Event

Gary Marcuse at Davidson College: Can Chinese Culture Save China's Environment?

Early morning at the Tibetan Monastery at Baiyu in eastern Qinghai province. Image by Li Lei/ Face to Face Media. China, 2014.

Tuesday, November 10, 2015 - 07:00pm EST (GMT -0500)

On Tuesday, November 10, at Davidson College, Pulitzer Center grantee Gary Marcuse explores the influence of religion and government leadership in response to China's environmental crises. Marcuse's Dean Rusk Lecture is part of his two-day visit to the North Carolina college, where he'll also speak with classes focusing on documentary filmmaking, visual anthropology and religion in Chinese societies.

Marcuse is an independent Canadian journalist and filmmaker with a special interest in environmental issues. His film, Searching for Sacred Mountain, examines how an unlikely partnership between religion and government may hold the answer to China's growing environmental crisis. The documentary is a part of the Pulitzer Center-supported project “Can Chinese Culture Save China’s Environment?”

Marcuse interviewed monks, filmmakers and professors throughout his reporting for the documentary, including Dr. Lü Zhi, a professor of conservation biology and executive director of the Center for Nature and Society in Beijing. In 2007 Lü founded the Shan Shui Conservation Center, an NGO focusing on developing community-based, grassroots solutions to conservation in western China.

Her research on the giant panda took her to the Tibetan region for the first time in the 1990s. What she found led to a deeper study of the Sacred Lakes and Mountains and a greater appreciation for the conservation practices of the Tibetan Buddhists.

His visit is co-sponsored by the Pulitzer Center and Davidson's Dean Rusk International Studies Program through their Campus Consortium partnership.

Can Chinese Culture Save China's Environment?
Tuesday, November 10
7:00-8:15 pm
Davidson College
Knobloch Campus Center Alvarez-Smith Room 900
405 N Main Street
Davidson, NC 28035

For more information, contact Meg Sawicki at mesawicki[at]davidson.edu