This interdisciplinary and international workshop seeks to question the received wisdom about Kun opera as the consummate elite, male, and classical genre of Chinese opera. Papers will explore the history and historiography of kunqu in Ming and Qing times with attention to its music and performance practices, as well as the genre’s transformation and the re-imagining of classical form (and Chinese opera more generally) in modern and contemporary times. In conjunction with the workshop, there will be a premiere screening of Hong Kong documentary filmmaker Cheuk Cheung’s My Next Step, about the increasingly marginalized wusheng (martial male role type) performer of Kun opera.
Organized by Andrea S. Goldman, Department of History, UCLA
Schedule
(click dates to see abstracts of papers)
Friday, January 8
9-9:15 Coffee
9:15-9:30 Welcome Remarks
9:30-10:30 Peng XU, Asian Languages & Cultures, Virginia Military Institute
10:40-11:40 XIA Taidi, Chinese, Shanghai University of Electric Power
11:45-1:00 Lunch
1:00-2:00 Casey Schoenberger, Asian Studies, Sewanee University
2:10-3:10 Joseph Lam, Ethnomusicology, University of Michigan
3:20-4:20 HUA Wei, Chinese Literature, Chinese University of Hong Kong
4:30-5:30 Discussion
Saturday, January 9
9:15-9:30 Coffee
9:30-10:30 CHEN Fang, Theater, National Taiwan Normal University
10:40-11:40 Hsiao-Chun Wu, History, UCLA
11:45-1:00 Lunch
1:00-2:00 Fang-ru Lin, Asian Languages & Cultures, UCLA
2:10-3:10 Ellen Gerdes, World Arts & Cultures/Dance, UCLA
3:20-4:20 Discussion, Wrap-up
Film screening to follow: My Next Step
RSVP required. Limited to UCLA faculty and students. Participants will be provided with the event location and papers in advance.
Image Source: Two Hundred Illustrations of Beauties from the Rare Collection of the Qing Court (Qing gong zhen bao Bi mei tu 清宮珍寶皕美圖), China: [s.n.], ca. 1911-1949.
The UCLA Taiwan Studies Lectureship is a joint program of the UCLA Asia Institute and the Dean of Humanities and is made possible with funding from the Department of International and Cross-Strait Education, Ministry of Education, Taiwan, represented by the Education Division, Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Los Angeles.