Since Sept. 22 the Chinese Cultural Festival has been in full swing. This weeklong event, ending Sept. 30, is free and open to the public.

Today, the UA’s Poetry Center is holding the Chinese Moon Festival Poetry Concert, co-sponsored by the UA Confucius Institute and UA Department of East Asian Studies. Along with vocal and instrumental music, UA professors Brigitta Lee and Dian Li will be giving a lecture on the poems from the Tang & Song Dynasties, speaking on both modern and ancient Chinese works. A reception will follow.

Out of the 70 Confucius Institutes in the state of Arizona, and the 350 in the U.S., the CIUA is the first to host the Chinese Cultural Festival, which was founded in May of 2008. The CIUA’s ultimate goal “is to promote multiculturalism and to foster friendly, productive relationships between the United States and China.”

Lee, an assistant professor in East Asian Studies, received her Ph.D. from Princeton University in 2007. Lee chiefly focuses her studies on Chinese poetry and poetics during the ancient and medieval times. Lee says her “research interests cut broadly across the fields of literature, religion, history, art and music.”

Li has been a professor in the UA East Asian Studies department since 1999, starting as assistant professor, and now as an associate professor since 2006. Li received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1997 and is interested in a myriad of topics, including Chinese critical theories, translation studies, contemporary Chinese poetry and violence in literature.

For more information about Concert speakers please visit http://eas.arizona.edu/people/index.html For more information about the Poetry Concert and the events please visit http://poetry.arizona.edu/news-event/2012/09/chinese-moon-festival-poetry-concert.