Guojun Wang (Assistant Professor of Asian Studies - Vanderbilt University)

Guojun Wang discusses his recent book Staging Personhood: Costuming in Early Qing Drama (Columbia UP, 2020). After toppling the Ming dynasty, the Qing conquerors forced Han Chinese males to adopt Manchu hairstyle and clothing. Yet China’s new rulers permitted the use of traditional Chinese attire in performances, making theater one of the only areas of life where Han garments could still be seen and where Manchu rule could be contested. Reading dramatic texts and performances against Qing sartorial regulations, Wang offers an interdisciplinary lens on the entanglements between Chinese drama and nascent Manchu rule in seventeenth-century China... (more details at the link above).