Performing Enlightenment: Buddhism and Theater in Early Modern China
Introduction
In late Ming and early Qing China, a major revival of Buddhism coincided with a growing fascination with theater. In Performing Enlightenment, Mengxiao Wang examines how Chinese Buddhist monastics and laypeople actively engaged with and transformed the dramatic arts. Drawing on a wide range of religious and literary sources, the book argues that Buddhist practitioners reconciled the tension between spiritual cultivation and worldly entertainment by reimagining theater as a creative mode of devotion. In this process, playwriting, stage performance, and theatergoing all emerged as legitimate pathways to enlightenment.
About the Speaker
Mengxiao Wang is Assistant Professor of Chinese Literature in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Southern California. She received her Ph.D. from Yale University and was the Sheng Yen Postdoctoral Fellow in Chinese Buddhism at UC Berkeley. Her research explores the intersections of literature and Buddhism in early modern China, with particular attention to theater, ritual, gender, and book history. Her first monograph, Performing Enlightenment: Buddhism and Theater in Early Modern China, was published by the Harvard University Asia Center in 2026.