Case studies fascinate because they link individual instances to general patterns and knowledge to action without denying the priority of individual situations over the generalizations derived from them. In this volume, an international group of senior scholars comes together to consider the use of cases to produce empirical knowledge in premodern China. They trace the process by which the project of thinking with cases acquired a systematic and public character in the ninth century CE and after. Premodern Chinese experts on medicine and law circulated printed case collections to demonstrate efficacy or claim validity for their judgements. They were joined by authors of religious and philosophical texts. The rhetorical strategies and forms of argument used by all of these writers were allied with historical narratives, exemplary biographies, and case examples composed as aids to imperial statecraft.

This is the first book in English on the seventeenth-century Chinese masterpiece Liaozhai's Records of the Strange (Liaozhai zhiyi) by Pu Songling, a collection of nearly five hundred fantastic tales and anecdotes written in Classical Chinese.

Gender in Chinese Music draws together contributions from ethnomusicologists, anthropologists, and literary scholars to explore how music is implicated in changing notions of masculinity, femininity, and genders "in between" in Chinese culture. Village ritualists, international classical pianists, pop idols, and professional mourners -- whether they perform in temples, on concert stages, or in TV shows, Chinese musicians continually express and negotiate their gendered identities. Gender in Chinese Music brings together contributions from ethnomusicologists, anthropologists, and literary scholars to explore how gender is not only manifested in the diverse musical traditions of Chinese culture but also constructed through performing and observing these traditions. Individual chapters examine unique music cultures ranging from those of courting couples in China's heartlands to ethnic minority singers in the borderlands, and from Ming-period courtesans to contemporary karaoke hostesses. The book also features interviews with musicians, music industry workers, and fans talking about gender. With its wide-ranging subject matter and interdisciplinary approach, this volume will be an important resource for researchers and students interested in how music is implicated in the changing notions of masculinity, femininity, and genders "in between." Contributors: RuardAbsaroka, Rachel Harris, Stephen Jones, Frank Kouwenhoven, Olivia Kraef, Joseph Lam, Rowan Pease, Antoinet Schimmelpenninck, Hwee-San Tan, Shzr Ee Tan, Xiao Mei, Judith Zeitlin, Tiantian Zheng. Rachel Harris is Reader in the Music of China and Central Asia at SOAS, University of London. Rowan Pease is Senior Teaching Fellow at SOAS, University of London. Shzr Ee Tan is Senior Lecturer in Music at Royal Holloway, University of London.

In the contemporary world, voices are caught up in fundamentally different realms of discourse, practice, and culture: between sounding and nonsounding, material and nonmaterial, literal and metaphorical. In The Voice as Something More, Martha Feldman and Judith Zeitlin tackle these paradoxes with a bold and rigorous collection of essays that look at voice as both object of desire and material object. Using Mladen Dolar's influential A Voice and Nothing More as a reference point, The Voice as Something More reorients Dolar's psychoanalytic analysis around the material dimensions of voices--their physicality and timbre, the fleshiness of their mechanisms, the veils that hide them, and the devices that enhance and distort them. Throughout, the essays put the body back in voice. Ending with a new essay by Dolar that offers reflections on these vocal aesthetics and paradoxes, this authoritative, multidisciplinary collection, ranging from Europe and the Americas to East Asia, from classics and music to film and literature, will serve as an essential entry point for scholars and students who are thinking toward materiality.