For the new academic year, CAS blogs are transitioning from the old lucian sites to a cas domain– like the one now featured on this website. During the turnover, we moved to a new location with a slightly easier url. Our updates for the new year will go on our new blog:

http://cas.uchicago.edu/workshops/ltchc/

This site will still be available and you can find it again under our “archives” page on the new site. Come visit us for information on our new line-up.

LTCHC Presents, co-sponsored with the Visual and Material Perspectives of East Asia Workshop

Yuhang Li

PhD Candidate, EALC

Oneself as a Female Deity:

Representations of Cixi Dressing as Guanyin

Friday, June 11, 4:00-6:00 pm

CWAC 156

In recent studies of the cult of Guanyin or Avalokiteshvara,
the most influential female deity in China, scholars have
primarily examined how Guanyin was first introduced from
India to China and gradually feminized in the process of
sinicization.  However, people have overlooked how believers
refashioned their own identity in response to the gendered
transformation of Guanyin. My paper will attempt to ask this
question by discussing the practices of elite lay Buddhist
women reproducing representations of Guanyin via woman’s
things and woman’s body in late imperial China.  I will focus
on the practices of the Empress Dowager Cixi (1835-1908), the
actual monarch of Qing China, who had herself visually
represented playing the role of Guanyin.  This paper will
start with an examination of how Cixi, from a young age, had
court painters draw portraits of herself as Guanyin and later
when photography was introduced to China, she dressed up as
Guanyin and was photographed as this deity. By looking at
this case, we can grasp how Cixi represents her body in order
to make it signify specific relations of gender and
religion.  Moreover, she eventually mediates the production
of her image through the modern technological form of the
photograph, which involves new forms of spatiality.  Hence my
paper will contribute to discussions about the reconstitution
of space, religion, bodies and gender in modern China.

There will be no paper circulated in advance for this talk.

Please join us for wine and refreshments and discussion for our final event of the 2009-10 year.

We will celebrate afterwards with a picnic dinner in the CWAC courtyard (exact details tba– keep checking back for more info!)

LTCHC Presents:

Lin Yeqing 林叶青

Visiting Scholar to EALC from Tsinghua University

清代乾隆年间昆曲发展状况分析

An Analysis of the State of Kunqu Development During the Qianlong Era

4:00-6:00 pm. Thursday, May 20th

Cobb 202

Please join us for refreshments and discussion. This session will be conducted in Chinese.

Paper will be available shortly on the papers page above.

LTCHC Presents:

Quincy Ngan

PhD Student, Art History

Liu Chen and Ruan Zhao

in the Tiantai Mountain

The presentation focuses on a Yuan dynasty handscroll that narrates the story “Liu Chen and Ruan Zhao in Tiantai Mountain.”  The handscroll’s debt to literature and drama will be addressed in detail. Lastly, I will tentatively explore the artist’s motivation behind the painting through analyzing what he borrows from literature and drama.

4:00-6:00 pm, Thursday, April 22

Cobb 202

Paper is available on the “Papers” page above.

Please join us for light refreshments and discussion

LTCHC Presents:

Zhou Qin 周秦

Suzhou University 蘇州大學

崑曲聲腔與崑唱藝術

The Music and Singing Arts of Kunqu Opera

3:00-5:00 pm

Thursday, April 1

Cobb 202

Please visit our papers page for an outline of Prof Zhou’s talk. Light refreshments will be served.

Due to the number of workshop events this week, we will fete both Prof Zhou and Prof Chen at dinner on Friday night. Please RSVP to attend.

LTCHC Presents

Liana Chen

The Pennsylvania State University

Reinventing Court Ceremonial Drama

after the Daoguang Reign

Cobb 202

4:00-6:00 pm

Friday, April 2

Please join us for snacks and scholarly discussion.

Here are some of our presentations for Spring 2010. Stay tuned for updates.

April 2 | Liana Chen, Pennsylvania State University

April | Zhou Qin, Suzhou University

April 22 | Quincy Ngan, PhD student, Art History

May | Lin Yeqing, Tsinghua University (visiting scholar in residence)

May | Zhang Han, PhD student, EALC

June 11 | Yuhang Li, PhD candidate, EALC (co-sponsored with VMPEA)

LTCHC in conjunction with the Theater and Performance Studies Workshop presents:

Xu Peng

Phd Candidate, EALC

Peking Opera in Its “Modern” Mode:

A Study of Tong Zhiling’s Performance in the Opera Film Third Sister Yóu

March 4, 5:00 pm

Cobb 110

Peking opera movie, Third Sister Yóu (You Sanjie) – directed by Wu Yonggang (1907-1982), shot in 1963 and shown in 1979 right after the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) – points to an important moment in the history of modernization of Peking opera, one in which, for the first time, the old master’s artistic principles and aesthetic cultivation faced subtle violations by an ideologically-driven and cinematically-oriented renovated style of performance.  This paper is a case study of how the first generation of the old masters’ followers began their serious pursuit of representing politically “proper” and “healthy” characters, which resulted in gradually shattering the fundamental elements that mattered most to the core of the old master’s art.  Such artistic and aesthetic changes, however, were to develop in the Cultural Revolution into a summit form – the eight “model works” – whose ultimate artistic goal was to highlight its proletarian heroes/heroines.

Light refreshments will be served.

The paper is available for download on the “papers” page above.

LTCHC Presents:

Anne Rebull

PhD student, EALC

The Rewards of Turning Gold into Iron:

The Southern Story of the Western Wing, Nanyin Sanlai, Musical Connoisseurship and Songbook Anthologies of the Late Ming

Cobb 110

Thursday, Feb 25, 5:00 pm

Light refreshments will be served

Paper will be available on the papers page shortly