New publications

posts related to new publications in Chinese studies

Jia Zhangke’s Filmic World

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Dear Colleagues,

I’m happy to announce the publication of my new book China in the Age of Global Capitalism: Jia Zhangke’s Filmic World, published by Routledge. This book maps ten of Jia Zhangke’s films onto three major themes: Jia’s filmmaking and China in the market society; truth claims and political unconscious; “post-socialist modernity” in the age of globalization.  By analyzing Jia’s narrative strategies, the author strives to discuss the impact of the larger political economic changes on ordinary people in Jia’s films and the director’s cultural political notion. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of Chinese film studies, as well as other disciplines, such as political science, sociology, anthropology, etc.

For more details, click the following link,

https://www.routledge.com/China-in-the-Age-of-Global-Capitalism-Jia-Zhangkes-Filmic-World-1st/Wang/p/book/9780367367794#series Continue reading →

Made in China 4.3

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Dear Colleagues,

I am glad to announce the publication of the latest issue of the Made in China Journal. You can download the pdf for free at this link: https://madeinchinajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Made-in-China-03-2019.pdf

Below you can find the editorial:

Bless You, Prison: Experiences of Detention in China

‘Bless you prison, bless you for being in my life. For there, lying upon the rotting prison straw, I came to realise that the object of life is not prosperity as we are made to believe, but the maturity of the human soul.’–Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

With these words, Soviet star dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn exalted the transformative role of the gulag—where he had been imprisoned for eight years—in reconfiguring his soul. Just like his account of life in the labour camps played a fundamental role in shaping public perceptions of the Soviet labour camps, our views of the Chinese detention system are also widely shaped by the writings and testimonies of former political prisoners, whether victims of the mass campaigns of the Mao era or more recent crackdowns against dissident voices. Reading these accounts, detention easily assumes the tragic connotations of martyrdom, and detainees come to be surrounded by a halo of heroism. But what about those uncountable prisoners who are detained for common crimes or less-noble causes? What about the reality of murderers, thieves, drug addicts, and prostitutes? Is prison a blessing for them too? Continue reading →

Notes on the Pekingese

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List members may be interested in my translation of a novella by Takbum Gyel, a writer from Qinghai who is well established in the Tibetan literary world. “Notes on the Pekingese” is a surrealist story about ethnic politics and social climbing set in a local government office in Tibet. You can find it here, published as an ebook by Ploughshares Solos: https://www.pshares.org/solos/notes-pekingese

Christopher Peacock <cp2657@columbia.edu>

 

Contemporary China Centre Blog

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We are delighted to announce the launch of the Contemporary China Centre Blog.

Based at the University of Westminster, the Contemporary China Centre focuses on interdisciplinary research about contemporary China which is grounded in cultural studies. Our work builds on Westminster’s long-term commitment to Chinese Studies, at whose heart lies an engagement with Chinese language, cultural practice and production, and its critical analysis. We seek to complement social science-based research on contemporary China with a critical perspective from the Humanities.

Our new blog project brings together our research and expertise concerning the cultural dimensions of social and political transformation in China and the cutting-edge issues and agendas that are core features of China’s role in the global circulation of knowledge and cultural influence. It also seeks to promote the University of Westminster Archive’s China Visual Arts Project, which was founded in 1977 and holds over 800 Chinese propaganda posters, as well as a wealth of Chinese books, objects and ephemera dating from the 1940s to the 1980s. We hope that this project will contribute to ongoing debates and promote interdisciplinary dialogue about the social, cultural, political and historical dynamics that inform life in China today.

You can access the Contemporary China Centre Blog at:  http://blog.westminster.ac.uk/contemporarychina/. You can also read about our very first issue, which is entitled Fashion, Beauty and Nation, here:  http://blog.westminster.ac.uk/contemporarychina/issue-1-fashion-beauty-and-nation/. Continue reading →

Lausan

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As you know, Hong Kongers are fighting brutal state violence in an ongoing struggle for self-determination. Many of us in the diaspora have been watching livestreams wondering what we can do. To that end, the mission of Lausan 流傘 is to publish English-language discourse about protests that bypasses oversimplified mainstream narratives by focusing on historical complexity and the radical potential of the movement.

We aim to share English-language writing about Hong Kong from an anti-capitalist, decolonial and intersectional perspective — that holds both Western and Chinese imperialisms to account. Lausan 流傘 as a publication shares and translates radical critiques and commentaries on Hong Kong from a left perspective. Our goal is that this can be another small step toward building solidarity with similar resistance movements around the world.

