HCIAS Colloquium – Dialogues Across World Regions How to Read Iconic Mao – A Biography in Images

This study of Mao Zedong focuses on one hyper-visible protagonist of the twentieth century—master choreographer of his image—to ask how this flesh-and-blood man has been transformed into a globally recognizable “bio-icon”. By showing how images of Mao have been read in different times and by different people in China and beyond, Dr. Mittler draws connections between his (visible) imaged body, picture power and his (invisible) emotional, experiential, sensual effects on the personal, national, and global scale. This talk will make visible some of the lasting shapes that Mao has assumed in the memory cultures of the present, and illustrate how his iconic image has affected and animated others, as reflections of how his ideas have been understood and applied. In reading his images intertextually, as visual biographies, so to speak, Dr. Mittler probes into how he is remembered and enshrined, or, put differently, how he lives on in people’s minds.