Event

Ping-­‐hui Liao
Chuan Lyu Endowed Chair
Professor of Literature, UC San Diego

Round table panel on the Sinophone studies:
Victor H. Mair, Professor of Chinese Language and Literature
Suvir Kaul, A. M. Rosenthal Professor of English
Xiaojue Wang, Assistant Professor of Modern Chinese Literature
Thursday, November 21, 2013
4:30pm, Class of ’55 Seminar Room (Room 241), Van Pelt Library

As emergent or minor literatures, Sinophone writings have been studied in conjunction with the Chinese ethnoscapes in “dis-semi- nation” or with an agenda to debunk cultural nationalism and to rethink the notion of “Middle Kingdom” and even of “Cultural China” in terms of the center and periphery dichotomy. Whereas “overseas Chinese literature,” “world literature in Chinese,” “Chinese immigrant literature,” “literature by Chinese ethnic minorities,” and so forth have been used over the years, Sinophone discourse is proposed as an alternative to address the hybrid, expressive cultures that have been developed across a rich diversity of Chinese speaking communities. Scholars attend to the differential and multiple ways in which Chinese scripts as well as Chinese heritages have been appropriated and cultivated to entertain new visions of being Chinese along the direction of exile and creativity, linguistic creolization and critical multiculturalism, centrifugal and contrapuntal forces in connection with the imaginary homeland. The talk traces the historical trajectories of Sinophone writings and Chinese diaspora to map out the imperial and post-contemporary conjectures in relationship to its counterparts in the Anglophone, Francophone, and other traditions.

The talk is followed by a round table discussion on the Sinophone studies, new area studies, diaspora, and comparative literature.

Modern China Seminar at Penn is sponsored by the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation Inter-University Center for Sinology.