Hosted by the Peter Wall Institute for Advances Studies, Christopher Rea, Associate Professor of Modern Chinese Literature, was recently interviewed on his latest book, The Age of Irreverence: A New History of Laughter in China.
The Age of Irreverence tells the story of why China’s entry into the modern age was not just traumatic, but uproarious. As the Qing dynasty slumped toward extinction, prominent writers compiled jokes into collections they called “histories of laughter.” Christopher Rea argues that this period—from the 1890s to the 1930s—transformed how Chinese people thought and talked about what is funny.
Listen to the podcast here.
