Research Projects

In March 1854, as the US Navy’s “Perry Expedition” to Japan anchored in Yokohama waters, White crew members staged a blackface minstrel show for Japanese officials to celebrate their new friendship. A Japanese artist sketched vivid images of the blackface performers and their instruments, which were copied and circulated around Japan. Historians have since used these images and other sources to tell a story of White race-making by the US for Japanese audiences. How does the history of the US Expedition to Japan change if we focus on the Expedition’s Black sailors instead of the White sailors’ depiction of an imagined “Blackness”? By centering Black musicians and their instruments, this project analyzes how the Perry Expedition brought Black performance to Asia; and suggests that as Black sailors performed in oceans, littorals, and ports across Asia, they helped construct a Black Pacific, connecting a global African diaspora. Moreover, the project argues that Black shipboard performances preceded, transformed, and recast the Expedition’s better-known (White-performed) blackface minstrel shows, which the project resituates as direct appropriations of Black shipboard performance for imperial ends. Thus, while this project will examine how Commodore Matthew Perry instrumentalized performances of Blackness and “Blackness” to create a diplomatic lingua Americana, it will also analyze how Black sailors used many of these same performances to create timespaces of joy, resistance, liberation, and community. This 36-month GRF will fund 1) Japan research trips to view key documents and art (National Diet Library, Yokohama Archives of History, Meisei University, Sanada Treasure Museum, Ryoma Memorial Museum, Fukuyama Castle Museum), 2) US research trips to consult unpublished diaries and documents (Harvard, Peabody Essex Museum, Yale, Gilder Lehrman Institute, Smithsonian, Library of Congress, Huntington Library), 3) translation assistance for Japanese documents, 4) image/reproduction costs, and 5) conference travel. By the end of the GRF term, this grant will yield two articles and a draft monograph. I can complete this work in 36 months because this project builds on preliminary research (including two published articles) and participation in a collaborative on the Expedition based in Japan.

Imperial edicts, which were regarded as the emperors’ words and writings, were usually issued in the form of chilling 敕令. According to Su Shi, edicts resembled a role model for people to learn from. This indicates a certain degree of authoritativeness and recognition of being the paradigm. Nevertheless, most of the edicts were, in fact, drafted by court officials. This resulted in the complex relations involving the emperor’s powers, ancestral rules, the genre of the emperor’s words, and the drafters’ mindsets. Discussions on the Wen-Tao relationship and development of the history of thought are usually based on the four principles of governance (Si Tong四統), which concern Tao, politics, academic education, and Wen. There have surely been some meaningful discussions in this regard, but in terms of the genre of edicts, court officials evidently could not regard the emperor merely as a governor and take the emperor’s words as an exception from Wen and Tao. In this case, this project is particularly interested in addressing these questions, i) what kind of history of thought could be perceived from the imperial edicts? What are the features of intellectual history presented through the authority of the emperor? What were the relations of the court-recognized Tian Zi (Heaven’s son) to Shangdi, Confucius and various gods? ii) How did the emperor’s words relate to the concept of “three religions三教” and religious developments? Or in other words, how did the emperor’s words influence Song people’s interpretation of the concept of three religions? iii) The most renowned literary figures of the Song Dynasty were also thought leaders. They called themselves Shi士, and amongst them were Ouyang Xu, Wang Anshi, Zhou Bida, and Liu Kezhuang, who served as zhi zhi gao 知制誥 (edict drafter). How did they understand the emperor’s words’ relations to Siwen斯文? To respond to the questions, this study, based on the applicant’s UGC-funded projects focusing on two topics of Northern Song (i.e., Guwen writers’ concept of deities and ritual writing; etiquette writing), aims to expand the area of study to touch upon the history of thought in Song imperial edicts. Case studies will be conducted to analyse Shangdi (and the related concepts), Confucius, Buddhism, and Taoism as depicted in the imperial edicts, in order to further the study of Song emperors’ relations to the history of thought.

