Asia Talks Series: A Historical Account of Music and Dance from along the Silk Road by Lanlan Kuang

Dear All,

You are cordially invited to the upcoming Asia Talks Series titled "A Historical Account of Music and Dance from along the Silk Road" by Lanlan Kuang.

The talk will take place at Nafi Baba Building 103, Boğaziçi University South Campus, on February 7 at 17:00 (Istanbul time, GMT+3). The participants who are not non-BU students or staff need to register via mail to: yasemin.daldal@std.bogazici.edu.tr

The lecture will be held in English.

Bio

Lanlan Kuang is an Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Central Florida. She holds a Ph.D. in Folklore and Ethnomusicology from Indiana University, Bloomington, and was awarded a Fulbright in 2008-2009. Specializing in Asian arts and humanities, aesthetics, and heritage studies, Kuang's research focuses on media and cultural policies and their impacts on socioeconomic and artistic developments. Her most recent monograph, Staging Tianxia: Dunhuang Expressive Arts and China’s Cosmopolitan New Heritage, was published by Indiana University Press in 2024. Kuang serves on the Florida State Department's Florida Folklife Council and the editorial boards of peer-reviewed journals and book series internationally. For more information, you can visit her website, https://lanlankuangofficial.pub/

Abstract

The ancient Silk Road formed an intercontinental network connecting Europe and Asia, facilitating vibrant exchanges of cultural traditions across Eurasia. Extending from Asia to Anatolia and from Thrace to Europe during the Middle Ages, this network profoundly impacted global cultures through the transfer of performing art styles, creating rich and complex adaptations across interconnected nodes.

This presentation presents China's historically formed frontier culture—a literary topography of time, space, cultural agents, signs, and metaphors—by examining Silk Road performing art traditions in classical and modern contexts. Centering on textual production as a critical analytical lens, the speaker introduces poetry, lyrics, and audio-visual samples as complex cultural performances that embody dynamic societal interactions. These textual productions reveal intricate processes of literary and artistic taste formation, demonstrating how cultural exchange occurred through carefully crafted linguistic and artistic expressions. Examined as living documents, the texts reflect nuanced negotiations of identity, aesthetic sensibility, and cultural knowledge across diverse geographical and temporal contexts, transforming our understanding of the Silk Road as a vibrant network of intellectual and artistic dialogue.

Keywords: Silk Road, China, cultural transmission, performative traditions, textual production, heritage productions