Staging Tianxia: Dunhuang Expressive Arts and China's New Cosmopolitan Heritage

explores the ancient Chinese vision of world order (all under heaven) by focusing on the historical, performative, and rhetorical processes of expressive arts and cultural heritages that inform a vision of China as a historically multiethnic and cosmopolitan nation. unites multimedia ethnographic research and theoretical insights from ethnomusicology, philosophy, religious studies, performance studies, and cognitive science, with a focus on Dunhuang , a modern interpretation inserted into the Chinese classical dance and theatrical arts tradition. It thus aims to redefine Silk Road studies and Dunhuangology, a transdisciplinary field dedicated to studying the texts and art of Dunhuang, a UNESCO World Heritage Site that connected China via the Silk Road with Central Asia, South Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. is a careful ethnographic study that looks at the importance of performance tradition and poetics in the arts and aesthetic theory of China.