Unfortunately, in cut-and-pasting, I inadvertently lopped off part of one paragraph of the ACCL election posting sent out earlier today. Please find the corrected version below.–carlos
Dear ACCL members,
As the outgoing president of the Association of Chinese and Comparative Literature (ACCL), my final task is to coordinate the election of the association’s next president. Given that the association does not have an official membership, anyone working in the field may vote. The president’s term of office is two years, and the president’s primary responsibility has traditionally been the organization and hosting of the association’s biannual conference.
I am happy to say that we have two excellent candidates for the position: Daniel Fried (Associate Professor, University of Alberta) and Mingwei Song (Associate Professor, Wellesley College). Please read their statements, below, and send your votes to (both) Prof. Michelle Yeh (mmyeh@ucdavis.edu) and Xiaomei Chen (xmchen@ucdavis.edu), who this year have once again agreed to oversee the elections. Please specify your institution and position when you vote (graduate students and independent scholars are also welcome to vote). The deadline for voting is midnight, November 1st, 2017.
sincerely,
carlos rojas
duke university
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DANIEL FRIED
Dear Colleagues,
I am seeking the Presidency of the Association of Chinese and Comparative Literature because I want to guide the ACCL toward greater openness to a broader array of scholars from around the world, and I have the administrative experience to realize this vision.
Recent growth in ACCL participation is a testament to rising interest in our field, and in the importance of literary relations between China and the rest of the world. However, with that growth, the ACCL does face new challenges associated with the evolution from a medium-sized scholarly organization to one with a more robust profile in the profession. Several steps need to be taken to lay a firmer foundation for future organic growth:
- Review of the ACCL’s charter, and preparation for possible expansion of the leadership team in the next cycle
- Examination of the Association’s fiscal condition, and exploration of fundraising possibilities which could support future growth
- Expanding the Association’s openness to engagement with scholars working on Chinese and Comparative Literature in a broader array of periods and departmental affiliations than currently represented
- Establishing regular principles for the regional rotation of the biennial conference, in consultation with membership, in a way that facilitates long-term growth and networking among scholars from many institutions worldwide
- Updating the ACCL webpage and maintaining a consistent presence on social media
For the next biennial conference, I would like to work hard on broadening participation by scholars who work on classical Chinese literature in comparative contexts, without at all reducing opportunities for those who would like to present on topics in modern and contemporary literature and culture. Growth in ACCL participation has been impressive and healthy, but drawn primarily from those working on 20th and 21st-century literatures; I hope that the membership would agree that a robust representation of colleagues working on premodern topics is also important to the long-term health of the ACCL.
The conference venue should only be decided after a consultation with membership, and should be chosen in a way that reflects both existing members’ preferences, and the need to expand opportunities for participation by scholars who have not been able to join in the past. Because the last three meetings have been held in Taipei, Shanghai and Hong Kong, it does seem time to rotate the venue to a location in North America or Europe. My initial sentiment is that Vancouver would make an excellent site to follow after Hong Kong: it is one of the world’s great sites of Sinophone encounters with the West, relatively accessible to many scholars in Asia and North America, and not exposed to whatever potential instabilities may exist in the US visa system two years from now. (If held there or elsewhere in Canada, I would be able as a Canadian academic to seek funding support from the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council; in addition, I believe that the China Institute of the University of Alberta could be persuaded to provide $10,000.) I am, however, very open to alternate venues: in particular, given the greater bureaucratic difficulties which many mainland Chinese colleagues are now facing around receiving approval for foreign travel, if the membership feels strongly that the conference should be held in China again, I would be happy to make such arrangements.
Biography:
I am currently an Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and of Chinese Literature at the University of Alberta; after receiving my PhD in Comparative Literature under the direction of Stephen Owen, I also taught for several years at National Central University in Taiwan before taking my current appointment. My research focuses on comparative intellectual history and comparative histories of criticism and theory between Europe and China; as an example, a forthcoming book, Dao and Sign in History (SUNY Press, 2018) examines the legacy of Daoist theories of language in the Six Dynasties period in comparison with 20th-century continental philosophy and poststructuralist theory. My next project, currently underway, will be a study of print culture in the Song, with a particular emphasis on how print enabled many of the distinctive developments in Song literature, philosophy, and material culture. In addition, I maintain significant interests in modern and contemporary Chinese literature and film theory; articles of mine have appeared in a wide variety of different journals such as PMLA; Comparative Literature; Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, and Reviews; Studies in English Literature 1500-1900; Comparative Critical Studies; Early China; and 《外语研究》.
I have extensive administrative experience at my home institution, managing graduate and undergraduate programs in Chinese and in Comparative Literature, as well as student study-abroad programs. In addition, I was the co-organizer (with Zhang Hui) of an international colloquium on Comparative Literature jointly hosted by Peking University and the University of Alberta; the experience I gained from convening this colloquium will be invaluable in organizing the next ACCL conference. In addition, this year I have taken the lead in organizing an application for a new MLA forum in pre-14th century Chinese literature, and hope to use that forum to also bring in more scholars of classical Chinese literature into participation in the ACCL.
