't tell how he escaped from slavery in his first Narrative, so I filled him on the fact that the Emancipation Proclamation hadn't happened.

Rajiv took me to the school canteen for dinner. He's a very nice guy. Young. Great smile!  He seemed impressed by the fact that I knew what paleek panner and mattar panner were; I told him I love Indian food and miss both these dishes. He walked me back to the subway and we went in different directions; I snapped a picture of him just before we parted ways.  After two subway lines, a wait for the bus, a bus ride, and a walk, I was home. Kerry had made spaghetti, so I of course sampled that.

Here are some pics from Thursday:

Before my lecture.

The SU Campus.

Buddhist temple near the campus (on the left, background).

Rajiv, before I got on the subway.