"Crafting Chinese Memories: The Art and Materiality of Storytelling" is an interdisciplinary book edited by that explores how works of art shape social and personal memories in modern China. Rather than treating storytelling as just a narrative, the book focuses on "material mediations"—how artistic mediums like film, literature, and physical crafts act as distinct modes of memory-making. Key Themes of the Work
While the book discusses modern storytelling, it is rooted in a long tradition where materials are inseparable from cultural identity. In Chinese craft, the medium often is the memory:
: Features insights from social anthropology, religious studies, film, and history to conceptualize how art reveals the "memory traces" of a culture. The Role of Traditional Materials in "Crafting Memory"
: Investigates how the physical nature of art—from the canvas of a film to the materials of a sculpture—embeds and preserves social memories of major events in China.
: Explores the relationship between literal history and the imaginative, "as-if real" elements of stories that help individuals process their own histories.