This project critically examines the figuration of oceans, seas, rivers, and bodies of water in contemporary Asian literary and cultural narratives in English and vernacular languages. While liquid and watery forms have garnered considerable attention in the emergent field of the blue humanities or the oceanic humanities, they have not attained systematic analyses within Asian literary and cultural studies. Adopting an inter-Asian framework, this project probes how Asian writers and cultural producers animate oceanic genres, forms, and images in order to articulate modes of affiliation that exceed imperial and national structures of power. In so doing, the project traces how aesthetic forms of inter-Asia incorporate culturally specific and socially situated oceanic thoughts as part of their efforts to repair and restore fractured human-ocean ties. Foregrounding the watery as material and symbolic spaces, this project addresses a series of interrelated questions: How does oceanic thinking contest aerial and terrestrial modes of knowing Asia? How do Asian artisans and cultural workers register aquatic imaginaries in their formal and rhetorical designs? To what extent have indigenous sea cosmologies inflected artistic expressions of human-marine relationships? My wager is that aesthetic objects from Asia offer rich thematic and formal resources that unsettle imperial and instrumental regimes of knowledge production and return us to sustainable forms of co-habitation amidst ongoing marine crises in the age of the Anthropocene.

Perfect Enlightenment, also known as the state of complete enlightenment. From the 11th to the 15th century, the ideology and belief in Perfect Enlightenment nourished numerous artistic and literary canons in East Asia. In the early Northern Song Dynasty, the Zen master Xuedou infused the concept of Perfect Enlightenment into the imagery of a bright moon, using his hundred poems about the moon to dissolve the solitude of wandering monks and creating new literary imagery and functions. In the mid-Northern Song Dynasty, Yang Jie was the first to incorporate the bright moon into his “Ode to Herding Bulls,” depicting the state of Perfect Enlightenment through painting. In the 10th year of the Chunxi era in the Southern Song Dynasty (1083), Emperor Xiaozong annotated the Sutra of Perfect Enlightenment from a pure Zen perspective, named the Jing Mountain Xingsheng Wanshou Temple, and built the Perfect Enlightenment Pavilion, establishing belief in Perfect Enlightenment as a state religion. Subsequently, the four major Perfect Enlightenment grotto temples emerged one after another in the Tongchuan Prefecture. Among them, the Sacred Site of Perfect Enlightenment at the Dazu Mount Baoding has two reliefs of the bright moon, and the inscription “Storehouse of Brilliance.” In the mid-Kamakura period, the Regent Hojo Tokimune built the Perfect Enlightenment Zen Temple and the Brilliance Hall in Kamakura, Japan. In the early Joseon Dynasty, King Sejo built the Perfect Enlightenment Zen Temple, the Brilliance Hall, and the Perfect Enlightenment Pagoda in Hanseong. In the early period of the Second Shō Dynasty of the Ryukyu Kingdom, King Shō Shin built the Perfect Enlightenment Zen Temple and the Perfect Enlightenment Pond in Shuri. Similar to the mindset of Emperor Xiaozong, whenever the country is in decline and in need of rebuilding its national faith, East Asian monarchies often choose the belief of Perfect Enlightenment. As a result, there are four major Perfect Enlightenment temples established as national religious spaces. These artistic and literary paradigms practice and convey the belief of Perfect Enlightenment through imagination, visual representation, and spatial experiences. This project aims to conduct a comprehensive study of the phenomenon group mentioned above for the first time using the approach of “History of East Asian Artistic and Literary Thought Originating from Religion.”

Autofiction has become a central facet of 21st-century Anglophone literature. By using (and disputing) the term “autofiction,” writers, publishers, readers, and critics have produced a new literary mode. Yet few have a clear sense of what this literary event means: muddled definitions and mixed feelings prevail. Some see autofiction as a simple hybrid—part autobiography, part fiction. Others stipulate that in autofiction, author, narrator, and protagonist must share a name and biography. Some are intrigued when writers put themselves at stake in their work. Others lament that the novel’s imaginative capacities should be reduced to gossip. Despite these differences, the event of autofiction has become impossible to ignore. In gathering preliminary data for this project, we identified more than two thousand different literary texts which have been described as autofiction. Some autofictional works are becoming canonical, with their authors winning prizes and posts. Because autofiction provides analytical leverage on contemporary literature as such, it matters for criticism. Autofictions are necessarily stories about writers and writing, and they articulate the lived experience of constructing the literary field, from enacting authorship on social media to experiencing precarity in the humanities. Finally, autofictional texts matter because they pervasively attend to central concerns of contemporary literary studies: ethical-political relationships with friends, strangers, and communities; more-than-human relationships with animals, materialities, and environments. Still, problems of novelty and definition mean that criticism of autofiction in English remains scattered and selective. We therefore begin by empirically investigating the emergence of autofiction as a concept and practice. Who writes autofiction, who publishes it, and who reads it? Who uses the word, and how? How has autofiction become an event in English-language literatures? To answer these questions and take criticism in new directions, we turn to the tools of computational literary studies (CLS). CLS is an aspect of digital humanities which adopts methods from corpus linguistics and natural language processing to understand literature. Collecting several hundred core autofictional texts, we digitize these works and conduct a comprehensive, multidimensional quantitative analysis. We employ established word frequency and genre analysis metrics, as well as more experimental techniques based on artificial intelligence and large language models. Ultimately, our project is cutting-edge not only because it provides new insight into an emerging genre, but because it offers a case study for what criticism can become when humanists take advantage of new reading and research technologies.