Please feel free to take a look at: https://lausan.hk and sign up for our newsletter (the form is on our homepage). We are looking for translators at the moment, if that is of interest to any readers of MCLC. This is a really difficult moment for all Hong Kongers. But it is also a moment of new possibilities — requiring all of our critical imaginations.

Christopher Chien <chienchr@usc.edu>

The Transcultural Streams of Chinese Canadian Idenitities

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New Publication

Jessica Tsui-yan Li, editor The Transcultural Streams of Chinese Canadian Identities. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2019.

https://www.mqup.ca/transcultural-streams-of-chinese-canadian-identities–the-products-9780773556850.php

Investigating the conditions that shape Chinese Canadian identities from various historical, social, and literary perspectives. Highlighting the geopolitical and economic circumstances that have prompted migration from Hong Kong and mainland China to Canada, The Transcultural Streams of Chinese Canadian Identities examines the Chinese Canadian community as a simultaneously transcultural, transnational, and domestic social and cultural formation. Continue reading →

Prism 16.1

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The inaugural issue of Prism: Theory and Chinese Literature is online now, for free viewing and downloading. Contributions by Zong-qi Cai, Wendy Larson, Carlos Rojas, Liying Sun and Michel Hockx, Xiaobing Tang, Maghiel van Crevel, Ban Wang, David Der-wei Wang, Michelle Yeh, Yingjin Zhang, Shannon M. Cannella, Chun-Ting Chang, Clara Iwasaki, Yu Zhang. See https://read.dukeupress.edu/prism/issue/16/1.

Strangers in China podcast

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The Sinica Podcast Network is proud to introduce the latest member of our family, Strangers in China. It features the voices of an emergent new China. Dissident voices, outspoken voices, marginalized voices, queer voices. Some are people who just find one aspect of living in China unreasonable, others are people who are rebellious. Some want to push the boundaries creatively, while others are just fighting to be seen. All are uniquely Chinese.

You may already know of the Network’s flagship show, the Sinica Podcast, but if this is your first time hearing about our other podcasts, we recommend a recent episode from each below. Take a look and – more importantly – take a listen, and give us any feedback at sinica@supchina.com!

Kaiser Kuo
Founder, Sinica Podcast Network
Editor-at-large, SupChina

Poetry in the Age of Global Media

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Dear colleagues,

I am delighted to announce the publication of my book Make It the Same: Poetry in the Age of Global Media, which is just out from Columbia University Press. I am extremely grateful to the MCLC scholarly community for helping make the book a reality.

Make It the Same explores how poetry—an art form associated with the singular, inimitable utterance—is increasingly made from other texts through sampling, appropriation, translation, remediation, performance, and other forms of repetition.

Two chapters deal primarily with poetry in Chinese, including work by Yi Sha 伊沙, Hsia Yü 夏宇, and Yang Lian 楊煉. The book as a whole offers a novel account of modern and contemporary literature that is of relevance to scholars of Chinese literature and culture. It shows how modernist and contemporary literature is defined not by innovation—as in Ezra Pound’s oft-repeated slogan “make it new”—but by a system of continuous copying. In Make It the Same, I argue that the old hierarchies of original and derivative, center and periphery are overturned when we recognize copying as the engine of literary change.

For more information on the book, see https://cup.columbia.edu/book/make-it-the-same/9780231190022, where you can use the code CUP30 to receive a 30% discount. Though the book is a bit pricy at present, I hope you might consider ordering it for your institution’s library.

Warmest wishes,
Jacob Edmond

Out now: Make It the Same: Poetry in the Age of Global Media (Columbia University Press, July 2019)
https://cup.columbia.edu/book/make-it-the-same/9780231190022

Alai’s In the Cloud

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Source: News China (Sept. 2019)
Requiem on the Ruins
By Liu Yuanhang

Book launch for In the Cloud, May 25, 2019

In his latest novel In the Cloud, award-winning ethnic Tibetan writer Alai breaks his decade-long silence on his experience with death during the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake. In an interview with NewsChina, Alai discusses past trauma, his literary transformations and social challenges to come

Alai was working on his mythological novel The King of Gesar at his home in Chengdu, Sichuan Province when the ground violently trembled under his feet.

