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
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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.