Public lecture: Prof. Rania Huntington, "Mapping the Weird: The Geography of the 17th Century Strange Tale" (02.02.2022)

The Department of Sinology welcomes all students as well as everybody who is interested to the last public lecture of the winter semester 2021/22. The lecture will be held on Feburary 2nd 18:00 in Hörsaal 2 (Philosophiegebäude) by Prof. Rania Huntington, Ph.D. (University of Wisconsin, Madison) on "Mapping the Weird: The Geography of the 17th Century Strange Tale".

Abstract
No matter how otherworldly or bizarre their contents, the zhiguai (tales of the strange) are usually set in mundane locations that can be found on a map. This means that geographic information provides a valuable method to consider these collections as wholes. Focusing on two thematized collections from the early seventeenth century, Qian Xiyan’s Kuaiyuan zhiyi and Wang Tonggui’s Ertan leizeng, this talk explores what the strange tale reveals about the geographic imagination, and how geography shapes different categories and concepts of the strange.