Thanks, and best wishes,
Daniel Fried
University of Alberta
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MINGWEI SONG
Dear Members,
First of all, I’d like to thank those who nominated me for this position. I have attended four ACCL conferences, held in Shanghai (2001, 2015), Beijing (2009), and Hong Kong (2017). I participated more actively in the most recent Hong Kong conference, serving as one of the multiple-day seminar co-organizers. Through my own experience, I have realized that ACCL is such an important academic gathering for scholars of Chinese cultural studies coming from all regions and all disciplines, and each biennial conference has served as an occasion to reflect on the development of the field and rethink about its future.
I am delighted to be considered for the position of the next ACCL president. If elected, my primary responsibility will be to organize the next biennial conference in 2019. I will work with other members to choose a location, and collaborate with one of the top academic institutions in Taiwan, Singapore, or China. Because we have just had conferences in Shanghai and Hong Kong, we may have to avoid organizing conferences in these two cities too soon. My ideal candidates for the next conference location include Taipei, Singapore, or another major city in China other than Beijing and Shanghai, contingent on the support of local colleagues and institutions.
I will work with other members to decide on the theme of the next conference. I believe we should continue to encourage interdisciplinary studies and new disciplines, such as art and media, digital humanities, ecocriticism, posthuman studies, etc. On the other hand, I hope that the conference will make greater efforts to draw more researchers working on pre-modern Chinese culture, as well as those working on Chinese philosophy, philology, anthropology, ethnic studies, and intellectual history.
The recently restructured conference format that Shengqing Wu first introduced to ACCL in 2015 and Carlos Rojas further developed in 2017 proves to be very successful. I will continue to support this sort of innovation, and invite scholars to organize a series of key seminars that consist of multiple-day linked panels. I will also encourage other forms of innovation that can be developed by junior scholars and graduate students in particular. Reports on the fields will be another important contribution. More exhibits, film screenings, and on-stage conversations with artists, writers, and filmmakers will certainly make the conference intellectually more stimulating.
I have never organized a conference on the scale of the ACCL biennial conference. Over the past decade, I have accumulated some experiences organizing conferences on different scales. In 2006, I co-organized with Shengqing Wu a two-day workshop on the late Qing and early Republican literatures at the Fairbank Center, Harvard University. In 2013, I organized a two-day “global science fiction” symposium at Wellesley College, together with a semester-long science fiction film series. In the academic year 2013-14, I organized for Wellesley College several events focusing on Ang Lee: five talks on Ang Lee and Chinese cinema, Ang Lee film retrospective, and an on-stage conversation with Ang Lee and James Schamus. In 2016, I organized for Fudan University a relatively larger conference on science fiction, inviting over twenty scholars from the US and China, as well as fifteen science fiction writers, to talk about the genre. In 2017, I worked with Kenny Ng to organize one of the six central seminars for the ACCL conference: “Human/Inhuman/Posthuman Conditions.” These experiences have helped me prepare for organizing a larger conference.
Biography:
I am an Associate Professor of Chinese Literature at Wellesley College. My most recent sabbatical leave enabled me to accept the Elizabeth and J. Richardson Dilworth Fellowship to become a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in 2016. My research interests include modern Chinese literature, cinema studies, youth culture, and science fiction. I have published several books and research articles, including Young China: National Rejuvenation and the Bildungsroman, 1900-1959 (Harvard, 2015), and Criticism and Imagination: Collected Literary Critical Essays (Fudan, 2013). I have been researching on Chinese science fiction since 2010. I edited four special journal issues on Chinese science fiction: Renditions 77/78 (2012), which features English translations of thirteen Chinese science fiction stories and novel excerpts; China Perspectives 1 (2015); Chinese Comparative Literature 100 (2015); Literature 5.1 (2017). My own academic articles and essays on Chinese science fiction appeared in English and Chinese journals such as Science Fiction Studies, Shanghai Culture, Shanghai Literature, People’s Literature, and Dushu. Some of my writings on Chinese science fiction have been translated into German, French, and Chinese. I gave talks on Chinese science fiction in more than thirty institutions around the world. I have organized three conferences or seminars on science fiction: “Global Science Fiction” symposium (Wellesley College, 2013); “Science Fiction” conference (Fudan University, 2016); and “Human/Inhuman/Posthuman Conditions” seminar (ACCL, 2017; co-organized with Kenny Ng). I have served as the jury for numerous major Chinese science fiction awards. I am currently editing Reincarnated Giant: Twenty-First Century Chinese Science Fiction (Columbia, 2018) and writing a monograph Posthuman China: Poetics and Politics of Science Fiction.
Sincerely,
Mingwei Song