What does it mean to recognize ethnic minority rappers as cultural theorists in China? This talk approaches minority rap, with a particular focus on Tibetan rap, not merely as music but as a vernacular theory of life emerging from the margins. Caught in a paradox, ethnic minorities are hyper-visible as objects of state governance, yet rarely heard in shaping the terms through which they are understood and represented. Drawing on lyrics, artist interviews, documentaries, and audience commentary, Dr. Tso will show how rappers reconfigure marginality into epistemic advantage, producing alternative vocabularies and frameworks for understanding minority experiences, aspirations, and social relations. In this reconfiguration, minority-ness is reimagined as immediate, relational, and generative. By foregrounding the analytical insights of these vernacular thinkers, this talk illuminates new ways of thinking about power, voice, and belonging in China.

Bendi Tso is a sociocultural anthropologist whose work focuses on borderlands, nationalism, ethnicity, and oral traditions in China. Her research draws on ethnographic methods to examine China’s ethnic minorities beyond the dominant analytical lens of ethnicity. She is currently developing a book project that explores how disparate Tibetan subgroups on the Sino-Tibetan borderland negotiate essentialized notions of Tibetanness in a landscape marked by ambiguity and transition. She is a postdoctoral fellow at the Kenneth G. Lieberthal and Richard H. Rogel Center for Chinese Studies at the University of Michigan.

In-person talk only.