CHINOPERL PRESENTATIONS – MARCH 14, 2024

Mark Bender, Panel Presenter
“Nodal Subjects and Epics in Mesoamerica and Southwest China” 
Thursday, March 14, 2024
Session 1A. Oral Tradition 1
9:10 AM - 10:20 AM 
Room 615 (Convention Center)

Eric Shepherd (DEALL alumnus), Panel Presenter
“Exploring the Aural Territory Shandong Fast Tales: Examples from The Tale of Wu Song”
Thursday, March 14, 2024
Session 1A. Oral Tradition 1
9:10 AM - 10:20 AM 
Room 615 (Convention Center)

Marjorie K.M. Chan and Jennifer W. Jay (U. of Alberta), Panel Presenters
“Dao Lang (刀郎) and his 2023 Song Luocha Haishi (羅剎海市)”
Thursday, March 14, 2024
Session 2A. Oral Tradition 2
10:30 AM - 11:40 AM
Room 615 (Convention Center)

Xuan Ye (叶璇) (DEALL alumna), Panel Presenter
 “论中国传统戏曲元素在对外汉语教学中的应用”
Session 5A. Oral Tradition 4
3:30 PM - 4:40 PM
Room 615 (Convention Center)

(Mark Bender is also serving as chair of Session 4A (Oral Tradition 3) and Marjorie Chan as chair of Session 1C (Cross-Boundary 1). Eric Shepherd will also be giving a short demonstration of Shandong Kuaishu (山东快书) in Session 3.)  

AAS PRESENTATIONS – MARCH 15-17, 2024

Hayana Kim, Panel Presenter.
“Revolutionary Women of the Kwangju Uprising Performing Grief and Rehearsing Democracy”
Friday, March 15, 2024
9:00 AM - 10:30 PM
Room 307 (Level 3, Convention Center)

 Xiaobin Jian, Panel Presenter.
“What/Whose Culture is Performed?”
Friday, March 15, 2024
11:00 AM - 12:30 PM
Room 304 (Level 3, Convention Center)

 Mari Noda and Galal Walker, Discussants.
Performed Culture Approach in East Asian Language Pedagogy: Where Will We Go from Here?
Friday, March 15, 2024
11:00 AM - 12:30 PM
Room 304 (Level 3, Convention Center)

Man He (Williams College), Panel Presenter
Ear-Witness to War: The Soundscapes of Cui Xiaoping 1940-1977
Friday, March 15, 2024
11:00 AM - 12:30 PM
Room 205 (Level 2, Convention Center)

Mark Bender, Discussant.
Transcultural Encounters in the Sino-Tibetan Borderlands: Repositioning Boundaries and Forging New Perspectives
Friday, March 15, 2024
2:00 PM - 3:30 PM
Room 211 (Level 2 Convention Center)

Wenyuan Shao (Shanghai University), Panel Presenter
"Retrieving Voices of “the Other” from Polyvocal Documents: Three Ethnic Minority Heroines in Late Imperial China As Examples"
Saturday, March 16, 2024
8:30 AM - 10:00 AM
Room 212 (Level 2, Convention Center)

Pil Ho Kim, Discussant and Chair.
The Long 1980s of South Korea
Saturday, March 16, 2024
2:00 PM - 3:30 PM
Willow B (2nd Floor, Sheraton)

Meow Hui Goh, Chair.
The Poetics of Community in Medieval China
Sunday, March 17, 2024
9:00 AM - 10:30 AM
Room 205 (Level 2, Convention Center)

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 ABSTRACTS

Bender, Mark. “Nodal Subjects and Epics in Mesoamerica and Southwest China.”
  
