This chapter includes three parts. The first part provides a brief introduction to rural China during the Song period. This is followed by a focused discussion on the spatial and administrative organization of Changshu County (in Jiangsu) near Lake Tai. Part three presents a case study of another county, Shanyin (Shaoxing, Zhejiang) in the southeast, aiming to illustrate the various aspects of rural life for both elites and ordinary people during the Southern Song.

Diasporic communities played a crucial role in the vibrant trading system that flourished across maritime Asia during the Song period. They served as cultural middlemen with both local merchants and the maritime trade offices that supervised the trade, and they provided hospitality for arriving merchants while engaging in their own long-distance business. Within the port cities of Guangzhou and Quanzhou in particular, there were merchant communities from India and Southeast Asia, but by far the largest and best documented were the Muslim communities, which is the focus of this chapter. It covers where and how they lived (and were buried), their relations with the Song authorities, and the elevation of some to official status. It also contrasts their remarkably peaceful history under the Song to the violence that they endured at time during both the Tang and Yuan.

Advancements in ceramic production technology during the Song period, coupled with a mature transportation and market system, resulted in ceramics of higher quality and greater variety becoming available to both domestic and overseas consumers. While the export of ceramics began prior to the Song, it reached new heights during this period, as evidenced by the records related to the Maritime Trade Superintendency, archaeological discoveries from the “Chinese Quarter” in Hakata and the Nanhai yihao shipwreck, and the prized collections of Japanese high authorities. As Chinese ceramics became integral to the daily lives of overseas consumers or even took on new functions abroad, ceramics production outside China also progressed, fostering more active exchanges of technologies and commodities between China and the wider world.

Su Shi was a major poet and outspoken opponent of a major policy reform program enacted during his lifetime. His writings reflecting that opposition eventually succeeded in attracting the ire of the reformers, who tried to make an example of him by imprisoning him and then sending into a series of exiles, each one more distant and harsh than the one before. These actions taken against Su Shi succeeded only in enhancing his fame. His affective buoyancy during periods of exile set him apart from the tradition of self-pitying writings composed by earlier exiled officials and helped to make him into an icon of uncrushable self-sufficiency in the face of political oppression. This chapter discusses the his life in the context of his struggles in an out of imperial officialdom, as well as the circle of friends who rallied around and admired him. Reference is also made to Su Shi’s literary talent for producing poetry that is at once striking for its imaginative flights and unusually accessible in its language, which helps to account for its enduring appeal even to readers today.

(2) This chapter traces Western scholarship on the Song period from 1920 to 2000. Relatively little was published in Western languages on the Song period before World War II, but afterward the field became quite active both in Europe and the US. Etienne Balazs initiated the Sung Project in Paris in 1954. During the same period, in the US considerable progress was made in translating Song primary sources into English. Conferences also helped the field grow, especially ones sponsored by the Committee on Chinese thought. In the US, government and foundation support for China studies in the 1960s and 1970s made it possible for the Song field to steadily grow, and fields like social and economic history became particularly strong. Song scholars formed the Society for Song-Yuan Studies, published a journal, and met each year at the meeting of the Association for Asian Studies.

This chapter examines the rise of government-run pharmacies during the Song dynasty as a lens through which to explore the state’s active role in shaping the healing marketplace and medical literature. These pharmacies not only sold pre-prepared prescriptions but also published self-help manuals. These manuals cataloged the full range of prescriptions available at the government-sponsored drugstores, along with the symptoms they were intended to treat. By promoting ready-made, prepackaged medications accessible directly to the public, the Pharmacy Formulary helped pioneer a new genre of self-help medical treatises. This development enabled patients to bypass physicians altogether, threatening physicians’ livelihoods and intensifying competition in an already crowded medical marketplace. In response, many learned physicians sought to defend the value of their expertise by emphasizing the nuanced skill required to match even standardized drugs to individual patients’ bodily conditions and disease progressions. This emphasis on diagnostic and therapeutic sophistication became a recurring theme in medical writings for centuries to come.

This chapter provides a collective portrait of the women in the family of the Northern Song statesman, Han Qi, based on Han’s funerary biographical work. Part one introduces Han the biographer and provides an overview of the women he recorded. This is followed by an examination of the Han women as female prototypes and individuals of unique talents and distinctive personalities. While these women were depicted as feminine exemplars, none of them appeared “faceless,” nor were they lauded for simply performing their designated domestic tasks. In addition to fulfilling their familial roles and duties, each woman navigated unique circumstances and showcased a diverse range of talents and personalities. Han Qi the biographer showed no reservations in expressing his affection for these women, acknowledging their contributions to the family, admiring their abilities and accomplishments, and mourning their loss. In addition to offering a close look at three generations of women in one scholar-official family, this chapter delves into Han Qi’s representation of female virtue and ability in the context of his emotional life and family preservation project.

