Chinese Literature as World Literature–cfp

Call for Papers: a special issue of MCLC
Chinese Literature as World Literature
Guest Editors Kuei-fen Chiu and Yingjin Zhang

World literature has been reconfigured as an open field of literary studies that emphasizes the process of circulation and reception over conventional categories such as authorship and canonization, but beyond apparent gains from (or against) translation in major languages, the geopolitics of center versus periphery and an elitist stratification of power and value have persisted. Modern Chinese Literature and Culture invites scholars to submit new research for this special issue that explores what Chinese literature has to offer to recent debates on world literature and what such debates may bring to Chinese literary studies.

We are interested in articles dealing with topics related but not limited to the following:

  • Chinese Literature and (De)Canonization of World Literature
  • Networking World Literature, Rewriting Chinese Literary History
  • Genre and Gender Troubles in Chinese Literature as World Literature
  • Chinese Literature and the Making of Literate (Re)Publics of World Literature
  • Chinese Literature and the “Worldly Project” of World Literature
  • New Mediality and Mediation of Chinese literature as World Literature
  • Chinese Literature in the Global Post-Literary Digital Age

We envision “Chinese literature” as a broad umbrella term to include literature written in Chinese as well as any other language authored by ethnic Chinese writers in all parts of the world regardless of nationality. This means that diaspora literature, Hong Kong and Taiwanese literature, Chinese-Malaysian literature, Sinophone literature (regardless of the language used), and indigenous or ethnic literature inside and outside mainland China are all legitimate.

Please send (1) your abstract of 300 words along with (2) your biographic note of 50 words to both guest editors—Kuei-fen Chiu (chiukf.taiwan@gmail.com) and Yingjin Zhang (yinzhang@ucsd.edu)—and MCLC editor Kirk A. Denton (denton.2@osu.edu) by December 1, 2016. We anticipate each article to be under 8,000 words and would welcome inquires before submitting your abstract. Selected abstracts will be invited to submit full manuscripts by July 1, 2017 for consideration of inclusion in the special issue, to be published in the spring 2018 issue. 

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