ICS Public Lecture – Prof. Hui Faye Xiao: "The Hen Cackles in the Morning: Gendered Soundscape and Female Leadership in Modern Chinese Literature and Cinema"
The importance of hearing in the sensory cosmos of Chinese epistemology is testified by the character 聖 (sheng) for the sage that takes the “ear” radical. Associated with the sagely man’ enunciative power, sound-making has been a key indicator of one’s possession of political authority. The Book of Documents stipulates that “hens must not cackle in the morning,” or women should be deprived of the male-exclusive privileges of making speeches, giving commands, and voicing concerns in sociopolitical affairs. The Confucian institution thus prescribes an audible gender order through regulating a hierarchical soundscape in which women’s voices and “improper” sound effects should be filtered out as disruptive feminine noises. Against the backdrop of this male-dominant sonic universe and political establishment, what made it possible for the new sound event to happen that installs the truth of women as modern speaking subjects with political authority rather than noise-making machines? This lecture tackles this central question through examining a set of Chinese literary and cinematic works that remap a gendered soundscape where a cacophony of sounds, affects and ideologies are given differential political and aesthetic values under shifting historic circumstances.
Speaker:
Prof. Hui Faye Xiao is a Professor of Chinese Literature in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Kansas. She is the author of Family Revolution: Marital Strife in Contemporary Chinese Literature and Visual Culture (2014) and Youth Economy, Crisis, and Reinvention in Twenty-First Century China: Morning Sun in the Tiny Times (2020). She has also co-edited (with Dr. Ping Zhu) the volume Feminisms with Chinese Characteristics (2021). Currently she is working on a third monograph tentatively titled “The Hen Cackles in the Morning: Gendered Soundscape and Female Leadership in Modern Chinese Literature and Cinema”.
Date: 25 September 2024 (Wednesday)
Time: 4:30pm – 6:00pm (4:00pm: Tea Reception)
Venue: Activities Room, 2/F, Art Museum East Wing, CUHK
Language: English
Registration: Click here
Enquiry: 3943 5976/
