Yiren Zheng (PhD Candidate, EALC)
Listening to Sonic Excess in 17th Century China
Discussant: William Carroll (PhD, CMS & EALC)
Friday, May 10, 3-5PM
Special location: EALC Seminar Room, Wieboldt Hall 301N
Followed by a catered dinner from La Petite Folie
On May 10 from 3PM to 5PM, the Art and Politics of East Asia Workshop will host Yiren Zheng (PhD candidate, EALC). Yiren will present a chapter of her dissertation, “Listening to Sonic Excess in 17th Century China.” Yiren offers the following abstract:
This chapter traces an unexplored discourse centered on forms of sonic excess embedded in 17th-century classical Chinese writings. The sonic excess includes both excessive sounding and excessive listening, which urge us to rethink the norms of sound-making and listening. By observing how several writers in the late Ming and the early Qing, including Pan Zhiheng (1556-1622), Chen Ding (1650-?) and Pu Songling (1640-1715) imagined forms of sonic excess, this chapter examines how speech became a problem through accidental and unexpected confrontations with alternative forms of communication.