The structure of the Ming chuanqi drama carries significant importance in its composition. During the late Ming Dynasty, these dramas often comprised thirty or even sixty acts. The organisation and structuring of such lengthy chuanqi drama became a concern for literati playwrights of the time. Previous studies have indicated that the structure of the eight-legged essay affected the construction of literati chuanqi dramas. For instance, the drama criticism of Jin Shengtan and the drama theory of Li Yu, which emerged in the early Qing Dynasty, drew inspiration from the structure of the eight-legged essay. Nevertheless, it remains unknown whether the composition of chuanqi dramas during the late Ming Dynasty, before the emergence of Jin’s criticism and Li’s theory, was also inspired by the structure of the eight-legged essay. Furthermore, previous discussions on the relationship between the eight-legged essay and the chuanqi drama structure often highlighted that the four-fold structure, i.e. introduction (qi), elucidation (cheng), transition (zhuan), and conclusion (he), as well as the symmetrical structures presented in chuanqi dramas, were influenced by the eight-legged essay. However, such structural features can be found in various classical Chinese literary genres, indicating that these observations are one-sided and lack scientific grounding. Since the eight-legged essay originates from the exegesis of Confucian classics, the Principal Investigator of this project believes that the structure of the genre is not solely inherited from the “acquired structure” of other literary genres but also constrained by the “innate structure” tailored for “speaking on behalf of the sages.” Considering the historical and cultural context of the late Ming Dynasty, this project selects masterpieces of chuanqi drama composed by twenty representative playwrights of the time as examples. It examines the “innate structure” and “acquired structure” of the eight-legged essay as double filters, aiming to explore whether the intervention of the structure of the eight-legged essay breaks the inherent limitations of the chuanqi drama’s construction. In addition, it seeks to re-examine the cultural significance of the intervention of the eight-legged essay in the development of the chuanqi drama’s structure.

This project aims to write a monograph from a micro-perspective, focusing on Wang Qishu (1728-1799), to study the relationship between literature and various cultural aspects during the Qianlong period, as well as the psychological state of literati during that time. We will discover that material culture, economic conditions, and social status influence the reception, creation, and value of literature, and also contribute to the negotiation and conflict between tradition and modernity (during the Qianlong era). Wang was active during the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty. He was a salt merchant, collector, poet, and official who enjoyed traveling, making friends, and compiling books. His lifelong activities were intertwined with the cultural circles of that time, granting him a unique socio-economic status. However, he could not become a prominent figure within the cultural sphere. When the Siku Quanshu Library was established, he was one of the most generous book donors, second only to Bao Tingbo, and received rewards from the emperor. He was also renowned for his passion for seal collecting, and his compilation Feihong Tang Seal Catalog is one of the most important seal catalogs of the Qing Dynasty. However, his achievements in poetry and literature were rarely discussed, and his works were not widely circulated. Donating money to obtain official position prevented him from being on par with the scholarly class who passed examinations. Qing records often sarcastically portrayed his antiquarian tendencies. Even in modern compilations of Qing poetry history and anthologies, he is seldom mentioned. In summary, Wang Qishu was a figure caught in a cultural dilemma. Through his traces, social interactions, and literary activities, we can observe the literature and culture of the prosperous Qianlong era from a different perspective.

