Igor Iwo Chabrowski, University of Warsaw
In this presentation Dr Chabrowski will address three main themes developed in his recent book Ruling the Stage: Social and Cultural History of Opera in Sichuan from the Qing to the People’s Republic of China (Brill, 2022). Firstly, Dr Chabrowski will discuss the changing social role of opera in Sichuan across the last two centuries, underlining its role in the (broadly conceived) social welfare of the rural and urban communities. Secondly, he will focus on the fundamental role of opera in transmitting ‘traditional’ culture into the modernizing urban environment of the early twentieth century. Finally, the talk will address the question of the politics of controlling opera, which formed a part of the culture war that shaped modern China. The main point to be developed is that researching Chinese opera outside the fields of literary and musicological studies permits addressing some key issues in the history of this country. They include such problems like the transformation of communities and their cultures, the expansion of market economies, the transmission of cultural imaginations and self-perceptions, the restructuring of religious life, the changing power relations between the government and the society, and the culture conflicts that underwrite the modern Chinese statehood.
Igor Iwo Chabrowski (PhD, 2013, the European University Institute, Department of History and Civilization) is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of History, University of Warsaw (since 2018). Previously he worked at the University of Oxford (2013–14) and the Chinese University of Hong Kong (2015–18). His research concentrates on the late Qing and modern Chinese history, the history of Thailand, global history, with a particular focus on China and Southeast Asia, and the history of relations between Poland and China seen through the perspective of global communism. Igor has published two books on Chinese cultural and social history – Singing on the River: Sichuan Boatmen and Their Work Songs (Brill, 2015) and Ruling the Stage: Social and Cultural History of Opera in Sichuan from the Qing to the People’s Republic (Brill, 2022) as well as a number of articles in Modern China, Journal of World History, Journal of Chinese History, and other journals.
