Levi S. Gibbs

My research looks at regional representation and cultural politics in contemporary Chinese literature and performance. My first book, Song King: Connecting People, Places, and Past in Contemporary China (2018), examines how singers and songs come to represent regions, nations, and time periods, in the process becoming discursive sites for issues connected to social change. I have also edited two books—Faces of Tradition in Chinese Performing Arts (2020), which looks at how individual artists, scholars, and their works are influenced by and come to represent broader fields of cultural production, and Social Voices: The Cultural Politics of Singers around the Globe (2023), which explores how professional singers from around the world become topics for conversations regarding a range of cultural politics. The latter is intended to serve as a textbook for college courses.