I’m looking forward to participate in the University of Pittsburgh Summer Institute for Chinese Studies––seminar on science, technology, and medicine (5/26-6/1, 2019). Many thanks to Joseph Alter and other colleagues at UP for including me in the program!
My Abstract: Yuan-dynasty dramas (mostly existing in Ming editions) include some special titles about criminal cases such as the well-known piece The Injustice to Dou E and some rarely studied plays such as Bu renshi (The Virtuous Mother Does Not Recognize the Corpse). Meanwhile, the Song-Yuan period saw the maturation of forensic studies in Chinese history, witnessing the publication of Song Ci’s Xiyuan jilu (Collected Writings on the Washing Away of Wrongs) followed by its different sequels and forensic manuals for local magistrates and their assistants. During the burgeoning period of both Chinese drama and forensic studies, how did theatrical representation and forensic investigation interact with each other? This study answers the question by examining the representation of men’s and women’s dead bodies in some Yuan-Ming plays. The paper focuses on two particular moments in those plays: the transition from a living body to a dead body; and the transition from corpse to legal evidence. It shows that, on the one hand, Yuan-Ming dramas heavily drew from actual practices involving corpses in society; and on the other hand, dead bodies as theatrical devices provided an anchor for plot developments as well as a unique venue to voice and perform concerns about personal identities.
This is belated news: My paper “The Inconvenient Imperial Visit: Writing Clothing and Ethnicity in 1684 Qufu” (Late Imperial China) won a 2017 SEC/AAS article prize.
I’m glad to be recipient of a MacroGrant from The Vanderbilt Institute of Digital Learning (VIDL) to support my teaching/research project “Transcultural Learning through Virtual and Performance Spaces.” Through the project, my students and I will explore the circulation of a classical Chinese drama The Orphan of Zhao in different languages; we’ll also stage a performance of the drama at Vanderbilt U.
My book manuscript Exile to the Stage: Costuming and Personhood in Early Qing Drama has been contracted with Columbia University Press and is scheduled to be published in 2020.
Imagining my future book…
I am honored to receive a Research Grant from the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation to support my book project Bodies That Still Matter: Forensics and Literature in Late Imperial China 屍體之重：法醫檢驗與明清文學 from 2018 to 2020.
The grant will allow me to make summer trips and conduct research in Asia and America. I look forward to working with literary and legal experts and exploring the intersections between crime literature and medical/legal practices in premodern China.
I will give a lecture titled “Authentic Selfies: Posing, Portraiture, and Self-representation in Late Imperial China” on April 24 for the class “The Real and the Fake in Early Modern China” at the University of Chicago. Thank Ariel Fox for the invitation!
I very much look forward to my visit to the University of Minnesota. Many thanks to the premodern workshop for the invitation!
GUOJUN WANG 