Studies of myth, epic, folk narrative, and art in Mesoamerica have productively utilized “nodal studies” to advance thinking about pervasive and recurring  “essential cultural features” represented in myth, epic poetry, folk narrative, and art  (Lopez Austin 1993; Chinchilla Mazariegos 2017:4).  Building on ideas of geophysical and cultural correspondences presented in a Chinoperl paper in 2023, this paper tentatively utilizes ideas of “nodal subjects” to examine corresponding phenomena from southwest China and Mesoamerica, keeping in mind Viveiros De Castro’s idea of “controlled equivocation” (2004).  Focus will be given to depictions of certain living beings that appear in the narratives, in particular exemplary characters in human form, transformational beings, and various avians and arthropods that appear in oral and iconographic traditions of Mayan, Aztec, and related groups juxtaposed with traditions of Yi, Miao, Yao, Han, and other ethnic groups in southwest China (researched by scholars such as Li Zixian, Yang Lihui, Bamo Qubumo, etc.).  This approach, while largely an experiment in applying nodal subject theory to Chinese folk material, allows the consideration of commonly occurring motifs documented within myths, epics of creation, oral narratives, and related art from southwest China (and contiguous areas in the Southwest Asian Massif) to be understood in an inter-ethnic, asynchronous, intermedial  perspective.  Such cross-cultural juxtapositions of expressive patterns will not only contribute to the development of theories to further understanding myth-epic traditions in the borderlands of southwest China, but furthermore will mutually enrich theoretical studies of oral and oral-connected literatures in China, Mesoamerica, and other areas of the globe.

 Chan, Marjorie K.M. and Jennifer W. Jay (U. of Alberta). “Dao Lang (刀郎) and his 2023 Song Luocha Haishi (羅剎海市).”

 Chinese pop singer, Dao Lang (刀郎, 1971- ) released to tumultuous reception an album in July 2023 entitled, Shan Ge Liao Zai《山歌寥哉》, with word play that tantalizingly suggests the celebrated title, Liao Zhai Zhi Yi《聊齋志異》(Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio), a short story collection by Qing dynasty writer, Pu Songling (蒲松齡, 1640-1715). All eleven songs in Dao Lang’s album, in fact, bear titles of stories from that short story collection. We will focus on the first song, Luocha Haishi (羅剎海市 / 罗刹海市, Luocha Sea Market), which had received the greatest attention. We will introduce background to Pu Songling and his original story, and then explore the impact of the song and the language used in it.
   
Jian, Xiaobin. “What/Whose Culture Is Performed?"

Following Walker and Noda’s paradigm shifting conceptual frame of “Performed Culture Approach (PCA),” this presentation explores the question of “what’s in the pedagogy of performing another culture.” While to some the answer to this question seems to be obvious—the target culture of course, I argue we should look beyond “what culture should be performed” to “what/whose culture is being performed” when one learns and uses a foreign language. Should and/or can one perform the “target culture?” If and how a “target culture” can be known/defined? Will the systematic comparisons and contrasts between the “base culture” and the “target culture” be helpful or counter-productive in the pedagogy of foreign languages/cultures? Should we see individuals’ behaviors as representations of their collective behavioral culture? If and how can we avoid stereotyping while attempting to characterize the “target culture?” Are characteristics of a culture objectively out there waiting for us to discover and put together or are they goal-influenced perceptions and creations? It’s time for us to begin the response to these hard and unavoidable questions facing the pedagogy of performing another culture.

Kim, Hayana. “Revolutionary Women of the Kwangju Uprising: Performing Grief and Rehearsing Democracy.”

In this paper, I offer a performance-centered account of the Kwangju Uprising by spotlighting some of the uprising’s most important women protestors. Although robust literature exists on the uprising, scholarship thus far has often depicted men, especially those who took up arms in defense of the community, as the central figures of the uprising, while sidelining women as those who assisted them by serving in the role of caregivers to nurse, cook, and feed their male counterparts. This narrative, which comes from the interpretive lens of patriarchy, stunts us from seeing the much wider breadth of women’s contribution. This paper, therefore, intervenes in such narrativization, bringing light to some of the uprising’s most significant women protestors, including street orators who strode the main thoroughfares of the town and theatre creators who occupied the city’s large plaza. Utilizing approaches and theories of performance studies and gender studies in engaging with sources from archives and ethnographic field research, this paper will analyze the various ways in which women presented performances of grief, demonstrating ultimately that women were not just supporters or caregivers, but that they were rather the uprising's most luminous revolutionaries, subversives, and insurgents.

Shepherd, Eric, U. of South Florida (DEALL alumnus). “Exploring the Aural Territory Shandong Fast Tales: Examples from The Tale of Wu Song.”

