Conference Program and Archive
During the 2020-2021 Great World Texts in Wisconsin program, teachers and students throughout the state are reading and responding to Yan Lianke’s Dream of Ding Village.
Officially censored upon its Chinese publication, Dream of Ding Village is the prescient story of the public health crisis of the 1990s when rural villages selling their blood led to an AIDS outbreak. The novel is the result of three years of undercover work by writer Yan Lianke, who once worked as an assistant to a well-known Beijing anthropologist in an effort to study a small village decimated by HIV/AIDS as a result of unregulated blood selling.
From March 29 to April 19, 2021, participating schools will be sharing student projects created in response to Yan Lianke’s novel in our first ever virtual GWT Month! We will be archiving these projects here on our digital conference program and archive, as well as highlighting outstanding projects on our weekly newsletter during this three-week period. Follow the fun on Twitter and Youtube with #dingvillagewi, and engage with students who have worked so hard this year despite enormous life challenges.
Our conference will culminate with a virtual lecture with author Yan Lianke on Monday April 19 from 7-8pm CT, featuring questions from our participating students. All schools and general audience members are now welcome to register for this live event. A recording of the lecture will be shared only with participating schools.
Student Projects
Hartford Union High School
Sun Prairie High School
Whitehall Memorial High School
Milwaukee School of Languages
Wisconsin Department of Instruction
Xavier High School
Golda Meir School
Vincent High School
Whitnall High School
Special Thanks
Great World Texts in Wisconsin is a public humanities initiative of the Center for the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
We are grateful to the program’s sponsors: A. W. Mellon Foundation; UW-Madison Libraries; Center for East Asian Studies; the Department of English; the College of Letters & Science; the Anonymous Fund of the University of Wisconsin-Madison; and the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction.
Thank you to this year’s faculty advisor, Anatoly Detwyler, Associate Professor of Asian Languages and Cultures, and Yuzhe Li, writer of the curricular guide. Special thanks to Vice Provost Lisa Carter and the staff of UW Libraries, including Todd Michelson-Ambelang.
Support Great World Texts
Your gift helps support high schools from all corners of Wisconsin engage critically and creatively in world literature while preparing students for the college experience and beyond. Funds go towards the purchase of copies of each year’s text—which live on as a part of each participating school’s permanent library—as well as paying for transportation and other costs that allow students to equitably participate in the annual student conference each spring.