The Pearl River is the second-largest river system in China after the Yangtze River. Its three major tributaries (West River, North River, and East River) and vast river networks connecting with the South China Sea shape and nourish the Pearl River Delta (PRD), making it one of the most populous urban clusters and creative hubs in the world. However, cultural and artistic impressions regarding the Pearl River are much impaired compared with the Yellow River and Yangtze River, which are often intricately associated with the Chinese national ethos and central plains landscape. This research aims to address this by tracing the existing artistic narrative of the Pearl River using contemporary art practices, as well as to enlarge our conception of a river from a linear water body to a vast water system with a co-constituting hydrosocial relationship with human society and the more-than-human world. The Pearl River, apart from providing natural water resources and a habitat for the delta’s biodiverse communities, is also one of the most human-engineered rivers to further develop a water-centric and amphibious economy and culture. As the PRD region undergoes rapid urbanisation and development, particularly with construction of the Greater Bay Area (GBA), it has become a contact zone for constant negotiations between land and water, anthropocentric development, and the more-than-human world, amidst increasing environmental hazards (Wang and Rainbow, 2020). The role of the Pearl River and its cultural and aesthetic agencies has become more crucial for researchers and the general public to understand the shifting ecological and cultural landscape of the region, as well as its translocal impact. Departing from the interdisciplinary field of environmental humanities, blue humanities, and creative arts, this research aims to explore the complex nature of human–river relations through the vernacular ecological art practices of the PRD region. Taking a different stance to the existing scholarship, which primarily focuses on the metropolitan characteristics of the region, this research aims to shift the focus to the water-centric environment of the area. It will further analyse art work through ecocritical theorisation and contextualisation in the PRD and coastal environment to further activate the artworks’ ecological messages, aesthetic richness, and social impact.

Given the escalating effects of climate change, intense urbanisation and population growth, there is a rising concern about sustainable food provisioning. Amidst overlapping uncertainties and challenges, high-technological, vertical and controlled farming in the urban area is increasingly positioned as a future-proof, and local food source untethered by the climate. High-technological farming often includes hydroponic or aquaponic practices, the use of LED light as sunlight, enclosed controlled growing environment and various automation measures. While these farming methods start to receive attention as a possible mode of climate adaptation, research surrounding the area in Hong Kong and around the world is still limited by an agrotechnological perspective. Framed in an interdisciplinary Environmental Humanities, this project brings the insights and approaches of the humanities into productive dialogue with agrotechnology and environmental science to examine this emerging and important farming landscape, with a specific focus on Hong Kong. Situating Care in Sustainable High-technological Urban Farming will deploy interwoven qualitative methods, specifically site visits, interviews, focus groups and comprehensive textual analysis. Grounded in rich empirical materials, the project will draw on and refigure the concepts of critical care, future, and more-than-human to develop an innovative conceptual approach through a care-based approach—care ecology—to account for, assess, and intervene in the contested narratives and practices of care and future in the making of urban farming. The central questions that guide this project include: What are the issues and limitations of the current narratives of care and technocratic mode of futuring that are mobilised in some urban farming practices? What are the multifaceted futures and relations enacted through, or impeded by the current and emerging technological, controlled urban farming practices, and their multispecies consequences? How might approaching urban farming through a critical lens of care along with the additional temporal and more-than-human dimensions open up spaces for more sustainable technological mode of agri-food production? The findings of the project will offer a critical social and cultural understanding of the subject that promises to enhance Hong Kong’s readiness for a wider seeding of urban farming practices and provide a solid basis for building towards sustainable food future. More broadly, the empirical and conceptual development will advance understandings in entangled human-environment-technology relations, serving as a test case for urban technological innovations in the time of climate crisis.

The Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), ruled by the Han Chinese, was a distinctive era in ancient China, following the Yuan Dynasty (1279-1368) under Mongol rule and preceding the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) led by the Manchus. The Han Chinese had experienced a rare period of governance by non-Han rulers, prompting the Ming imperial court to make concerted efforts to restore the status of the “Celestial Empire,” reminiscent of the Tang (618-907) and Northern Song Dynasties (960-1127). This research, serving as a pilot study for the PI’s 2026/2027 GRF application, will focus on how Song history was rewritten in court dramas of the Ming and the Qing dynasties. Its primary objectives include:

• Investigating how the court dramas articulate the Ming Dynasty’s claim to inherit the status of the ‘Celestial Empire’ from the Tang and Northern Song dynasties.
• Examining how Neifuben (or Inner Palace Editions) texts of Ming court drama portray the self-image of Ming rulers as legitimate sovereigns of the ‘central nation’.
• Cataloguing the strategies employed in these operas to reinterpret the history of the Song dynasties in line with Ming ideological goals.
• Conducting a preliminary comparative analysis of how the rewriting of Song History from Ming court drama was adapted or subverted in Qing court drama, with a focus on shifts in the conceptualisation of the ‘central nation’ and Hua-Yi relations.

This study will address a significant gap in Ming theatre scholarship and provide new insights into the ruling ideologies of both the Ming and Qing dynasties.