In this talk, Dr. Kile demonstrates how we might better understand Chinese early modernity through environment and experience, categories that also open up possibilities of geographical comparison. He analyzes how the sea novels Sanbao taijian xiyang ji (Record of the Sanbao Eunuch in the Western Seas, pub. 1597), Haiyou ji 海遊記 (Record of a Sea Journey, pub. ca. early nineteenth century), and Xiyi meng Xiyi meng Haiguo chunqiu 希夷夢 海國春秋 (A Dream of the Master of Infinitesimal Subtlety, or A Chronicle of the Sea Kingdom) describe travel by sea – for example, into a luoji 落漈 (whirlpool), or across a ruanshui yang 軟水洋 (“soft water” sea) – and how this fictional practice details and elaborates the perceived and imagined qualities of water. Lu Xun famously described Ming and Qing novels that abounded with super-mobile human characters as “supernatural” fiction (shenmo xiaoshuo 神魔小說). Dr. Kile departs from this foundational paradigm to look more precisely: what terms do these novels use for moving through air, and how did that relate to water travel? The depths of the seas and the heights of the skies did not function as media for actually existing humans in the early modern period, but in the fiction of the time, humans could travel through the sea, both across its surfaces and through its depths, as well as through the sky in all its vastness.

SE Kile is a scholar of early modern Chinese literature and cultural history, focusing on the intersections of multimedia practice across a broad range of cultural objects, from poetry to props, from novels to gardens. An associate professor in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Michigan, Kile’s first book, Towers in the Void: Li Yu and Early Modern Chinese Media (Columbia, 2023), theorizes early modern mediation and entrepreneurship through Li Yu's cultural production across the areas of playwriting, fiction writing, garden and architectural design, theater direction, and body modification. His current book project argues for the relevance of the “early modern” to the study of China, exploring how novelists synthesized scientific, religious, and vernacular knowledge about the world.

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