East Meets West Lecture Series

Film Screening: American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs (2013)
A film on the life of Chinese American civil rights activist Grace Lee Boggs.
Director Grace Lee; producers Grace Lee, Caroline Libresco, and Austin Wilkin.
82 Minutes. Transcript available.

What does it mean to be an American revolutionary today? Grace Lee Boggs, a Chinese American woman in Detroit, who died in October 2015 at 100 years old, has a surprising vision of revolution. A writer, activist, and philosopher rooted for more than seventy years in the African American movement, she devoted her life to an evolving revolution that encompassed the contradictions of America’s past and its potentially radical future. This Peabody Award–winning documentary plunges us into Boggs’s lifelong practice of igniting community dialogue and action, work that traverses the major US social movements of the last century: from labor to civil rights, to Black Power, feminism, the Asian American and environmental justice movements, and beyond.

Angela Davis, Bill Moyers, Bill Ayers, Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis, Danny Glover, Boggs’s husband James Boggs, and a host of Detroit comrades across three generations help shape this uniquely American story. As she wrestles with a Detroit in ongoing transition, contradictions of violence and non-violence, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr., the 1967 rebellions, and nonlinear notions of time and history, Boggs emerges with an approach that is radical in its simplicity and clarity: revolution is not an act of aggression or merely a protest. Revolution, Boggs says, is about something deeper within the human experience—the ability to transform oneself in order to transform the world. More than ten years in the making, this inter-disciplinary film has a wide appeal to college students.

Part of East Meets West — Asia Program Lecture Series
Our fall lecture series will feature seven public lectures and one documentary exploring the theme of “Resilience” from multiple regional and disciplinary perspectives. All events are free and open to the public. Except as noted, presentations will be held from 4:30–6:00 p.m. on Tuesdays in Todd Hall 276.

• Sept. 5: Film: American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs (2013) on the life of Chinese American civil rights activist Grace Lee Boggs. Director Grace Lee; producers Grace Lee, Caroline Libresco, and Austin Wilkin. 82 Minutes.
• Sept. 12: “In Our Own Backyard: Japanese Internment during WWII,” Dr. Katy Fry (History)
• Sept. 19: “Patterns of Resilience: An Aesthetics of Chinese Urban Environments,” Dr. David Wang (Architecture)
• Sept. 26: “Mindfulness: East and West,” Dr. Julia Cassaniti (Anthropology) and Dr. Lydia Gerber (Asian Studies)
• Oct. 3: “Community in a Global Migration Crisis: US-Resettled Burmese and Iraqi Refugees,” Dr. Caitlin Bletscher (Center for Transformational Learning and Leadership)
• Oct. 10: “Building Nationhood in the Post-Soviet Era,” Dr. Marina Tolmacheva (History)
• Oct. 17: “A Taste of Home: Food as a Form of Diasporic Resilience,” Dr. Shawna Herzog (History)
• Oct. 24: CHINA TOWN HALL | 4:00–5:40 p.m.
  • Interactive Webcast @ 4:00 p.m.
    Dr. Susan E. Rice, former National Security Advisor and US Ambassador to the UN
  • Local Presentation @ 4:45 p.m.
    “US–China Relations in the Trump Era: What Is Washington State’s China Strategy?” Dr. Mercy Kuo, President and Executive Director of the Washington State China Relations Council, Seattle

WSU students may enroll in Asia 301: East Meets West [DIVR] for 1 credit. Participants receive a letter grade and can repeat the class for up to 3 credits. There are no prerequisites.