2020
Dream of the Red Chamber: The Collaborative Study and Operatic Premiere of a Classic (Educational Activities)
University of Minnesota, 2021-2023
Principal Investigator(s): Ann Waltner, University of Minnesota; with Christine Marran, University of Minnesota; Mark Russsell Smith, University of Minnesota, Greater Twin Cities Youth Symphonies; Pearl Lam Bergad, Chinese Heritage FoundationThe award will help fund educational activities related to a performance at the University of Minnesota of a new, shorter, semi-staged version of the English-language opera Dream of the Red Chamber, of which a fully-staged version premiered in 2016. These educational activities include workshops with the composer, librettist, conductor, director, and choreographer that will illuminate the textual and musical transformations of the opera, and will utilize local resources, such as the Minneapolis Institute of Art’s holdings of Chinese art and opera costumes. Other projects include a course on the novel and its adaptations, and seminars on related topics.
2020
In Remembrance of the Saints: The Rise and Fall of an Inner Asian Sufi Dynasty by Muhammad Sadiq Kashghari
Translated by David Brophy
Columbia University Press, December 2020
In the first half of the eighteenth century, members of the Naqshbandi Sufi dynasty vied for influence in the Tarim Basin, part of present-day Xinjiang. The ensuing conflict saw the region incorporated into the expanding Qing imperium. Three decades afterward, Muḥammad Ṣadiq Kashghari was commissioned to write an account of these Naqshbandi Sufis and their downfall. Providing a rare local perspective on China’s expansion into Muslim borderlands, this translation sheds light on Xinjiang’s political and religious traditions and makes a foundational work of Inner Asian literature available to students and scholars.
2020
Korea and Vietnam before the Twentieth Century: Comparisons and Connections
Center for Korean Studies, University of California, Los Angeles, 2022
Principal Investigator(s): Sixiang Wang, University of California, Los Angeles, with Kathlene Baldanza, Pennsylvania State University; Bradley Camp Davis, Eastern Connecticut State University; John D. Phan, Columbia UniversityThis international conference seeks to foster dialogue between specialists of Korean and Vietnamese humanities. It will consist of eight panels, each featuring a pair of specialists, one working on Vietnam, the other working on Korea, who will give thematically-linked presentations on a common area of study: Pedagogy and Learning; Book History; Literacy and Poetic Culture; Political Legacies; Vernacular Culture; Popular Fiction; Environmental History; and Frontiers and Borders. It will also include a round-table on rare materials collections and digital source material. Several projects will be selected for publication in a special issue of a journal.
2020
Performing “Ghost Village” at the Symposium “Sensorium of the Early Modern Chinese Text” (Performance)
Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago, 2021
Principal Investigator(s): Ariel Fox, University of Chicago; Paize Keulemans, Princeton University; Suyoung Son, Cornell UniversityThis musical performance of three arias from the opera Ghost Village will accompany a two-day symposium, The Sensorium of the Early-Modern Chinese Text, scheduled for October 23-25 at the University of Chicago. Ghost Village is based on one of the stories from Strange Tales of the Liaozhai by the early Qing dynasty author, Pu Songling (1640-1715). The opera is a collaboration between Chen Yao, of the Central Conservatory in Beijing, and Judith Zeitlin, of the University of Chicago. Open to the public, the project aims to foster an appreciation of late-imperial Chinese culture.
2020
The Culture of Language in Ming China
By Nathan Vedal
Columbia University Press, forthcoming
The Culture of Language in Ming China traces the origins of the study of phonetic scripts designed for writing Chinese, as well as early proposals for language standardization that brought together seemingly unrelated communities, from Buddhist monks to opera librettists. Conventionally understood as a period of intellectual stagnation, the late Ming dynasty represented a pivotal moment in scholarly practices and literary production revolving around philological pursuits, which continue to resonate to the present day. The Culture of Language in Ming China is the first book to examine the broad body of Ming scholarly texts on language.
2020
The Lady of Linshui Pacifies Demons: A Seventeenth-Century Novel
Translated by Kristin Ingrid Fryklund, with an introduction by Mark Edward Lewis and Brigitte Baptandier
University of Washington Press, February 2021
The Lady of Linshui Pacifies Demons is a seventeenth-century novelistic account of the founding myth of the Lady of Linshui, the goddess of women, childbirth, and childhood, who is still venerated in places in Southeast Asia. The goddess’s story evolved from the life of Chen Jinggu in Ming Dynasty Hunan and has taken the form of vernacular short fiction, legends, plays, sutras, and stele inscriptions at temples where she is worshipped. This unabridged, annotated translation provides insights into late imperial Chinese religion, the lives of women in the period, and more broadly, the structure of families and local society.
2020
The Objectionable Li Zhi: Fiction, Criticism, and Dissent in Late Ming China
Edited by Rivi Handler-Spitz, Pauline C. Lee, and Haun Saussy
University of Washington Press, January 2021
The iconoclastic scholar Li Zhi was a central figure in the cultural world of the late Ming dynasty. His provocative and controversial writings and actions strongly influenced late-Ming print culture, commentarial and epistolary practice, discourses on authenticity and selfhood, attitudes toward friendship and masculinity, displays of filial piety, understandings of the public and private spheres, views toward women, and perspectives on Buddhism and the afterlife. In this edited volume, leading sinologists demonstrate the interrelatedness of seemingly discrete aspects of Li Zhi’s thought and emphasize the far-reaching impact of his ideas and actions.
2020
The Religious Ethic and Mercantile Spirit in Early Modern China by Ying-shih Yü
Translated by Yim-tze Kwong and edited by Hoyt Cleveland Tillman
Columbia University Press, March 2021
Why did modern capitalism not arise in late imperial China? The preeminent historian Ying-shih Yü offers a magisterial examination of religious and cultural influences in the development of China’s early modern economy. The book traces how religious leaders developed the spiritual significance of labor and how merchants adopted this religious work ethic. Yü argues that China’s early modern mercantile spirit was restricted by the bureaucratic priority on social order, and rejects the premise that China needed an early capitalist stage of development. Now available in English, this landmark work has been influenced scholars in East Asia since its publication in 1987.