That hideous noise: Chinese sounds and the transnational making of race and modernity in China and the U.S., 1850-1940

This dissertation investigates the sonic friction created by interactions among colonial elites, Chinese intellectuals, and marginalized Chinese laborers between the 1850s and the 1940s. Specifically, it explores how the sounds of Chinese people—early Chinese immigrants setting off firecrackers in the United States., the chanting of Shanghai dock laborers, and Beijing night watchmen’s singing—were racialized as barbarous yet simultaneously reclaimed as sounds of awakening in China. This dissertation contends that these sonic frictions constituted critical sites in which abstract categories such as race, modernity, and national identity were negotiated and contested. By tuning in to the noisescape and foregrounding the visceral qualities of sound, it models an analytical framework can create room for the elusive experiences of marginalized groups to become recognizable, asserting that their sonic presence was both visceral and powerful. It challenges historians’ preoccupation with searching for ideal oppressed subjects who “have voice” and reflects on the pervasive trope of marginalized groups as voiceless. It calls upon historians to expand their methodological apparatus so that we might better hear the visceral immediacy of marginalized groups’ singing, chanting, and groaning.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

History

Grantor

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2025

Author dc:creator

• Liu, Lingyan

Contributors dc:contributor

• Goldman, Andrea S.
• Symes, Carol
• Burton, Antoinette
• Asaka, Ikuko
• Barnes, Nicole Elizabeth

• Noise
• Race
• Modernity.

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2025 Lingyan Liu

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/132459

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/132459