John A Crespi | Colgate University (original) (raw)
Papers by John A Crespi
Chinese Literature Today, 2011
Frontiers of Literary Studies in China, 2016
Voices in Revolution, 2009
Manhua Modernity, 2020
From fashion sketches of smartly dressed Shanghai dandies in the 1920s, to multipanel drawings of... more From fashion sketches of smartly dressed Shanghai dandies in the 1920s, to multipanel drawings of refugee urbanites during the war against Japan, to panoramic pictures of anti-American propaganda rallies in the early 1950s, the polymorphic cartoon-style art known as manhua helped define China's modern experience. Manhua Modernity offers a richly illustrated, deeply contextualized analysis of these illustrations across the lively pages of popular pictorial magazines that entertained, informed, and mobilized a nation through a half century of political and cultural transformation. In this compelling media history, John Crespi argues that manhua must be understood in the context of the pictorial magazines that hosted them, and in turn these magazines must be seen as important mediators of the modern urban experience. Even as times changed—from interwar-era consumerism to war-time mobilization to Mao-style propaganda—the art form adapted to stay on the cutting edge of both politics and style
The artist uses the satirical tenor of manhua to probingly turn these perverse phenomena into ima... more The artist uses the satirical tenor of manhua to probingly turn these perverse phenomena into images for the gaze of all Chinese people, awakening the souls of every Chinese person and reminding them never to forget the crimes and sorrows of the war. Manhua Journey to the West is thus more than a manhua exhibition. It is a history of modern Chinese society, a milestone for China’s War of Resistance. —Hsin-Min Bao Wankan (Xinmin bao wankan, Chengdu), February 7, 1946
ASIANetwork Exchange: A Journal for Asian Studies in the Liberal Arts, 2011
More college students than ever are heading to Chinese cities to spend weeks or months learning C... more More college students than ever are heading to Chinese cities to spend weeks or months learning Chinese history, culture, and language. And more than ever they and their instructors are bringing with them an array of digital devices, from still cameras to video cameras to laptop computers. Whether on campus or while studying abroad, many of these students will learn about China by analyzing examples of Chinese cinema. But with digital recording and editing equipment right at their fingertips, why not invite them to plunge into China's history and culture firsthand as they produce their own digital stories right in the midst of the country itself? This essay explains one approach to how a course integrating digital video and audio technology can help students engage closely and thoughtfully with local cultures. The ideas I present are based on my own experience leading several study abroad trips-the most recent and successful in spring 2010during which students learned about Beijing by creating their own digital stories on site in that city. What I hope to show is how the general principles structuring such a course, for the most part adaptable to other cities and other topics, can help students confront and rethink some of the stubborn dichotomies that subconsciously shape understanding of other cultures, including China's. To be clear, this is not a course on filmmaking or video production. In fact, I have received no special training in those areas beyond the sort of media analysis one learns as an academic in the humanities. Rather, I point one way through
From fashion sketches of Shanghai dandies in the 1920s, to phantasmagoric imagery of war in the 1... more From fashion sketches of Shanghai dandies in the 1920s, to phantasmagoric imagery of war in the 1930s and 1940s, to panoramic pictures of anti-American propaganda rallies in the 1950s, the cartoon-style art known as manhua helped define China’s modern experience. Manhua Modernity offers a richly illustrated and deeply contextualized analysis of these illustrations from the lively pages of popular pictorial magazines that entertained, informed, and mobilized a nation through a half century of political and cultural transformation.
The Columbia Companion to Modern Chinese Literature, 2016
Chinese Literature Today, 2011
Few Chinese poets who have come to prominence after the Misty Poetry phenomenon of the early to m... more Few Chinese poets who have come to prominence after the Misty Poetry phenomenon of the early to mid 1980s have cast a longer shadow than Wang Jiaxin. Wang, Professor of Literature at Renmin university (one of China’s most prestigious), is not only a major poet, but also an important editor and translator, and an influential literary critic. Because he is known for his uniquely cosmopolitan, existential style, many in China associate him with the so-called intellectual school, a term that would likely signal an “academic” flavor to most Western readers—but this simply would not be an accurate assessment ofWang’s poetic style. Through this interview with sinologist John Crespi, readers will gain a strong sense of Wang’s intimately subjective yet radically cosmopolitan poetics as he discusses the work of Western poets from Paul Celan to Emily Dickens, the relationship between writing and translating poetry, and the existential dislocation of physical/external locations and the psychological/ interior space of poets, such as himself, who have composed a significant body of work outside their homeland.
Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, 2010
Based on participant-observation over a span of eighteen months between 2005 and 2007, this essay... more Based on participant-observation over a span of eighteen months between 2005 and 2007, this essay aims to expand the study of Chinese contemporary poems beyond the familiar text-centered approaches by examining the social function of poetry in a Beijing recitation club. The study situates the club within the tradition of poetic gatherings in China, relates the history of the club itself, and analyzes the structure of club meetings as well as the aesthetics of club recitation. The essay centers on the close, performance-centered analysis of a specific recitation event that stands out for its reflexive engagement with the practice of “exchange” or jiaoliu–a multifaceted principle that animates club activities and represents the adaptation of socialist-era aesthetics to China’s post-socialist urban society.
ASIANetwork Exchange, 2011
More college students than ever are heading to Chinese cities to spend weeks or months learning C... more More college students than ever are heading to Chinese cities to spend weeks or months learning Chinese history, culture, and language. And more than ever they and their instructors are bringing with them an array of digital devices, from still cameras to video cameras to laptop computers. Whether on campus or while studying abroad, many of these students will learn about China by analyzing examples of Chinese cinema. But with digital recording and editing equipment right at their fingertips, why not invite them to plunge into China’s history and culture firsthand as they produce their own digital stories right in the midst of the country itself?
MIT Visualizing Cultures, 2011
This is an online unit created for Visualizing Cultures website, MIT, published 2011. Includes th... more This is an online unit created for Visualizing Cultures website, MIT, published 2011. Includes three-chapter illustrated essay (~12,000 words), nine visual narratives, and image gallery linked to Case Library Special Collections online digital archive of Modern Sketch (時代漫畫). Here is the link to the unit:
https://ocw.mit.edu/ans7870/21f/21f.027/modern_sketch/index.html
Modern Sketch, published in Shanghai, was the leading illustrated satire magazine in China. Thanks to the multi-talented Visualizing Cultures staff for helping make these hard-to-find materials available for teaching and research.
Be sure to take a look at all the other fantastic units on the Visualizing Cultures website:
https://ocw.mit.edu/ans7870/21f/21f.027/home/index.html
Carlos Rojas and Andrea Bachner ed., Oxford Handbook on Modern Chinese Literatures. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016, 215-244., 2016
Zhang Guangyu's illustrated tale Journey to the West in Cartoons (1945) has been described as a c... more Zhang Guangyu's illustrated tale Journey to the West in Cartoons (1945) has been described as a colorful, whimsical, but also trenchant lampoon of bankrupt politics and society under Nationalist rule at the close of the War of Resistance against Japan. Journey is indeed a masterful example of satire, but it is also a remarkable work of manhua, a genre of verbal-visual art often referred to as "cartoon" that flourished in China's treaty ports in the first half of the twentieth century. This chapter proposes that when viewed in conversation with the history of China's manhua, Zhang's fanciful allegory describes a symbiosis between manhua and the popular print genre of the pictorial magazine, the medium in which manhua thrived during the interwar years.
Carlos Rojas and Andrea Bachner ed., Oxford Handbook on Modern Chinese Literatures. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016, 215-244., 2016
A self-published collection of papers by Colgate students who participated in the Fall 2016 China... more A self-published collection of papers by Colgate students who participated in the Fall 2016 China Study Group and based on their immersion internships in a local retail franchise. The program was run in collaboration with CET Shanghai.
