Author: jiayizhu

6/4 Yueling Ji

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Ph.D. Candidate, EALC

The Stylistic Complaint: Rereading Modern Chinese Literature in Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan

Time: Friday, June 4, 6-8 pm CT

Zoom Registration: https://uchicago.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJIsdu6sqzMtH9yxqmjZNyRaHJDbnkueK6AR

The Art and Politics of East Asia (APEA) workshop is proud to host Yueling Ji (Ph.D. Candidate, EALC), who will be presenting her dissertation chapter “The Stylistic Complaint: Rereading Modern Chinese Literature in Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan.” Elvin Meng (Ph.D. Student, Comparative Literature) will offer a response. Yueling summarizes her chapter as follows:

Each chapter of my dissertation studies a case in the history of 20th-century Chinese literary criticism where “style” became an important object of literary analysis. In this chapter, the main figures are linguists, translators, and literary critics based in Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan. Between the 1960s and the 1990s, a linguistic method to analyze the writing style of modern Chinese literature was developed and applied to canonical literary works. The critics argued that those works contain grammatical errors, misuse figures of speech, and damage the integrity of the national language. In this way, stylistics became a tool to decenter the canon and challenge the cultural authority behind it. Additionally, this chapter will introduce, as a practical skill, how to use the linguistic method to analyze writing style. 

Yueling Ji is interested in problems of language, style, and form in literature. She argues that the formal analysis of written texts has a social function for a community of readers. Her dissertation, “Style and Modern Chinese Literary Criticism,” studies how 20th-century Chinese critics used stylistics to debate ideological beliefs. She has also written about Sino-Soviet relations, Marxism, and feminist/queer theories.

**PLEASE NOTE that the workshop is from 6 to 8pm CT**
 
Please contact Jiayi Zhu (jiayizhu@uchicago.edu) and Sophia Walker (scwalker2@uchicago.edu) if you have any questions or concerns.
Sophia and Jiayi, Co-coordinators, Art and Politics of East Asia Workshop

5/21 David Wilson

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Ph.D. Candidate, Ethnomusicology
Coming in from the Cold: Complicating Global Cold War Narratives through Chinese Revolutionary Ballet

Time: Friday, May 21, 5-7 pm CT

Zoom Registration: https://uchicago.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJYrde6vpj8pHdz_2XP04Ixbj72nA7Qgn2HS

The Art and Politics of East Asia (APEA) workshop is proud to host David Wilson (Ph.D. Candidate, Ethnomusicology), who will be presenting his paper “Coming in from the Cold: Complicating Global Cold War Narratives through Chinese Revolutionary Ballet.” Lilian Kong (Ph.D. Student, EALC) will offer a response. David summarizes his paper as follows:

Although The White-Haired Girl has a long development and performance history, the ballet version of the story is particularly associated with China’s Cultural Revolution. In this paper, rather than looking at the ballet from the perspective of the Cultural Revolution, or even socialist-era China more broadly, I consider The White-Haired Girl both as a site of transnational circulation and exchange, and as part of a global network of Cold War cultural exchange. Drawing primarily on published personal accounts and press coverage, I trace the ballet’s connections with both Japan and Canada. In doing so, I propose that The White-Haired Girl allows us to read the ways in which the legacies of post-War artistic exchange and circulation allow us to disturb the classic Three Worlds model of the Cold War, and to understand the uneven global experience of Cold War politics.
 
David Wilson is a Ph.D. candidate in ethnomusicology. His dissertation focuses on the ways in which transnational circulations of music and media affect music’s potential as a site for political discourse in modern China and Taiwan. He has written and presented on diverse topics such as the construction of gender in Chinese model operas, performance practice in Gustav Mahler’s orchestral songs, and the racial imaginary constructed by the musical playlist for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and inauguration.
 
**PLEASE NOTE that the workshop is from 5 to 7pm CT**
 
Please contact Jiayi Zhu (jiayizhu@uchicago.edu) and Sophia Walker (scwalker2@uchicago.edu) if you have any questions or concerns.
Sophia and Jiayi, Co-coordinators, Art and Politics of East Asia Workshop

2/26 Jiayi Chen

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Ph.D. Candidate, EALC

“Theorizing ‘Youxi’: Virtual Theatricality and Reading the Journey to the West”

Time: Friday, January 29th, 3-5 pm

Zoom Registration: https://uchicago.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJcpc-6pqzgrE9xhrGGpDKOFjM4eIOxvNv88

Discussant: Alia Breitwieser Goehr (Ph.D. Candidate, Comparative Literature) 

