Books by Mark Bender

Introduces the oral narrative tradition that still flourishes in Shanghai and in Suzhou, an ancient city known as the city of gardens. This book provides an overview of the tradition, focusing on the contextualized performance of narrative. It examines how oral territory is opened and explored in performance.

This unprecedented volume presents important cultural works from the borders, margins, buffer zones, transitional areas, and frontiers from within and around the mega-states of China and India, subsumed within the larger geo-political constructs of East Asia, Southeast Asia, and South Asia.