Timothy Thurston and Tsering Samdrup - No Laughing Matter: Understanding Tibetan experience in China through Comedy
Description
What do people think about when they hear China and Tibet in the same sentence? They often think of the traumatic experiences of surveillance, self-immolations, repression of religious expression, and international accusations of cultural genocide. Rarely will they think of traditional humour, and modern comedy disseminated in audiovisual media. But laughter is more characteristic of the everyday Tibetan experience, and attending to Tibetan humor and comedy can help us understand contemporary Tibetan experience in contemporary China. Interspersed with clips in the original Tibetan, Tim Thurston and collaborator Tsering Samdrup will discuss their preparation of a book of translated Tibetan comedic scripts, and how these comedies can help provide a nuanced understanding of the complexities of everyday Tibetan experience in twentieth and twenty-first century China.
United States
