Withdraw
Loading…
That hideous noise: Chinese sounds and the transnational making of race and modernity in China and the U.S., 1850-1940
Liu, Lingyan
Loading…
Permalink
https://hdl.handle.net/2142/132459
Description
- Title
- That hideous noise: Chinese sounds and the transnational making of race and modernity in China and the U.S., 1850-1940
- Author(s)
- Liu, Lingyan
- Issue Date
- 2025-08-29
- Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)
- Goldman, Andrea S.
- Doctoral Committee Chair(s)
- Symes, Carol
- Committee Member(s)
- Burton, Antoinette
- Asaka, Ikuko
- Barnes, Nicole Elizabeth
- Department of Study
- History
- Discipline
- History
- Degree Granting Institution
- University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
- Degree Name
- Ph.D.
- Degree Level
- Dissertation
- Keyword(s)
- Noise
- Race
- Modernity.
- Abstract
- This dissertation investigates the sonic friction created by interactions among colonial elites, Chinese intellectuals, and marginalized Chinese laborers between the 1850s and the 1940s. Specifically, it explores how the sounds of Chinese people—early Chinese immigrants setting off firecrackers in the United States., the chanting of Shanghai dock laborers, and Beijing night watchmen’s singing—were racialized as barbarous yet simultaneously reclaimed as sounds of awakening in China. This dissertation contends that these sonic frictions constituted critical sites in which abstract categories such as race, modernity, and national identity were negotiated and contested. By tuning in to the noisescape and foregrounding the visceral qualities of sound, it models an analytical framework can create room for the elusive experiences of marginalized groups to become recognizable, asserting that their sonic presence was both visceral and powerful. It challenges historians’ preoccupation with searching for ideal oppressed subjects who “have voice” and reflects on the pervasive trope of marginalized groups as voiceless. It calls upon historians to expand their methodological apparatus so that we might better hear the visceral immediacy of marginalized groups’ singing, chanting, and groaning.
- Graduation Semester
- 2025-12
- Type of Resource
- Thesis
- Handle URL
- https://hdl.handle.net/2142/132459
- Copyright and License Information
- Copyright 2025 Lingyan Liu
Owning Collections
Graduate Dissertations and Theses at Illinois PRIMARY
Graduate Theses and Dissertations at IllinoisManage Files
Loading…
Edit Collection Membership
Loading…
Edit Metadata
Loading…
Edit Properties
Loading…
Embargoes
Loading…