Teaching Documents by John A Crespi
复旦大学文博系硕士研究生周紫檀整理、排版, 2017
2017年4月19日下午，复旦大学文物与博物馆学系与任重书院在光华楼15楼会议室联合举行了一场关于英文文献阅读策略的小型交流会。会议由文物与博物馆学系讲师、任重书院导师赵晓梅博士主持，邀请到美国... more 2017年4月19日下午，复旦大学文物与博物馆学系与任重书院在光华楼15楼会议室联合举行了一场关于英文文献阅读策略的小型交流会。会议由文物与博物馆学系讲师、任重书院导师赵晓梅博士主持，邀请到美国柯盖德大学东亚语言与文学系副教授、复旦大学富布赖特研究学者江可平（John Crespi）以及悉尼大学城市学高级讲师王光亮（Non Arkaraprasertkul）博士，与文博系、旅管系本科生、研究生分享英文文献阅读的经验。
座谈会伊始，赵晓梅老师介绍了本次交流会的起因：赵老师自上学期开始担任任重书院第六届“经典研读计划”研习班指导老师，组织同学们一起阅读大卫·罗温索（David Lowenthal）的英文著作《过往即他乡》（The Past is a Foreign Country）。在读书会开展过程中，同学们发现对这部史诗般的学术著作阅读较为吃力。同时，本学期赵老师也开设文博系专业选修课《国际文化遗产保护概论》，涉及不少英文参考文献，同学们在阅读中也存在较多困难。因此想到邀请两位老师从英文阅读策略角度，与同学们分享经验，为同学们答疑解惑。
讨论会分为经验分享与问答两个环节，两位老师结合自身外语学习经历与经验，对在场学生提出的疑问做了精彩解答，座谈完毕后与会同学表示备受鼓舞、获益匪浅，座谈内容简述如下：
ISSUU, 2015
English scanlation of 1950s Chinese pictorial satire magazine. Published on ISSUU, October 2015. ... more English scanlation of 1950s Chinese pictorial satire magazine. Published on ISSUU, October 2015. Created with Li Jiang, Colgate 2017.
Chinese Literature Today, 2011
Frontiers of Literary Studies in China, 2016
Voices in Revolution, 2009
Manhua Modernity, 2020
From fashion sketches of smartly dressed Shanghai dandies in the 1920s, to multipanel drawings of... more From fashion sketches of smartly dressed Shanghai dandies in the 1920s, to multipanel drawings of refugee urbanites during the war against Japan, to panoramic pictures of anti-American propaganda rallies in the early 1950s, the polymorphic cartoon-style art known as manhua helped define China's modern experience. Manhua Modernity offers a richly illustrated, deeply contextualized analysis of these illustrations across the lively pages of popular pictorial magazines that entertained, informed, and mobilized a nation through a half century of political and cultural transformation. In this compelling media history, John Crespi argues that manhua must be understood in the context of the pictorial magazines that hosted them, and in turn these magazines must be seen as important mediators of the modern urban experience. Even as times changed—from interwar-era consumerism to war-time mobilization to Mao-style propaganda—the art form adapted to stay on the cutting edge of both politics and style
The artist uses the satirical tenor of manhua to probingly turn these perverse phenomena into ima... more The artist uses the satirical tenor of manhua to probingly turn these perverse phenomena into images for the gaze of all Chinese people, awakening the souls of every Chinese person and reminding them never to forget the crimes and sorrows of the war. Manhua Journey to the West is thus more than a manhua exhibition. It is a history of modern Chinese society, a milestone for China’s War of Resistance. —Hsin-Min Bao Wankan (Xinmin bao wankan, Chengdu), February 7, 1946
ASIANetwork Exchange: A Journal for Asian Studies in the Liberal Arts, 2011
More college students than ever are heading to Chinese cities to spend weeks or months learning C... more More college students than ever are heading to Chinese cities to spend weeks or months learning Chinese history, culture, and language. And more than ever they and their instructors are bringing with them an array of digital devices, from still cameras to video cameras to laptop computers. Whether on campus or while studying abroad, many of these students will learn about China by analyzing examples of Chinese cinema. But with digital recording and editing equipment right at their fingertips, why not invite them to plunge into China's history and culture firsthand as they produce their own digital stories right in the midst of the country itself? This essay explains one approach to how a course integrating digital video and audio technology can help students engage closely and thoughtfully with local cultures. The ideas I present are based on my own experience leading several study abroad trips-the most recent and successful in spring 2010during which students learned about Beijing by creating their own digital stories on site in that city. What I hope to show is how the general principles structuring such a course, for the most part adaptable to other cities and other topics, can help students confront and rethink some of the stubborn dichotomies that subconsciously shape understanding of other cultures, including China's. To be clear, this is not a course on filmmaking or video production. In fact, I have received no special training in those areas beyond the sort of media analysis one learns as an academic in the humanities. Rather, I point one way through
From fashion sketches of Shanghai dandies in the 1920s, to phantasmagoric imagery of war in the 1... more From fashion sketches of Shanghai dandies in the 1920s, to phantasmagoric imagery of war in the 1930s and 1940s, to panoramic pictures of anti-American propaganda rallies in the 1950s, the cartoon-style art known as manhua helped define China’s modern experience. Manhua Modernity offers a richly illustrated and deeply contextualized analysis of these illustrations from the lively pages of popular pictorial magazines that entertained, informed, and mobilized a nation through a half century of political and cultural transformation.
