Print, Popular, and Material Culture in Modern China and Beyond

Coordinator: Dr Nicolai Volland, Department of Chinese Studies

Project Description and Scope

The modes of cultural dissemination at both the elite and popular levels have seen a surge of scholarly interest in recent years. Scholars working on a number of national contexts, including modern China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, and other nations of Southeast Asia, have turned their attention to products of print and material culture, as well as to the audiovisual and cinematographic expressions of popular culture. Over the past five years, a number of important books have been published that suggest new ways to approach and interpret long-standing core issues of literary scholars, historians, and scholars from other disciplines, such as modernity, nationalism, emotion, visuality, etc. At the same, scholars have made original use of old and newly emerging source materials, ranging from books and newspapers to films, sound recordings, and objects of everyday life. The combination of new ideas and creative use of sources, and especially the focus on print, popular, and material culture, allows new approaches to our understanding of the patterns through which culture (in the broader sense) has been and is being formed and perceived in China and Southeast Asia, and how its creators (be they elites or masses) and recipients interact in the shaping of culture. At NUS, faculty and graduate students in a number of different departments have turned to the study of print, popular, and material culture.

The “Print and Popular Culture” research group was established in the Department of Chinese Studies in fall 2007 and has since provided a forum to bring together senior scholars, junior faculty, and graduate students with research interests that cover a variety of themes, from book printing in Qing dynasty China, through publisher-reader relationships in early twentieth century popular journals, to the cultural networks of Hong Kong’s transnational film industry. The group has successfully promoted discussion among group members and has reached out to the wider public, such as through the exhibition of Republican-era Chinese journals now on display in the NUS Chinese Library. In addition to the research group’s regular activities, individual conversations have taken place between group members and faculty from other Departments, especially History, but also Sociology, Japanese Studies, and Architecture. The aim of the reading group is to bring these discussions into a more regular framework, to intensify contacts between faculty members and graduate students across faculties, to stimulate interdisciplinary cooperation and research, and provide input for new research initiatives.

In an institution like NUS, research on the histories and cultures of modern China or Southeast Asia is necessarily split between different departments and disciplines. Research on related topics might be conducted by members of different faculties, with limited opportunities for in-depth discussions and regular interaction. While there are useful structures for interdisciplinary research within NUS and FASS – such as ARI or the FASS research clusters – these are usually oriented towards broad themes and operate on a rather large scale. In contrast, our reading group aims at fostering regular, close contact between a small group of scholars that focuses on collective readings and discussions. Such sustained interaction will lead to a lively exchange of ideas, and hopefully also to collaborative research projects in the future.

The reading group “Print, Popular, and Material Culture in Modern China and Southeast Asia” takes culture in its broad sense, looking into the wide range of modes and patterns in which people, especially at the popular level, engage in production and consumption of culture, and focuses in particular on the role of print media, audiovisual products, and everyday and material culture in these processes. Members or the reading group have been and are working on China, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Malaysia in the modern period. Through sustained dialogue, fostered by the group’s reading of new and stimulating research, we would like to explore how patterns of cultural production and consumption in these regions compare. In particular, we are interested in the transference of innovative approaches to new contexts and in finding out find out what recent research from different contexts and regions can tell us about our own fields, thus enhancing the research efforts of all group members.

The reading group will make best use of the structures already created through the “Print and Popular Culture” research group of the Chinese Studies Department; the group will complement the existing cluster through interdisciplinary dialogue with colleagues from the History Department and from other interested faculties. We plan to meet every three weeks to discuss one relevant book. Apart from these regular reading sessions, we hope to be able to invite two Asia-based scholars (one per semester) to discuss their writing with us, giving us in-depth insights into the ideas and approaches employed and into the sources used for their writings. Our aim is to increase contact and provide faculty members and our graduate students in particular with access to scholars and new ideas that will broaden their horizons and inspire new ideas.

Initial Reading List

Theme 1: Material Culture and Cultural Consumption

  • Frank Dikötter. Exotic Commodities: Modern Objects and Everyday Life in China (Columbia Univ. Press, 2007).
  • Wenhsin Yeh. Shanghai Splendor: Economic Sentiments and the Making of Modern China, 1843-1949 (Univ. of California Press, 2007).
  • Benjamin A. Elman. A Cultural History of Modern Science in China (Harvard University Press, 2006).
  • Wong Yunn Chii / Tan Kar Lin. “Emergence of a Cosmopolitan Space for Culture and Consumption: The New World Amusement Park-Singapore (1923-1970) in the Inter-War Years,” in Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 5.2 (2004), p. 279-304.