This paper explores the soundscapes created in the performance of The Tale of Wu Song from the Shandong fast tale rhythmic storytelling tradition. Shandong fast tale performances are multi-modal, multi-dimensional narrative experiences that are inherently distinct from their textual counterparts. Audience members of live performances experience a range of sounds some verbal, some musical, some mechanical, and some paralinguistic. Those who are fluent in the fast tale register of performance (Foley, 2002) are keyed to an action-packed world of meaning (Bauman, 1977). Mark Bender (Bender, 2003), in discussing the extratextual elements of Suzhou tanci performance has used the notion of “oral territory”, or all of the elements of oral performance often left or edited out in the textualization process, to examine the way tanci performances are keyed. He noted shifting among registers, voice changes associated with characters, onomatopoeia, and filler words as examples. All of these extra-textual elements are present in Shandong fast tale performances. In addition, there are also paralinguistic elements that are not oral in nature but vital to the fast tale experience. This paper seeks to explore the soundscapes of fast tale performances using examples from Gao School fast tale performers’ performances of The Tale of Wu Song by looking at both the oral territory Bender has opened and by discussing other aural elements in fast tale worlds. The paper will discuss instrumental sounds, the beat and rhythm of the rhythm-keeping ban, rhyme, repetition, registers of speech, character voices, filler words, non-verbal performer sound effects, lexical and non-lexical onomatopoeia, non-lexical sounds, non-verbal vocalizations, mechanical sounds, sounds that indicate action, and other paralinguistic elements.

Ye, Xuan (叶璇), Indiana U. Bloomington (DEALL alumna). “论中国传统戏曲元素在对外汉语教学中的应用.”

语言和文化是相辅相成、密不可分的。中国传统戏曲博大精深，是中国文化的重要组成部分，也使得汉语变得鲜活而又富有生命力。

有鉴于此，本研究提出将中国传统戏曲元素引入对外汉语教学是切实可行的，一方面可以利用中国戏曲很强的艺术表现力激发学习者对中国戏曲艺术载体——汉语的兴趣，另一方面也可以以润物细无声的形式辅助对外汉语教学，通过语言的艺术去进行语言教学。本研究在分析目前中国传统戏曲与汉语教学相结合面临的困境和挑战后，将结合笔者的实际教学案例，探索将中国传统戏曲与对外汉语教学有机结合的途径和方法。 

经笔者观察和研究后发现，目前中国传统戏曲与中文教学相结合遇到的挑战不外乎这样几个方面：

一、中国戏曲这种艺术形式对于海外尤其是美国的学生太过于陌生，学生很难领略戏曲艺术的魅力。

二、戏曲的语言与学生课堂上学习的中文差别较大，学生难以理解。

三、大部分海外学生学习中文的目的偏实用主义，对商务中文或者中美关系类似话题更感兴趣，对纯文学艺术的兴趣不大。

针对以上问题，我们将介绍如何在对外汉语课堂中使用课本How to Read Chinese Drama in Chinese: A Language Companion 来攻克以上教学难点。该课本是2023年出版、针对海外中高年级的中文学生出的中国戏剧教材。结合目前中国传统戏曲与汉语教学相结合面临的困境以及笔者对课本的理解和教材的处理，我们提出：

一、真正找到中美文化的共通性，引导学生思考中国戏曲的普世价值。例如，可以请学生以现代美国为背景，改编一个戏曲的故事。有学生把《西厢记》搬到了现代美国，在改编过程中将张生和莺莺的性别对调，把中国古代的阶级地位差别改为美国大学中的隐形阶级矛盾，但不变的是原剧中对爱情和自由的向往。亦或者可以把画京剧脸谱活动与万圣节画面具活动相结合，真正实现从”沙拉碗”到”番茄汤”的转变。

二、可以利用课本中已有的原文与现代文翻译相对照，找出原文中当今仍常用的书面语。比如原文中的”小姐入来也”一句，学生可以参考现代文翻译了解”入”的意思，并可由此学习”出入境”等现代汉语表达。如此一来，戏曲的教学就不仅仅局限于古文课或者文化课，也可以为现代汉语课所用。

三、以学生更感兴趣的角度切入，比如戏曲在新文化运动和文化大革命中的遭遇，引导学生思考戏曲对于中国人的重要性，从而更愿意了解戏曲，走进戏曲。

本研究立足于笔者自己的教学实践和研究，希望可以抛砖引玉，共同探讨将中国传统戏曲元素引入对外汉语教学的可行性和方法，既能有效提高学习者中文学习能力，让学习者真正感受到“汉语”本身的魅力，也能将戏曲文化和艺术发扬光大，实现共享多样文化。