Author: sitingjiang

PhD Candidate, EALC

“Can style be described with adjectives of mood?”

Time: Friday, June 3, 3-5pm CT

Zoom Registration Link: 

https://uchicago.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJ0ld-Gorj8iG9bl0JftxhOzukYhVC-b23UR

Left: C. T. Hsia’s drawing of book cover, in letter to brother T. A., March 6, 1961

Right: Cover of first edition of A History of Modern Chinese Fiction, Yale UP, 1961

Abstract: “Style” is an elusive concept in literary studies, encompassing a wide range of textual characteristics and critical practices. One common way for a reader to engage with literary style is to describe their impression of a text with adjectives, for example, to call the text “bleak,” “stirring,” “delightful,” or “decorous,” and so on. But what is the nature of these “feeling words” that describe style? How do they relate to the formal characteristics of the text, and how do they relate to the reader who is expressing their opinion? This chapter explores these questions with well-known examples from the history of Chinese literary criticism. In particular, I discuss the influences of classical Chinese poetics and Anglo-American New Criticism on a few notable critics of modern Chinese literature active during the Cold War period.

Presenter: Yueling Ji is a PhD candidate in modern Chinese literature. Her dissertation is a study of the history and methodology of Chinese literary criticism, focusing on the concept of style. She also writes about China-Russia relations, Marxism, and gender/sexuality theories.

Respondent: Celia Xu is a Ph.D. candidate in the comparative literature department at UChicago. She works on modern and contemporary poetry in China and the U.S., with a particular interest in the interaction between science and poetry.

William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor, East Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago

“Instrument of Flesh”: The new operatic voice in early modern China”

Sound and Society & Arts and Politics of East Asia (APEA)

★ Co-Sponsored Workshop ★

PhD Candidate, East Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago

“Reading Games”

Time: Friday, April 15, 3-5pm CT

Zoom Registration Link: https://uchicago.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJAtce2rrTovHN3QFXUtmrA4xp6cOQa4y4-n

Abstract: This chapter examines a set of “game texts” around a central figure, the early Qing literati Zhang Chao 張潮 (1650-1707), to establish a methodological basis and general scope for the entire dissertation. Game texts, for the sake of my discussion, is an umbrella term referring to literary quotes and other texts inscribed on game equipment, games whose default goal is to read the literary texts successfully, and texts as a notation system to record and reenact games. I parse the ways in which texts join to shape games, as well as the reading experience could be gamified through the manipulations of graphs and forms. I then advance to explore a series of interplays between games and texts, ranging from dice/domino manuals where literary quotes are paired with dot patterns, a game of reading rendered as a screen image represented with graphs, to a weiqi notation system using words to translate the moves. All three cases, as I demonstrate, subvert a common sense that texts prescribe meanings; rather, yi 意 (literally, meaning), could be appropriated to connect and “enliven” the lifeless dots, be triggered when the texts form the image of an object, and be disordered automatically once a game is enacted. Through varied graphic, formal, and sentence-level innovations, games, I argue, have been turned into an active training ground for both historical readers and us literary scholars alike to learn new possibilities of making sense of the texts, thus encouraging us to redefine what “reading” itself means in early modern China.

Presenter: 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, literature, and reading experience, as well as their relationship to print and theater cultures in China from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries.

Discussant: Elvin Meng is a joint PhD student in the Department of Comparative Literature and the Department of East Asian Languages & Civilizations at the University of Chicago. His research interests include East Asian & European thought, media history & theory, translation, Manchu studies, history of linguistics & mathematics, and modernism.

PhD student, EALC

“What Is Exclaimed?! – Exclamation Points From Punctuation Reform to Xiao Hong’s Field of Life and Death”

Time: Friday, Mar 4, 3-5 pm CT

Zoom Registration Link: https://uchicago.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJIqfuuhrTkvGdbor5Rf9LpQ4PAXW4U8WzBU

The Art and Politics of East Asia (APEA) workshop is proud to host Jiarui Sun (PhD student, EALC), who will be presenting a draft of her paper, “What Is Exclaimed?! – Exclamation Points From Punctuation Reform to Xiao Hong’s Field of Life and Death”. Yueling Ji (PhD candidate, EALC) will offer a response.

Jiarui summarizes her paper as follows:

“Because formalistic reforms like the adoption of Western-style punctuations do not explicitly alter “the shape, sound, or meaning of Chinese characters, but instead their configuration and flow on the page” (Mullaney 2017, 207), their impact often lies in the margin of our linguistic awareness, making it difficult for scholars of Chinese language reform to articulate their historical and theoretical significance in the formation of modern Chinese language and vernacular writing. So what happens if we study the evolution of modern Chinese writing from the perspective of one single punctuation mark? In this essay, I trace the historical development of discourses around the “proper” use of the exclamation point and show how its references and rhetorical effects – termed orders of indexicality in linguistic anthropology – build upon one another and give birth to new meanings based on different language users’ ideological engagement. From its most explicit presence in grammar guides to its most implicit impact on literary criticism, I argue that the exclamation point, through its orders of indexicality, opens up productive means to theorize the dialectic relationship between ideologies and linguistic structure, and therefore guide us to a more comprehensive understanding of how formal changes like new-style punctuations deeply impact realms of politics, gender, and artistic virtuosity.”