Dissertation: “The Sound of Ghosts: Ghost Opera, Drama Reform and the Staging of a New China” considers the celebrated and vilified genre of chuanqi 传奇 (supernatural tales) and guixi 鬼戏 (ghost plays), in Chinese society, culture, and politics in the period after 1949. The project builds on earlier research I did on Meng Chao 孟超 and his 1961 kun ghost opera, Li Huiniang 李慧娘.
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Thanks to a long-standing interest in adventuring literature (particularly stories of high-altitude mountaineering), combined with some fascinating overlap with my literary ghosts, I’m preparing short- and long-term projects related to high-altitude mountaineering in China. I’m starting the projects with a look at the 1960 ascent of Mount Everest (which came during the disastrous Great Leap Forward and resulting famine) and its reception in cultural circles. It is a project I am very anxious to get underway!
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Building off a completed research paper (“The Games People Play”), I’m collecting materials for a long term project on the history of mahjong in the late Qing, Republican, and early PRC periods. Despite the important place mahjong holds in Chinese culture (and the associations it has with Asia in the West!), there has been very little research done on mahjong’s history and role in society and culture. Because mahjong is one of those topics that is frequently referenced, but is rarely the subject, in sources, I’m gathering sources as I go about other projects (with help from colleagues and friends who know to be on the lookout for any references to 麻将, 麻雀, 马将, 马吊, mahjong, majongg …).
As an offshoot, I’m hoping to put a paper together on the bizarre proliferation of “mahjong solitaire” games (essentially matching games with mahjong tile sets), which are wildly popular casual games and come in a variety of iterations.
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Along with friends, I have a couple of projects brewing in the overlapping space between digital humanities and Chinese history (not always as close together as we would like!): stay tuned.
