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What Do We Share?

What do we share? As humans we share the same bodies, and in literature we share some worldwide fundamental genres, such as origin myths and creation stories, stories about the end of humanity, and proverbs. Today, join award-winning Dutch author Mineke Schipper as she draws from her extensive research and critically acclaimed books to ask the question: what do we share? Her books have been translated all over the world, including in China, and include Never Marry a Woman with Big Feet: Women in Proverbs from Around the World in which she argues that proverbial messages help us find out to what extent we continue to follow and swallow ideas about masculinities and femininities propagated by our ancestors, or have come to look differently at the world than they did. Among her other books are Naked or Covered: A History of Dressing and Undressing Around the World, and her latest title A History of Power and Powerlessness, which considers how and why the female body has been desired, admired, used and abused since time immemorial. Mineke will be in conversation with Hu Chuanji, a professor from Sun Yat-Sen University.