North America
Professor Gao’s talk lifts out of the dustbin of history the life and career of Liu Liangmo, a talented musician, prolific journalist, and Christian activist. Liu agilely navigated slippery trans-Pacific political and ideological landscapes throughout the World War II and Cold War. After “coaxing the Chinese (civilians and soldiers) into mass signing” and helping to invent the new genre “songs of resistance” to promote national morale and unified resistance against Japan, Liu sojourned to the United States. There, despite close surveillance by the FBI, he formed an unusual alliance with African Americans by contributing a weekly column to the biggest black newspaper “Pittsburgh Courier” and cooperating with Paul Robeson, the world famous singer and actor, in popularizing Chinese songs of resistance. Robeson and Liu brought the future national anthem of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) into global circulation. Meanwhile, Liu traveled more than 100,000 miles to speak and sing about China to grassroots white Americans on behalf of the United China Relief. Later, as a top official representing Protestant denominations in the PRC, Liu helped to bring Christianity into line with the new regime, served China as its authoritative interpreter of the United States, and facilitated the alliance between the PRC and such African American cultural giants as W.E.B Du Bois, Shirley Graham Du Bois, and Paul Robeson.
Craig Quintero, Associate Professor, Chair, Department of Theatre and Dance, Grinnell College
SanSan Kwan, Associate Professor, Theater Dance and Performance Studies, UC Berkeley
The emperor was at the center of Chinese political theory throughout the imperial period. Sometimes this theoretical position found expression in an announcement to the realm. The First Emperor, for example, made his power known in 221 BCE by means of a widely-distributed inscription in his own voice. My examination of excavated documents the Han central government promulgated in its northwestern border region, however, suggests that the emperors’ theoretical potency was not matched by conspicuous utterance, at least not in those contexts. What emerges instead is taciturnity, constraint, silence. In this presentation, I consider example documents and discuss what the imperial voice in these texts tells us about the nature of rule and rulership in the Han dynasty.
From 1253, when Mongol armies invaded the independent Dali Kingdom in the southeastern foothills of the Himalayas, its capital, Dali, was transformed into a remote periphery of Yuan and then Ming empires. By the sixteenth century, Dali's gentry families, both indigenous and migrant, were increasingly educating their sons in the classical tradition, to enroll in the civil service examinations and take positions as Ming officials. How did their experiences transform the ways that Dali's literati wrote about their hometown, about its people, and about themselves?
The Princeton University Art Museum presents an exhibiton focused on the transformation of feasting in the Song, Liao and Yuan dynasties.
The Newark Museum presents an exhibition on birds in art featuring works from around Asia.
Highlighting the artistic traditions of diverse cultural regions, this new installation brings together a stunning array of objects from India, Nepal, Tibet, China, Korea, Japan, Myanmar, Thailand, and Cambodia. (Exhibition dates: October 1, 2017 – October 1, 2020)
Explore the Philadelphia Museuem of Art's recently redone Chinese galleries, full of newly restored art, textiles and photographs.
A new installation, Pure Amusements: Wealth, Leisure, and Culture in Late Imperial China features Chinese works ranging from prints to sculpture and furnishings to ceramics drawn from SAM's collection and focused on objects created for, and enjoyed during, the intentional practice of leisure. (December 24, 2016 - Ongoing)