The Columbia Companion to Modern Chinese Literature, 2016
Chinese Literature Today, 2011
Few Chinese poets who have come to prominence after the Misty Poetry phenomenon of the early to m... more Few Chinese poets who have come to prominence after the Misty Poetry phenomenon of the early to mid 1980s have cast a longer shadow than Wang Jiaxin. Wang, Professor of Literature at Renmin university (one of China’s most prestigious), is not only a major poet, but also an important editor and translator, and an influential literary critic. Because he is known for his uniquely cosmopolitan, existential style, many in China associate him with the so-called intellectual school, a term that would likely signal an “academic” flavor to most Western readers—but this simply would not be an accurate assessment ofWang’s poetic style. Through this interview with sinologist John Crespi, readers will gain a strong sense of Wang’s intimately subjective yet radically cosmopolitan poetics as he discusses the work of Western poets from Paul Celan to Emily Dickens, the relationship between writing and translating poetry, and the existential dislocation of physical/external locations and the psychological/ interior space of poets, such as himself, who have composed a significant body of work outside their homeland.
Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, 2010
Based on participant-observation over a span of eighteen months between 2005 and 2007, this essay... more Based on participant-observation over a span of eighteen months between 2005 and 2007, this essay aims to expand the study of Chinese contemporary poems beyond the familiar text-centered approaches by examining the social function of poetry in a Beijing recitation club. The study situates the club within the tradition of poetic gatherings in China, relates the history of the club itself, and analyzes the structure of club meetings as well as the aesthetics of club recitation. The essay centers on the close, performance-centered analysis of a specific recitation event that stands out for its reflexive engagement with the practice of “exchange” or jiaoliu–a multifaceted principle that animates club activities and represents the adaptation of socialist-era aesthetics to China’s post-socialist urban society.
ASIANetwork Exchange, 2011
More college students than ever are heading to Chinese cities to spend weeks or months learning C... more More college students than ever are heading to Chinese cities to spend weeks or months learning Chinese history, culture, and language. And more than ever they and their instructors are bringing with them an array of digital devices, from still cameras to video cameras to laptop computers. Whether on campus or while studying abroad, many of these students will learn about China by analyzing examples of Chinese cinema. But with digital recording and editing equipment right at their fingertips, why not invite them to plunge into China’s history and culture firsthand as they produce their own digital stories right in the midst of the country itself?
MIT Visualizing Cultures, 2011
This is an online unit created for Visualizing Cultures website, MIT, published 2011. Includes th... more This is an online unit created for Visualizing Cultures website, MIT, published 2011. Includes three-chapter illustrated essay (~12,000 words), nine visual narratives, and image gallery linked to Case Library Special Collections online digital archive of Modern Sketch (時代漫畫). Here is the link to the unit:
https://ocw.mit.edu/ans7870/21f/21f.027/modern_sketch/index.html
Modern Sketch, published in Shanghai, was the leading illustrated satire magazine in China. Thanks to the multi-talented Visualizing Cultures staff for helping make these hard-to-find materials available for teaching and research.
Be sure to take a look at all the other fantastic units on the Visualizing Cultures website:
https://ocw.mit.edu/ans7870/21f/21f.027/home/index.html
Carlos Rojas and Andrea Bachner ed., Oxford Handbook on Modern Chinese Literatures. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016, 215-244., 2016
Zhang Guangyu's illustrated tale Journey to the West in Cartoons (1945) has been described as a c... more Zhang Guangyu's illustrated tale Journey to the West in Cartoons (1945) has been described as a colorful, whimsical, but also trenchant lampoon of bankrupt politics and society under Nationalist rule at the close of the War of Resistance against Japan. Journey is indeed a masterful example of satire, but it is also a remarkable work of manhua, a genre of verbal-visual art often referred to as "cartoon" that flourished in China's treaty ports in the first half of the twentieth century. This chapter proposes that when viewed in conversation with the history of China's manhua, Zhang's fanciful allegory describes a symbiosis between manhua and the popular print genre of the pictorial magazine, the medium in which manhua thrived during the interwar years.
Carlos Rojas and Andrea Bachner ed., Oxford Handbook on Modern Chinese Literatures. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016, 215-244., 2016
A self-published collection of papers by Colgate students who participated in the Fall 2016 China... more A self-published collection of papers by Colgate students who participated in the Fall 2016 China Study Group and based on their immersion internships in a local retail franchise. The program was run in collaboration with CET Shanghai.
复旦大学文博系硕士研究生周紫檀整理、排版, 2017
2017年4月19日下午，复旦大学文物与博物馆学系与任重书院在光华楼15楼会议室联合举行了一场关于英文文献阅读策略的小型交流会。会议由文物与博物馆学系讲师、任重书院导师赵晓梅博士主持，邀请到美国... more 2017年4月19日下午，复旦大学文物与博物馆学系与任重书院在光华楼15楼会议室联合举行了一场关于英文文献阅读策略的小型交流会。会议由文物与博物馆学系讲师、任重书院导师赵晓梅博士主持，邀请到美国柯盖德大学东亚语言与文学系副教授、复旦大学富布赖特研究学者江可平（John Crespi）以及悉尼大学城市学高级讲师王光亮（Non Arkaraprasertkul）博士，与文博系、旅管系本科生、研究生分享英文文献阅读的经验。
座谈会伊始，赵晓梅老师介绍了本次交流会的起因：赵老师自上学期开始担任任重书院第六届“经典研读计划”研习班指导老师，组织同学们一起阅读大卫·罗温索（David Lowenthal）的英文著作《过往即他乡》（The Past is a Foreign Country）。在读书会开展过程中，同学们发现对这部史诗般的学术著作阅读较为吃力。同时，本学期赵老师也开设文博系专业选修课《国际文化遗产保护概论》，涉及不少英文参考文献，同学们在阅读中也存在较多困难。因此想到邀请两位老师从英文阅读策略角度，与同学们分享经验，为同学们答疑解惑。
讨论会分为经验分享与问答两个环节，两位老师结合自身外语学习经历与经验，对在场学生提出的疑问做了精彩解答，座谈完毕后与会同学表示备受鼓舞、获益匪浅，座谈内容简述如下：
ISSUU, 2015
English scanlation of 1950s Chinese pictorial satire magazine. Published on ISSUU, October 2015. ... more English scanlation of 1950s Chinese pictorial satire magazine. Published on ISSUU, October 2015. Created with Li Jiang, Colgate 2017.
ISSUU, 2017
English scanlation of a wartime Chinese pictorial magazine. Published on ISSUU, October 2017. Cre... more English scanlation of a wartime Chinese pictorial magazine. Published on ISSUU, October 2017. Created with Fanyi Zhang, Colgate '19. Link to ISSUU: https://issuu.com/johncrespi/docs/resistance_sketch_e
ISSUU, 2017
English scanlation of a 1920s Shanghai pictorial magazine. Posted on ISSUU, September 2017. Cr... more English scanlation of a 1920s Shanghai pictorial magazine. Posted
on ISSUU, September 2017. Created with Carmen Kong, Colgate '19. Link to the ISSUU site: https://issuu.com/johncrespi/docs/shanghai_sketch_no.10.