CFP: New Genres of Chinese Web Novels, a special issue of Chinese Literature and Thought Today (CLTT)
Guest-edited by Dr. Renren Yang (The University of British Columbia)
The first decade of the twenty-first century witnessed an upsurge and expansion of Chinese web novels (wangluo xiaoshuo 网络小说), most of which are popular genre fiction serialized and consumed online. The commercialization of Internet literature further prompted the reinvention of old genres and the proliferation of new genres with an increasingly diversified and contested system of classification. Existing English-language scholarship has examined an array of established genres such as tomb robbing (daomu 盗墓), farming (zhongtian 种田), household fights (zhandou 宅斗), matriarchal tales (nüzun 女尊), boy’s love (danmei 耽美), web-game (wangyou 网游), time travel (chuanyue 穿越), infinite fiction (wuxian liu 无限流), immortality cultivation (xiuzhen 修真), Eastern fantasies (xuanhuan 玄幻), etc.
Yet at the same time, many other popular genres and subgenres have been invented (and reinvented) in astonishing variety that demands our scholarly attention. These genres include but are not limited to fiction with ACGN (erciyuan 二次元), urban (dushi 都市), sports (tiyu 体育), horror (kongbu 恐怖), girl’s love (baihe 百合), officialdom (guanchang 官场), and military (junshi 军事) themes, as well as stories that revisit the 1950s-90s PRC (niandai wen 年代文), fan fiction that crisscrosses multiple comics (zongman wen 综漫文), step-mother literature (houma wenxue 后妈文学), etc.
In this special issue, we invite authors to explore understudied genres and subgenres of Chinese web novels from the perspectives of Chinese literature, cultural studies, media studies, philosophy, or other interdisciplinary lenses. What are the historically specific conditions for the rise of a particular literary genre? How do newly emerged genres inherit, subvert, transform, and add to conventions of canonized genres such as martial arts, romance, and detective fiction? What kinds of intellectual traditions and changing worldviews do the new generic conventions present? What real-life social, moral, and political problems do the new generic conventions attempt to expose and resolve?
Many web novels could be interpreted as an interplay or a synthesis of multiple genre types. The sheer amount and diversity of Chinese web novels render themselves ready for philosophical, anthropological, sociological, and psychological explications. Theoretically-informed interpretations of representative web novels are welcome, and so are English translations of previously published research papers in Chinese. Our preference is for an engaging and accessible discussion style that retains research rigor and critical edge.
Below is the timetable:
- If this is of interest, please send a title and a 250-word abstract, plus a short bio to Dr. Renren Yang (renren.yang@ubc.ca) by February 28, 2023.
- Notification of acceptance of abstracts will be sent out by March 31, 2023.
- Full papers (up to 9,000 words) are due on September 30, 2023.
Please feel free to contact Renren Yang (renren.yang@ubc.ca) for any inquiries.
*Chinese Literature and Thought Today (CLTT) is a peer-reviewed journal published by Routledge. CLTT represents the merger of two forerunners of Chinese humanities scholarly publications, Contemporary Chinese Thought and Chinese Literature Today. Past issues of CLTT can be accessed via https://www.tandfonline.com/journals/mcsp21.