Description: Staging Chinese Revolution surveys fifty years of theatrical propaganda performances in China, revealing a dynamic, commercial capacity in works often dismissed as artifacts of censorship.
Brief description: Xiaomei Chen (Indiana PhD) is professor of Chinese literature in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of California, Davis. She is the author of Staging Chinese Revolution: Theater, Film and the Afterlives of Propaganda (CUP, 2016); Occidentalism: A Theory of Counter-Discourse in Post-Mao China (Oxford, 1995; second and expanded edition, 2002), Acting the Right Part: Political Theater and Popular Drama in Contemporary China (Hawai'i, 2002); and editor of Reading the Right Text (Hawai'i, 2003) and The Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Drama (CUP, 2010; abridged edition 2014).
Review Quotes: Xiaomei Chen has done magnificent work in rethinking the meaning and function of theater and historical dynamics in the context of Chinese revolution and its aftermath. She looks into sources drawn from performing arts and media studies, identifies ideological and affective contestations, and ponders the consequences of the politics of theater both on the stage and in everyday life. Both historically informed and theoretically provocative, Chen's book is a most important source for anyone interested in theater studies, comparative literature, and cultural and political history.--David Der-wei Wang, author of The Lyrical in Epic Time: Modern Chinese Intellectuals and Artists Through the 1949 Crisis