THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
May 7-8, 2022
Performance Penthouse 901, Logan Center for the Arts
This two-day symposium explores the early modern text as located at the critical juncture of three different approaches that have crucially informed the field of Chinese literature over the last twenty years: print culture, material culture, and media studies. Each of these approaches has emphasized how the reading and writing of literature crucially depends on the material and the medium of the text, thus forcing us to read beyond the letter of the text itself. By emphasizing the relationship between the senses and the literary text, this symposium aims to explore how both meaning and sensation are located at the boundary of the text itself, investigating not only the relationship between text, materiality, and medium but also the relationship between the text and the human body, the subject’s mind, and the audience’s affect. Bringing together scholars of art history, media, literature, and performance, this symposium suggests new directions in the field of early modern Chinese literature. In addition, we will explore the ghostly re-appearance of voices and bodies from sixteenth-century Ming musical culture and eighteenth-century chinoiserie through two video performances followed by a round table discussion.
SATURDAY, MAY 7
Performance Penthouse 901, Logan Center for the Arts
9:30 - 11:00
Panel 1: A Taste of Text (Chair: Ariel Fox, University of Chicago)
- Wai-yee Li (Harvard University) - "The Taste of Water in Honglou meng."
- Rania Huntington (University of Wisconsin, Madison) - "Taste from Other Lives."
- Suyoung Son (Cornell University) - "Textuality of Taste in Yuan Mei's Suiyuan shidan."
11:15 - 12:15
Panel 2: The Spectacular Body (Chair: Melissa Van Wyk, University of Chicago)
- Yuhang Li (University of Wisconsin, Madison) - "Female Bodies Going Bananas: Eroticism and Botanical Layers in Late Imperial China."
- Fumiko Joo (Mississippi State University) - "Peony Lanterns on the Stage: Voyeuristic Visions of Decay and Theatricality."
13:30 - 15:00
Panel 3: Objects, Performativity, and Intermediality (Chair: Wei Shang, Columbia University)
- Thomas Kelly (Harvard University) - "Impressions of Loss: Writing and Memory in Biographies of Seal Carvers (1673)."
- Ling Hon Lam (University of California, Berkeley) - "In-formation: Energetic Regimes and Ruptures in Early and High Qing Media Production."
- Sophie Volpp (University of California, Berkeley) - "The Textual Sensorium and the Confiscation List in The Story of the Stone."
15:30 - 16:30
Performance Screening
- Ballet des Porcelaines
- Pipa Plays Opera
16:45 - 17:30
Roundtable Discussion
- Weihong Bao (University of California, Berkeley)
- Martha Feldman (University of Chicago)
- Haun Saussy (University of Chicago)
SUNDAY, MAY 8
Performance Penthouse 901, Logan Center for the Arts
9:30 - 11:00
Panel 4: Reading, Audiality, and Affect (Chair: Wu Hung, University of Chicago)
- Paize Keulemans (Princeton University) - "Tenuous Tactility: The Diasporic Imaginations and Literary Migrations of the Game Mahjong."
- Ellen Widmer (Wellesley College) - "Lin Daiyu and the Place of the Qin in Guixiu Literary Culture of the Ming and Qing."
- Rivi Handler-Spitz (Macalester College) - "His Master's Voice: Laughter, Silence, Orality, and Authority in Li Zhi's Yulu."
11:15 - 12:15
New Directions Roundtable (Chair: Judith Zeitlin, University of Chicago)
- Alia Goehr (University of Chicago)
- James Kennerly (University of Chicago)
- Yiwen Wu (University of Chicago)
Weihong Bao (Associate Professor; East Asian Languages and Cultures; University of California, Berkeley)
Martha Feldman (Professor; Music Department; University of Chicago)
Ariel Fox (Assistant Professor; East Asian Languages and Civilizations; University of Chicago)
Alia Breitwieser Goehr (Teaching Fellow; Comparative Literature; University of Chicago)
Rivi Handler-Spitz (Associate Professor; Asian Languages and Cultures; Macalester College)
Rania Huntington (Professor; Asian Languages and Cultures; University of Wisconsin, Madison)
Fumiko Joo (Associate Professor; Department of Classical and Modern Languages and Literature; Mississippi State University)
Thomas Kelly (Assistant Professor; East Asian Languages and Civilizations; Harvard University)
James Kennerly (Ph.D Student; East Asian Languages and Civilizations; University of Chicago)
Paize Keulemans (Associate Professor; East Asian Studies; Princeton University)
Ling Hon Lam (Associate Professor; East Asian Languages and Cultures; University of California, Berkeley)
Wai-yee Li (Professor, East Asian Languages and Civilizations; Harvard University)
Yu-hang Li (Associate Professor; Art History; University of Wisconsin, Madison)
Haun Saussy (Professor; East Asian Languages and Civilizations; University of Chicago)
Wei Shang (Professor; East Asian Languages and Cultures; Columbia University)
Suyoung Son (Associate Professor; Asian Studies; Cornell University)
Melissa Van Wyk (Assistant Professor; East Asian Languages and Civilizations; University of Chicago)
Sophie Volpp (Professor; Comparative Literature; University of California, Berkeley)
Ellen Widmer (Professor; East Asian Studies; Wellesley College)
Wu Hung (Professor; Art History; University of Chicago)
Yiwen Wu (Ph.D Student; East Asian Languages and Civilizations; University of Chicago)
Judith Zeitlin (Professor; East Asian Languages and Civilizations; University of Chicago)
Sensorium of the Early Modern Chinese Text is co-sponsored by the Center for East Asian Studies, the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange, the James P. Geiss & Margaret Y. Hsu Foundation, the Franke Institute for the Humanities, and the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations.