Paize Keulemans (Ph.D. University of Chicago, 2004) is Associate Professor of East Asian Studies who began studying Chinese language and culture in 1986 at Leiden University, the Netherlands. Since then, he has studied Chinese language and literature in a variety of places: Nankai University, Cambridge University, National Taiwan University, the University of Chicago, Beijing University, and has taught Chinese literature at Columbia University, and, most recently, Yale. Keulemans’ research interests are focused on the interaction between oral and written literature. His book, Sound Rising from the Paper: 19th-century Martial Arts Fiction and the Chinese Acoustic Imagination (Harvard University Asia Center Press, 2015), pursues this topic from an acoustic angle, investigating the way a plethora of sound effects (onomatopoeia, dialect accents, vendor calls, etc.) turn the silent pages of printed novels into a lively acoustic spectacle. His second research project, tentatively entitled, Idle Chatter: The Productive Uses of Gossip and Rumor in 17th-century Chinese Literature, explores the relationship between oral and written literature from a different point of view, the seemingly endless production of printed hearsay, rumor, and gossip in late-Ming and early-Qing novels, short-stories, and opera. Keulemans specializes in late-imperial novels and opera, but his interests also include modern Chinese literature, contemporary Chinese film, Dutch-Chinese interactions from the 17th-century onwards, and the adaptation of China’s great novels such as The Three Kingdoms into video games, the subject of his latest project, Old Novels, New Games: The Concept of Play in Late-Ming and Late-Twentieth Century Culture.
Education
- Ph.D. in East Asia Languages and Literatures, University of Chicago
- B.A. in Chinese Language and Literature, Leiden University (Netherlands)
Selected Publications
- “開かれた世界という物語──オランダの悲劇、中國の噂、そして世界的なニュウスとしての明朝滅亡 (A tale of an open world: The fall of the Ming dynasty as Dutch tragedy, Chinese gossip, and global news). In グローバルヒストリーと東アジア史(Global history and the history of East Asia). P. Keulemans, C.V. 3 Edited by Masashi Haneda 羽田正. Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai, 2016. pp. 211-246.
- “Tale of an Open World: The Fall of the Ming Dynasty as Dutch Tragedy, Chinese Gossip, and Global News.” In Frontiers of Chinese Literature 9.2 (2015): 190-234.
- Sound Rising from the Paper: Nineteenth-Century Martial Arts Fiction and the Chinese Acoustic Imagination. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center Press. October 2014.
- “Onstage Rumor, Offstage Voices: The Politics of the Present in the Contemporary Opera of Li Yu.” In Frontiers of History in China 9.2 (June 2014): 165-201.
- “向世界打開中國:17 世紀兩部荷蘭悲劇裏的明朝之亡 (Opening China to the World: The Fall of the Ming in two Seventeenth-century Dutch Tragedies).” In Fudan xuebao 3 (2013): 2-10.
- “明朝覆滅的舞臺演繹——十七世紀荷蘭劇作家古斯之Trazil 與馮德爾之 Zungchin 解析 (Staging the fall of the Ming in seventeenth-century Holland: van der Goes’s Trazil and Vondel’s Zungchin.” In Guoji hanxue tongxun 7 (July 2012): 71-94.