This chapter examines the career of Wei Liaoweng, a Southern Song official and Neo-Confucian scholar, to explore the multifaceted roles and responsibilities of local administrators during a period of political turbulence and social transformation. It investigates how he navigated overlapping identities while negotiating between ideological commitments and the practical demands of governance. Although Wei devoted significant effort to fortifying local defenses and securing revenue, his administration was far from purely extractive. He worked to alleviate the economic burdens of local residents, developed water management systems, promoted education by building academies and supporting government schools, and implemented social welfare and public health programs. Wei’s Neo-Confucian convictions informed an activist vision of governance that emphasized community building and collaboration between local officials and literati. His career illustrates the dynamic interplay between intellectual and political life, the integration of state and local initiatives, and the critical role of personal networks in sustaining effective local administration.

This chapter explores the role of poetics in theorizing blackness. That is, if the question of being is an abiding issue in black studies and if that question figures through discourses about black writing, how does poetics contribute to this study? Rather than engage blackness as a content in poems, the chapter considers poetry as an intervention in language. This attentiveness to language characterizes a kind of thinking that is manifest in poetics and that generates possibilities for engaging the philosophical relationship between expressiveness and blackness.

This chapter locates Claudia Rankine’s highly celebrated book Citizen in a lineage of African American artists participating in a similar mode of renovation, which is the production of distinctive kinds of poetry based on linking past artistry and heritage to forward-facing experimentation. It challenges how Citizen was treated as exceptional by the press and prize committees that celebrated it when in fact Rankine herself carefully put her poems and essays in conversation with a number of predecessors, including Richard Wright and Zora Neal Hurston, and with such contemporaries as Nikky Finney, Erica Hunt, and Harryette Mullen. It then connects Rankine to the younger writers Morgan Parker and Aurielle Marie, who, like Rankine and visual artist Glenn Ligon, adapted Hurston’s well-known essay "How It Feel to Be Colored Me" to new purposes. Lineage and innovation united with a heritage of renovation make Citizen outstanding and deserving of its accolades but not unique so much as an extension of innovative African American literary practice.

This is by no means the first single-volume survey of the history of Spanish music to appear in English. The editors of and contributors to The Cambridge History of Music in Spain freely admit the debt we owe to illustrious predecessors going back over a century. Prominent among these are Carl Van Vechten, Walter Starkie, Gilbert Chase, and Ann Livermore.

Music in the Iberian Peninsula before 1450, co-authored by Carmen Julia Gutiérrez (Universidade Complutense de Madrid) and Manuel Pedro Ferreira (Universidade Nova de Lisboa), takes a comprehensive view of the topic (ignoring later political and cultural borders) while incorporating novel scholarship. The chapter encompasses an overview of liturgy, culture, and politics in Iberia between the 6th−11th centuries, a substantial chapter on the Hispanic rite and its music, and a history of the introduction and establishment of the Roman rite in the Peninsula, including a detailed discussion of sources, notation and repertoire. The authors then concentrate on court and town (until 1350), embracing Andalusian Music (8th−13th centuries), the emergence of the troubadour tradition, the Cantigas de Santa Maria, and the Ars Antiqua polyphony (12th−14th centuries), from the earliest evidence to Parisian and regional traditions. Ars Nova polyphony is dealt with in a section on princely and religious chapels (14th−15th centuries) focusing separately on the kingdoms of Aragon, Navarre, Castile and Portugal. The chapter includes newly devised historical maps and musical examples.

This chapter covers the period between the triumph of the rebel army in the Spanish Civil War and 2020 and therefore goes through three decisive stages in the history of contemporary Spain: the successive inner stages of the Francoism (1938−1975), the transition (1976−1982), and the consolidation of a decentralised democratic regime in Spain (1982–present). Four main axes structure the approach provided by the text, namely the evolution of the circumstances of use, propaganda, control, and institutional politics of musical events; the dynamics of continuity, renewal, and reform of the procedures and instances of institutional and private promotion and dissemination of music in the country; the development of the main compositional trends and their progressive internationalisation; and, finally, the historiographic and critical treatment of the period under study.

This study examines the rich diversity of musical instruments and music and dance traditions in Spain, exploring those historically documented and those still thriving today. These cultural practices have been imbued with social, political, and ideological significance, becoming integral elements of Spain’s cultural heritage. The research also investigates the ongoing transformations within these traditions since the late nineteenth century, driven by the involvement of cultural and governmental institutions, musicians, enthusiasts, and various social groups. Case studies, including the Catalan sardana, the Galician gaita (bagpipes), music from Holy Week celebrations, and the rabel (rebec) and its jota repertoires in Cantabria, are analysed as representative examples. This approach to traditional music and dance aims to challenge common stereotypes and exoticised perceptions of Spanish culture. It underscores the complexity of these musical traditions, highlighting their vitality and role as markers of regional and national identity, while also addressing the challenges they face in an urbanised, dynamic, post-industrial, and increasingly secularised society.