XUELEI HUANG: Scents of China [Book Launch]

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Manchester China Institute

In this talk, Dr Xuelei Huang discusses her latest book - "Scents of China: Scents of China: A Modern History of Smell".

The Portico Library

In this vivid and highly original reading of recent Chinese history, Xuelei Huang documents the eclectic array of smells that permeated Chinese life from the High Qing through to the Mao period. Utilising interdisciplinary methodology and critically engaging with scholarship in the expanding fields of sensory and smell studies, she shows how this period of tumultuous change in China was experienced through the body and the senses. Drawing on unexplored archival materials, readers are introduced to the 'smellscapes' of China from the eighteenth to mid-twentieth century via perfumes, food, body odours, public health projects, consumerism and cosmetics, travel literature, fiction and political language. This pioneering and evocative study takes the reader on a sensory journey through modern Chinese history, examining the ways in which the experience of scent and modernity have intertwined.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER<a href="https://www.ed.ac.uk/profile/xuelei-huang" title="https://www.ed.ac.uk/profile/xuelei-huang" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Dr Xuelei Huang</a> is Senior Lecturer in Chinese Studies at the University of Edinburgh. She received her PhD from the University of Heidelberg and held research positions at Academia Sinica, the Nantes Institute for Advanced Studies, and the International Research Centre for Cultural Studies in Vienna (IFK).Her research focuses on sensory history and media culture in modern China, and her publications include Scents of China: A Modern History of Smell (2023), Shanghai Filmmaking: Crossing Borders, Connecting to the Globe, 1922–1938 (2014), Sensing China: Modern Transformations of Sensory Culture (co-edited with Shengqing Wu, 2022), and journal articles. She is the recipient of the Ruprecht Karls Prize for best dissertation and an Alexander von Humboldt research fellowship, among others.

ABOUT THE MODERATOR<a href="https://research.manchester.ac.uk/en/persons/aoife-cantrill" title="https://research.manchester.ac.uk/en/persons/aoife-cantrill" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Dr Aoife Cantrill</a> is a Lecturer in Chinese Studies and Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Manchester. Her research primarily looks at the interaction between Sinophone and Japanophone cultures in Taiwan from 1930 onwards, with a focus on women’s writing and its history. Her other research interests include the use of paratext in contemporary Chinese fiction, and the cultural politics of textile production in the Japanese Empire.

ABOUT THE ORGANISERS<a href="https://www.mci.manchester.ac.uk/" title="https://www.mci.manchester.ac.uk/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">The Manchester China Institute (MCI)</a> promotes multidisciplinary research, teaching and programming with impact beyond academia, seeking to remedy class, racial, gender, and other inequalities, and to improve mutual understanding in UK-China relations. The MCI is based at the University of Manchester.

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XUELEI HUANG: Scents of China [Book Launch]

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XUELEI HUANG: Scents of China [Book Launch]

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