Professor Xiaomei Chen returned to IU to give our annual Wertheim Lecture in Comparative Drama in January 2024. In attendance were Patricia Eoyang, wife of the late Eugene Eoyang, her mentor and dissertation adviser.

Xiaomei Chen is Distinguished Professor Emerita at the University of California at Davis and Chair Professor at the Hang Seng University of Hong Kong. She is the author of Occidentalism (1995), Acting the Right Part (2002), and Staging Chinese Revolution (2016), and Performing the Socialist State (2023).She is the editor of Reading the Right Text (2003) and Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Drama (2010) and co-editor, with Claire Sponsler, of East of West: Cross-Cultural Performances and the Staging of Difference (2000)”; with Julia Andrew, of Visual Culture in Contemporary China (2001), and with Steven Siyuan Liu, Hong Shen and the Modern Mediasphere in Republican-Era China (2016). She is co-editor with Tarryn Chun and Siyuan Liu, Rethinking Socialist Theater Reform (2021), which won Excellence in Editing Award by the Association of Theatre for Higher Education (ATHE).

Professor Chen spoke eloquently, without notes, and without text, equipped with just some well-chosen  PowerPoint slides. Her topic was “Propagandist Theater as Dramatic Art.” After the lecture, Xiaomei reflected on the experience and her earlier education at Indiana University in a message to donor Judy Wertheim, who was unable to attend. Xiaomei gave me permission to use her comments, which have been included below, and edited for length and clarity by both of us:

"Dear Judy [Wertheim]:

Thank you very much for your great support for the Wertheim Lecture in Comparative Drama hosted by the Department of Comparative Literature at IU. I was impressed by the department's thoughtful plan of several events following my talk that involved engaging students and faculty, such as the round table discussion that included participating  professors in the related fields in modern Chinese literature, German theater studies, and South East Asian performance studies. The positive feedback and dynamic interactions from this visit have inspired me to further my research in comparative drama in the global context that Professor Albert Wertheim had helped pioneer.

I am also very grateful for this visit since it provided me with an opportunity to visit IU 40 years after I first started as a graduate student in the Department of Comparative Literature at IU in 1984. By then, I had applied for 10 comparative literature departments in the U.S. and IU was the only one that accepted me and gave me a chance to grow. During my four-years stay at IU, I witnessed Comparative Literature’s transition from a program into a department, and benefited tremendously from the inspiring teachers who impacted me throughout my career. For example, It was great for me to publicly express my gratitude for Professor Eugene Eoyang, my advisor who supervised my dissertation, parts of which became my first book entitled Occidentalism; to the late professor Clifford C. Flanagan, who inspired me in numerous ways in the five courses I took from him; to Professor Marvin Carlson from whom I took another five courses on European and Comparative Drama, and to Professor Claus Clüver, who published my first journal article in the Yearbook of Comparative Literature; and last but not the least, to Professor Sumie Jones, who tutored me about how to develop an interactive teaching style with which I have also trained my own students.

It was lovely to re-connect with some of my professors I met 40 years ago such Professors David Hertz, Herb Marks, and Breon Mitchell. After my trip to Bloomington, Professor Sumie Jones wrote to me from California after she heard from her research assistant (a current graduate student) that she enjoyed my lecture and my tribute to Sumie and other teachers.

Your generous support for the lecture series means so much to me and I am sure similar things have also happened to other speakers since its initiation in 2003. I am also very grateful to Professor Rosemarie McGerr, Department Chair David Hertz, and Sarah Allison Shin; their wisdom, humor, and patience made my visit especially memorable.

Best regards,

Xiaomei Chen"