That hideous noise: Chinese sounds and the transnational making of race and modernity in China and the U.S., 1850-1940

Liu, Lingyan

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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

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