East Asian Humanities Workshop: Student Symposium

We invite you to join us for the final East Asian Humanities Workshop event of the 2021-22 academic year. We are pleased to showcase the research of two current graduate students. Maciej Kurzynski is a PhD Candidate in Modern Chinese Literature, and Katherine Whatley is a PhD Candidate in Pre-Modern Japanese Literature.

Maciej Kurzynski: "'Us and Them' - On the Cultural Grammar of the Modern Chinese Narrative and the Fragility of First-Person Plural"

Abstract: In this chapter, I explore the various manifestations of the pronoun "we" (women 我们) in post-1949 Chinese narratives. The socialist "we" has been invariably couched as a positive, progressive entity, surrounded with a multitude of uplifting terms and expressions, and it often encompassed the narrator himself. For Gao Xingjian 高行健, however, "we" has never been more than a disguise: "should at any time I use the word 'we,' it is when I am being extremely hypocritical and cowardly" ([1990] 2000). In my project, I make my way through the Tracks in the Snowy Forest《林海雪原》(1957), Keep the Red Flag Flying《红旗谱》(1957), and We Sow Love《我们播种爱情》(1957), participate in The Muslim Funeral《穆斯林的葬礼》(1988), and finish with a recent movie Us and Them《后来的我们》(2018), to explore how "culture," or fashions of speaking, affects the presumably objective and well-defined structure such as grammar. I show how the supposedly stable deictic boundaries between grammatical persons are in constant flux, always at risk of reification and dispersal.

Katherine Whatley: "Transness Transtime: Gender and Performance in Premodern Japanese Literature"

Abstract: Tale of the Heike is a Japanese epic (circa 1330), performed by travelling bards with the biwa (Japanese lute). Through valorous warriors fighting to the honorable death, the bards forewarned that all that is prosperous must decline. The text was performed orally, thus one intriguing character is Gio, who is a shirabyoshi, a crossdressing dancer and entertainer, sponsored for both musical and sexual favors in the court until around the 14th century. Fallen out of favor in the court, she too forewarns of the impermanence of all things. I will draw parallels between the performance practice of the shirabyoshi with that of a modern day biwa and Heike performer, Kinishi Tsuruta (1911-1995). Tsuruta, assigned female at birth, defied any gender conventions of the era. This performer had two distinct careers (that of a prewar woman travelling player) and that of postwar biwa performer known for both traditional and avant-garde repertoire (including the works of contemporary classical composer Toru Takemitsu). During Tsuruta's post-war career, Tsuruta had a "wife" and presented to the world as a man performer. I will raise questions about musical and gender performance across time, and question the stability and permanence of categories of gender and performance practices.