The Art and Politics of East Asia (APEA) workshop is proud to host Jiayi Chen (Ph.D. Candidate, EALC), who will present her paper, “Theorizing ‘Youxi’: Virtual Theatricality and Reading the Journey to the West”. She summarizes the paper as follows:

This paper discusses the notion of “virtual theatricality” as a perspective to understand the reading experience of the sixteenth-century novel Journey to the West. The scene of the guessing game in Chapter 46 will be my start point. On one hand, it points to the interplay between the concept of hiddenness and transformation. On the other hand, it is relevant to the huanxi 幻戏 performance, a prototype of modern magic tricks, that oscillated between deception and divine acts while engaging the bodily experiences of the performers and the spectators. I use “theatricality” instead of “theater” to call attention to the participatory spectatorship/readership not confined to the medium of theater per se. Meanwhile, in lieu of a preconditioned line between reality and illusion, “virtual” suggests the agency of the spectator/reader to draw such a boundary (or rather a continuum). By looking closely at some episodes in the novel and its rich commentaries, I show how “virtual theatricality” suggests that the text of the novel embodies openness and transforming possibilities by inviting the reader to experience its textual virtuality. In so doing, I also try to offer an interpretation of youxi (literally means roam and play) which is so closely related to the Journey to the West. 
 
Jiayi Chen is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago, with a concentration on early modern Chinese literature. Her dissertation studies the interplay between games and reading experience in China from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. She also holds broader interests in the practices and representations of storytelling, text-image relations, and Sino-Japanese cultural exchange.
Please contact Jiayi Zhu (jiayizhu@uchicago.edu) and Sophia Walker (scwalker2@uchicago.edu) if you have any questions or concerns.
Jiayi and Sophia, Co-coordinators, Art and Politics of East Asia Workshop

2/12 Li Yifan

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Chinese director of documentary “We Were SMART” (杀马特我爱你 shāmǎtè wǒ ài nǐ)

Time: Friday, February 12th, 7-9 pm CST

Zoom Registration:

https://uchicago.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJEtduCrrTgrGdWLJOH8yccPfR0kFYxd4rlu

The Chinese word 杀马特 (Shamate, written as SMART in the film’s English version) is a homophonic appropriation of the English word “smart.” Starting in the 2000s, this term has appeared on the Chinese Internet, labeling a form of fashion with its iconic hairstyle, makeup, and attire. Documentary We Were SMART looks into the lives of people who are associated with SMART, namely, young factory workers migrated from rural areas to the periphery of urban spaces. In addition to in-depth conversations with these people, the film also includes footage shot by them, offering an insider’s view of SMART’s life stories.

Li Yifan is a documentary filmmaker and artist in China. He teaches at Sichuan Fine Arts Institute. His other works include “Chronicle of Longwang: A Year in the Life of a Chinese Village” (乡村档案：龙王村2006影像文件) and “Before the Flood” (淹没).

This event is co-sponsored by the Center for East Asian Studies with generous support from a Title VI National Resource Center Grant from the U.S. Department of Education.

Please contact Jiayi Zhu (jiayizhu@uchicago.edu) and Sophia Walker (scwalker2@uchicago.edu) if you have any questions or concerns. We will see you on Zoom! 

1/29 Brian White

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Ph.D. Candidate, EALC

“Mixed Media: SF as a Social Genre”

Time: Friday, January 29th, 3-5 pm

Zoom Registration: https://uchicago.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMvdOqrpj8qGtMpyU53gJvwY8zZpP_Sre3i

Discussant: Jiarui Sun, Ph.D. Student, EALC

The Art and Politics of East Asia (APEA) workshop is proud to host Brian White (Ph.D. Candidate, EALC), who will present his paper, “Mixed Media: SF as a Social Genre.” He summarizes the paper as follows:

Brian summarizes his chapter as follows: While the historical roots of the otaku (devoted fans of anime and manga) are often said to be in 1960s science fiction fandom, the specific theoretical implications of this connection have not been extensively explored in English. In this paper, Brian White develops a theory of the SF genre as a force of social relationality, exceeding the bounds of any one text or creator in favor of communal identification as “SF fans”. This genre-based model of social relations enfolds a transmedia assemblage of texts and media habits, allowing us to cut across the boundaries that have commonly divided literary and media studies examinations of media communities.

Brian White is a 9th year PhD candidate in EALC. His dissertation takes up issues of media, discourse, and community formation in 1960s Japanese science fiction. Starting next year, he will be assistant professor of Japanese at Kalamazoo College.

Please contact Jiayi Zhu (jiayizhu@uchicago.edu) and Sophia Walker (scwalker2@uchicago.edu) if you have any questions or concerns.
Jiayi and Sophia, Co-coordinators, Art and Politics of East Asia Workshop