Peng Xu

This collaborative reading workshop shall add to our understanding of the visual dimension of drama in Ming and Qing China through an interdisciplinary approach to dramatic texts that portray or engage other forms of art, such as painting, gardening, woodblock printing, costuming, and performance arts (e.g., guqin-playing, female dance, ballad singing, and court pageantries, etc.). In this workshop, we bring together drama scholars with cross-genre, cross-media, and cross-disciplinary research projects all of which involve close reading of dramatic texts as a fundamental part of their scholarship. Each participant has proposed one to two dramatic texts at the center of their ongoing research projects to be the primary material for an intensive group discussion.