“At that moment I was writing about the fury of the gods, who make the entire world quiver in fear. It took me a few seconds to judge whether the violent quake was real or my imagination. I felt the tremor instantly spring up from the ground to my desk and it almost flung me to the floor. Then I realized it was not from my hallucination. It was a real earthquake,” reads the preface of In the Cloud, Alai’s latest book released on April 30. Continue reading →

Revisiting Liaozhai zhiyi

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I am glad to announce the publication of the first issue of Ming Qing Studies. Monographs:

Revisiting Liaozhai zhiyi 聊齋誌異  

http://www.writeupsite.com/ming-qing-studies-2018.html

https://sites.google.com/site/mqsweb/home

This book is the first of a series of volumes that accompany the annual publication of Ming Qing Studies. The series will publish a volume for each issue, and this is a supplement to MQS 2018. Every volume consists of a focused essay, or collects a few essays on the same topic. Mini-monographs, research reports, and occasional papers of length comprised between 20,000 and 60,000 words are also considered for publication. Monograph n. 1 is:

Revisiting Liaozhai zhiyi 聊齋誌異, by Paolo Santangelo Continue reading →

Chinese Environmental Humanities

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Hello, I am pleased to announce that the first Chinese Environmental Humanities anthology is finally out. I’d appreciate if you can recommend it to your librarian to purchase this book.

Here I’d like to thank all the scholars involved in this project: Profs. Joni Adamson, Scott Slovic, Kiu-wai Chu, Haomin Gong, Xinmin Liu, Dong Isbister, Ralph Litzinger, Jeffrey Nicolaissen, Xiumei Pu, Steve Roddy, Steve Rachman, Darryl Sterk, Christopher K Tong, Fan Yang, Winnie Yee, Runlei Zhai, 釋昭慧. Thanks for being part of this CEH family, it’s such an honor to work with all of you!

I also want to express my gratitude to the following scholars: Patrick D. Murphy, Masami Yuki, Serpil Oppermann, Karen L. Thornber, Sheldon Lu. Thank you for being part of the family as well. Finally, I am indebted to the editor-in-chief of Chinese Literature and Culture in the World Series (Palgrave), Ban Wang, for the invitation. It’s been a wonderful journey working with you and the Palgrave crew. Continue reading →

“Teaching the PRC” PRC History Review 4.2

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The PRC History Review
Volume 4, Number 2 (August 2019)
Special Issue: Teaching the PRC

The PRC History Group is very excited to announce the newest issue of The PRC History Review, which features a series of essays on teaching the PRC. An extra special thanks to our guest editors, Brian DeMare and Covell Meyskens, for all of their work on this issue, which also includes contributions from (in the order they appear) Rebecca Karl, Marc Matten, Emily Wilcox, Gail Hershatter, Ralph Thaxton, Kirk Denton, Denise Ho, Guobin Yang, Jeremy Brown, Stefan Landsberger, Elizabeth Perry, Eddy U, Sun Peidong, and Kaiser Kuo!

The issue is available online here: Special Issue: Teaching the PRC. Table of Contents appears below.

Fabio Lanza <flanza@email.arizona.edu>

Editorial Introduction
Brian DeMare, Tulane University and Covell Meyskens, Naval Postgraduate School

Why Mao? Why Now? A Brief Essay on Pedagogy and Possibility
Rebecca E. Karl, New York University Continue reading →

My Mountain Country

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Ye Lijun’s My Mountain Country
Translated from the Chinese by Fiona Sze-Lorrain
Foreword by Christopher Merrill

Contemporary Chinese poet Ye Lijun’s My Mountain Country in Fiona Sze-Lorrain’s translation, with a foreword by Christopher Merrill and an essay by the poet-translator, is just published by World Poetry Books.

Read some poems here and here. To order: SPD (pre-order: Amazon)

In this remarkable English debut, award-winning Chinese contemporary poet Ye Lijun offers readers a lyrical diorama of nature and the inner world. By turns intimate and profound, Ye’s poems in Fiona Sze-Lorrain’s masterful translations make music of everyday silences, and illuminate the invisible openings in our lives. In this vital collection by one of China’s essential literary voices, each encounter is an invitation, wherein a village, a nest, a telescope, or a book proves to be a transient guide to the unknown.

Prism–cfp

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CFP (General Issues) – Prism: Theory and Modern Chinese Literature
// Seeking Contributions for General Issues //

A general issue appears in March, and its submission deadline is April 1 of the preceding year.

If you have any questions regarding your submission, please send email to prism@ln.edu.hk.

Prism: Theory and Modern Chinese Literature presents cutting-edge research on modern literary production, dissemination, and reception in China and beyond. It also publishes works that study the shaping influence of traditional literature and culture on modern and contemporary China. Prism actively promotes scholarly investigations from interdisciplinary and cross-cultural perspectives, and it encourages integration of theoretical inquiry with empirical research. The journal strives to foster in-depth dialogues between Western and Chinese literary theories that illuminate both the unique features of each interlocutor and their shared insights into issues of universal interest. Prism is a new incarnation of Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese (JMLC), founded in 1997 by the Centre for Humanities Research of Lingnan University. For submission guidelines and a more detailed description of Prism, visit prism-journal.org. Continue reading →