Today the University of Exeter celebrated Chinese New Year with a festival presented by the Chinese Student Scholars Association. I caught the parade as it started down the High Street…
… and then there was Dragon and Lion traditional dancing in front of Exeter Cathedral!
The parade continued through the city centre and onto campus, where more events were planned for the rest of the day.
At Exeter we’re committed to thinking about culture in a global context and seeing the parade reminded me of the Department of English & Film’s connections to Chinese performance, art, and literature! Here are just three examples:
My colleague Professor Nick Kaye has extensive research links with Chinese researchers and cultural institutions and one of his new projects involves engaging new urban audiences with traditional Chinese opera via digital mediation; Nick is working with Shanghai All-Female Yue Opera, the only all-female Chinese opera.
Professor Regenia Gagnier has just published a book entitled Literatures of Liberalization: Global Circulation and the Long Nineteenth Century which is centred on two of Regenia’s big interests: the global history of liberalism as a concept and the migration of literary texts around the world. Where the latter is concerned, Regenia has tracked the planetary circulation of decadent literature and the novels of Charles Dickens. China regularly features in her thinking and she has written about how both literature and liberalism have been translated, adapted, and negotiated in modern China.
Finally, Professor Corinna Wagner specializes in the relationship between art, literature, disease, and the body, and regularly writes about medical illustrations during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Corinna is also interested in global circulation and her publications include an article comparing Joseph Towne collection of anatomical waxes with the Lam Qua paintings of the patients of medical missionary Peter Parker. Corinna is giving the sample lecture at this Wednesday’s Offer-Holder Visit Day and I imagine medicine and the body will come up again!