Friday, April 23:00-5:00pmWomen's Building Formal Loungereception to follow
"When a Superpower Holds a Coming-Out Party: The 2010 Shanghai World Expo and the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair"
Susan Brownell, University of Missouri-St. Louis, Professor, Anthropology and LanguagesPan Tianshu, Fudan University, Shanghai, Associate Professor of Social Development and Public Policy
Tianshu Pan and Susan Brownell compare domestic preparations and global reactions surrounding the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis and the 2010 Shanghai World Expo. In many ways, the St. Louis World's Fair marked America's emergence on the world stage as a colonialist power, the main criterion for superpower status in 1904. The St. Louis World's Fair was also the first international exposition to which the Qing imperial court sent an official delegation. Building on the lessons first learned in 1904, China is now using the World Expo to display its own emergence as a superpower - but what are the criteria for superpower status in the 21st century, and will China succeed in convincing the rest of the world that it has reached them? |
