Professor Ning Ma Recipient of the 2019-2020 Talle Faculty Research Award

Professor Ning Ma poses for a picture on campus
Photo by Matthew Weber, CLAgency student

Congratulations to ALL faculty member, Associate Professor Ning Ma -- 2019-2020 recipient of the Talle Faculty Research Award for her project "The Ways of the Monkey King: Chinese Culture and Globalization in Deep Time."  

This book project supplies a “deep time” view into the cultural history of the most adapted character in Chinese popular media, that is, the Monkey King, otherwise known as Sun Wukong. This investigation journeys into the cross-cultural amalgamation of Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism in the formation of the Chinese cultural ethos, and into the social and material history of a proto-public sphere fostered by traditional Chinese popular media. Through the paradigmatic example of the Monkey King, it argues that these historical roots persisted in suppressed yet active ways in Chinese culture’s dynamic negotiations with modern globalization, negotiations that occur not only within mainland centers, but also across peripheries including Hong Kong, Taiwan, and overseas Chinese communities. Hence the book brings to light generative cross-cultural engagements on diverse fronts involving Chinese culture and globalization, and reveals various forms of vernacular cosmopolitanism within the very makings of Chinese culture.

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