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Podcast: New Books in Art
Episode: Lanlan Kuang, "Staging Tianxia: Dunhuang Expressive Arts and China's New Cosmopolitan Heritage" (Indiana UP, 2024)
Description: How can art shape historical memory and national identity? And how can cultural heritage and historical references be used to enact a vision of a nation? In Staging Tianxia: Dunhuang Expressive Arts and China’s New Cosmopolitan Heritage (Indiana University Press, 2024), Lanlan Kuang explores these questions through the lens of Dunhuang expressive arts — a twentieth-century music and dance performance style inspired by the images, music descriptions, and narratives found in the Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes. Through these performances, Dunhuang expressive arts presents a vision of China as a historically multiethnic and cosmopolitan nation.
Staging Tianxia is an ambitious and inter...