Sinophone Frontiers and Imagined Non-communities
David Der-wei Wang (Harvard University)
This lecture seeks to explore the shifting definitions of the borderland as a geopolitical space, a territorial gateway, a contact zone, a liminal terrain, a “state of exception,” and a venue of imagined non-communities. With Manchuria—Northeast China—as an entry point, the lecture reflects on the recent growth in understanding the characteristics of borders and frontiers, including migration and settlement, cultural hybridity, and transnationalism. It also examines the boundaries of literature as it manifests itself in the making and unmaking of territorial contours.
David Der-wei Wang is Edward C. Henderson Professor in Chinese and Comparative Literature at Harvard University, Director of CCK Foundation Inter-University Center for Sinological Studies, Academician of Academia Sinica, Changjiang Scholar in mainland China, and Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His English books include Fictional Realism in 20th Century China: Mao Dun, Lao She, Shen Congwen; Fin-de-siècle Splendor: Repressed Modernities of Late Qing Fiction, 1849-1911; The Monster That Is History: Violence, History, and Fictional Writing in 20th Century China; The Lyrical in Epic Time: Modern Chinese Intellectuals and Artists Through the 1949 Crisis; and Why Fiction Matters in Contemporary China. His Chinese books include Reading Contemporary Chinese Fiction; Narrating China; The Making of the Modern: The Making of Literature; Methods of Imagining China; Into the Millennium: 20 Contemporary Chinese Fiction Writers; Post-Loyalist Writing; Lyricism and Chinese Modernity: Eight Lectures at Peking University; Modern Chinese Lyrical Tradition: Four Essays; The Fearful Imagination; and Intellectuals in Times of Crisis. He is also the editor of The Harvard New Literary History of Modern China, and co-editor of From May Fourth to June Fourth: Fiction and Film in 20th Century China; Running Wild: New Chinese Writers; Chinese Literature in the Second Half of A Modern Century; Late Ming and Late Qing: Dynastic Decline and Cultural Innovation; Writing Taiwan; Writing Taiwan: A New Literary History; Globalizing Chinese Literatures; Utopia and Utopianism in the Contemporary Chinese Context: Texts, Ideas, Spaces; Taiwan: A History through Literature; The Modernity of Lyricism: Essays on Chinese Lyrical Tradition; Sinophone/Xenophone: Contemporary Chinese Literature Reader; A Nanyang Reader: Literature, Sea and Island; and Northeast China Reader.
Co-sponsored by the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures, Program in Comparative Literature, Rutgers Center for Chinese Studies, and Global Asias
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