Theme 2: Cultural Expressions of Love, Sexuality, and Emotions

  • Ann Laura Stoler. Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule (Univ. of California Press, 2002).
  • Eugenia Lean. Public Passions: The Trial of Shi Jianqiao and the Rise of Popular Sympathy in Republican China (Univ. of California Press, 2007).
  • Scot Barmé. Woman, Man, Bangkok: Love, Sex, and Popular Culture in Thailand (Rowman & Littlefield, 2002).
  • Lee Haiyan. Revolution of the Heart: A Genealogy of Love in China, 1900-1950 (Stanford Univ. Press, 2007).

Theme 3: Visual Culture, Art and Architecture

  • Shih Shu-Mei. Visuality and Identity: Sinophone Articulations Across the Pacific (Univ. of California Press, 2007).
  • Lai Chee Kien. Building Merdeka: Independence Architecture in Kuala Lumpur, 1957-1966 (Galeri Petronas, 2007).
  • Tang Xiaobing. Origins of the Chinese Avant-Garde: The Modern Woodcut Movement (Univ. of California Press, 2008).

Theme 4: Popular Perceptions of Nationalism, Identity, and History

  • Hong Lysa / Huang Jianli. The Scripting of a National History: Singapore and its Pasts (NUS Press, 2008).
  • Rudolf Mrázek. Engineers of Happy Land: Technology and Nationalism in a Colony (Princeton Univ. Press, 2002).
  • Wang Hui. Empire and Nation-State: Two Narratives of China (Harvard University Press, forthcoming).

Theme 5: Popular Culture and the Cold War in Asia

  • Tina Mai Chen. “Propagating the Propaganda Film: The Meaning of Film in Chinese Communist Party Writings, 1949-1965,” in Modern Chinese Literature and Culture 15.2 (Fall 2003): 154-93, and “Internationalism and Cultural Experience: Soviet Films and Popular Chinese Understandings of the Future in the 1950s,” in Cultural Critique 58 (Fall 2004): 82-114.
  • Jeremy Brown / Paul G. Pickowicz (eds.). Dilemmas of Victory: The Early Years of the People’s Republic of China (Harvard Univ. Press, 2008).

Theme 6: Culture in Asia and the Impact of New Technologies

(readings TBA)

Theme 7: Aurality and Audio Culture

(readings TBA)

Meeting Schedule and Events:

Every three weeks (every two weeks if there is sufficient demand from group members) in the Graduate Students Room, Dept. of Chinese Studies (AS3). We propose a brown bag lunchtime seminar that saves times and can be extended into discussion over coffee. Tentatively proposed is Friday at noon. Please contact coordinator for confirmed meeting schedule.

Speakers to be invited (tentatively):

  • Frank Dikötter (Prof., University of Hong Kong)
    Author of Exotic Commodities and a number of other innovative books (incl. The Discourse of Race in Modern China; Sex, Culture, and Modernity in China; Imperfect Conceptions: Medical Knowledge, Birth Defects and Eugenics in China; and Crime, Punishment and the Prison in Modern China) that have made a significant impact in Chinese historical studies over the past decade. We plan to read and discuss with him Exotic Commodities, his latest book.
  • Wang Hui (Prof., Tsinghua University, Beijing)
    Leading Chinese thinker and public intellectual with encyclopedic knowledge on cultural and intellectuals trends of early modern and modern China; author of The Rise of Modern Chinese Thought and China’s New Order; is currently exploring notions of “Asia” in popular and elite culture. We plan to read parts of his Empire and Nation-State once it is published.
  • Amin Sweeney (emeritus Prof., UCLA, currently based in Jakarta)
    Leading scholar of Malay and Indonesian music and literature, and audio culture. Author of (among others) A Full Hearing, Shadow Puppets, Authors and Audiences in Traditional Malay Literature, and Malay Word Music. The group plans to read a collection of his essays on the oral traditional and audio culture.

List of Participants

  • Dr Nicolai Volland, Department of Chinese Studies (chsvnm@nus.edu.sg)
  • A/P Yung Sai-Shing, Department of Chinese Studies
  • Dr Chua Ai Lin, Department of History
  • Dr Lee Seung-Joon, Department of History
  • Dr Mark Emmanuel, Department of History
  • Dr Xu Lanjun, Department of Chinese Studies
  • Mr Chia Meng Tat, Graduate student, Department of History
  • Ms Chua Karen, Graduate student, Department of History
  • Ms Grace Mak. Graduate student, Department of Chinese Studies
  • Ms Sin Yee Theng, Graduate student, Department of Chinese Studies
  • Mr Wei Bingbing, Graduate student, Department of History
  • Ms Zhang Jing, Graduate student, Department of Chinese Studies

In addition, we plan to involve other interested faculty member and graduate students from our Departments, as well as staff from Malay Studies and South Asian Studies.