On Dec. 5, we were fortunate to have Fei Wu, the renown musician and singer, to perform Chinese music in my class Chinese Drama. Fei is an expert on Chinese guzheng and is familiar with many Chinese performance genres. In our class, Fei performed a kunqu song from the Peony Pavilion 牡丹亭, a song she composed with sanxian (the three string instrument), Summer Palace 頤和園, and the Manchu chaqu 岔曲.

With Abigail Washburn, Fei just performed at the National Immigrant Integration Conference 2016 in Nashville.
http://www.niic2016.org/blog/from-banjos-to-guzhengs

I am thrilled to welcome the incoming participants of Manuscript Workshop: New Directions in Chinese Studies, a workshop on the parameters and practices of manuscript development on topics regarding China and the larger Sinophone sphere. Sponsored by the Asian Studies Program at Vanderbilt University, the workshop will take place on October 20th-22nd 2016 (Thursday-Saturday), at Vanderbilt University.

With the Manuscript Workshop, we seek to provide a space in which scholars from different disciplines can share innovative ideas and approaches, and engage in in-depth discussion of each other’s works. This 2016 workshop features the challenges and solutions of developing book manuscripts. Participants will reflect on the general issues regarding conceiving, structuring, and materializing book manuscripts, and will provide specific comments on each other’s works from interdisciplinary perspectives. The workshop consists of a method session followed by discussions of individual projects.

June 6, 2016, I was invited to give a talk at Hong Kong Baptist University. The talk was in Chinese, and the title is “Across Genders and Ethnicities: The Dilemma of Crossdressing in Early Qing Drama Lovebirds Switcheroo” (剃髮易服與男女易裝： 清初傳奇《倒鴛鴦》中的服飾與性別). It is about a book chapter I am working on.

May 27-28, 2016, I attended the Forgotten Books and Cultural Memory conference hosted by the English Department at Taipei Tech. It is an international conference on book culture, with scholars sharing their studies on books in different cultural contexts.

I presented a paper titled “Recollecting Body and Clothing: The Shifting Meaning of Female Chastity in the Reproduction of a Chinese Drama.” It is from a chapter in my current book manuscript.

Link to the conference: https://forgottenbookstaipei.wordpress.com

This past summer (2016), I had a wonderful time as a visiting scholar at Academia Sinica (Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy).  Academia Sinica has such a rich collection of books in its libraries! I was also fortunate to use the resources at National Taiwan University library. The research trip tremendously enriched the primary materials for my current book manuscript.

The 2016 summer was a particularly busy time at Academia Sinica. With a series of workshops, conferences, and lectures by the newly elected academicians, I was able to meet many great scholars from different countries. I look forward to another visit to Taiwan!