Project

Radio Culture in Modern China, 1923-1949

Program

Luce/ACLS Early Career Fellowships in China Studies – Long-Term

Department

Asian Studies

Named Award

Long-term named award

Abstract

On January 23, 1923, the first radio station in China started broadcasting in Shanghai. By 1949, radio had become an indispensable part of people’s everyday lives. This project has two objectives. First, it will publish the first monograph in English on the cultural history of radio in modern China. Second, it will build the website Sinophone Radio Studies—a digital archive for radio fan magazines and broadcast recordings. Together, these objectives illuminate these questions: How did radio reshape people’s listening experience? How did different agents participate in the making of this new media culture? How was Chinese radio connected to the global soundscape? Considering radio as a new information technology, what can be learned from this history about the current age of information redundancy?