Associate Professor of Chinese Literature
About
Current research interests:
My name is David Rolston. I have a Ph.D. from the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations of the University of Chicago, which was awarded in 1988. My main advisor was David Tod Roy, who recently finished his monumental translation of a path-breaking Chinese novel of 100 chapters, The Plum in the Golden Vase, or Chin P’ing Mei, which he had already begun when I was his student. I was also fortunate to have on my committee Anthony C. Yu, translator or The Journey to the West (Xiyou ji) and the influential critic of modern Chinese literature, Leo Lee.
My doctoral thesis was on the influence of the rather unique native Chinese tradition of fiction criticism (which involved, for instance, reading editions of novels in which the main text of the novel was sometimes almost swallowed up by marginal and interlineal comments and the commentators came very close to usurping the place of the original authors, not least through their silent editing of the text) on the production of the famous 18th century novel, Rulin waishi (Unofficial History of the Literati). In 1990 I completed the editing and publication of a collection of introductory essays and translations of traditional essays on how to read six classical Chinese novels (How to Read the Chinese Novel). I published a heavily revised version of my doctoral thesis in 1997 (Traditional Chinese Fiction and Fiction Commentary: Reading and Writing Between the Lines), which changed the focus of the original thesis from one novel to all traditional Chinese fiction, both in the literary and vernacular languages, and also addressed the influence of Chinese fiction commentary in East Asia.
Since the publication of the second book, I have concentrated more on traditional Chinese theater, and particularly on its most influential form, Peking opera (a.k.a., Jingju). I have a long term, gargantuan book project (20 chapters) on the world that Peking opera conjured up (with special emphasis on the characters that appear on stage or are referenced by them), and a more modest one (five chapters) on the textualization of Peking opera (while the popular notion that the actors were all illiterate and had little use for play scripts is not true, it is true that the circulation of early play texts was very limited, and there was a long and complicated process through which play texts began to circulate more widely). I am especially interested in the connection between the full textualization of plays and censorship, a strong feature of both Qing dynasty palace performance of Peking opera and of the performance of almost all theatrical genres in the People’s Republic of China. Most of my recent publications have been in Chinese and connected to academic conferences held in Peking.
Current projects:
I have been involved in the production of material to help English-speakers understand specific Peking opera plays or Peking opera in general since 1982 and recently finalized the English subtitles for performances at the Kennedy and Lincoln Centers. I hope to reach wider audiences in the near future through the production of DVDs making full use of the technology they make available.
Since 2010, I have been the editor of CHINOPERL: Journal of Chinese Oral and Performing Literature. I have been successful in improving many aspects of the journal while I have been editor. I have been particularly pleased to be able to help younger scholars have the experience of publishing their first articles while at the same time maintaining high editorial standards.
Teaching interests:
Although I have taught a wide variety of courses, I particularly enjoy teaching courses in the area of my research interests (traditional Chinese fiction and drama/theater), and have especially enjoyed courses that have allowed me to “stretch” out a bit through team teaching or that are designed to help undergraduate or graduate students produce major research papers that go through a detailed and careful process of revision. Classes that focus on the original Chinese editions of fiction and drama are always a delight to teach.
