Dear list members,
The registration link for the SEC-AAS conference has been reopened and you can still register for the conference by January 9, 2025:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/sec-aas-2025-tickets-1096536613529
You are welcome to register and join us as an observer even if you are not presenting. We look forward to welcoming you to Lexington in late January!
Warmly,
Luo, Liang
2025-26 Hou Family Fellowships in Taiwan Studies
The Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University is pleased to announce the 2025-26 competition for the Hou Family Fellowships in Taiwan Studies.
The Hou Family Fellowships in Taiwan Studies sponsors one Postdoctoral Fellow and one Pre-doctoral Fellow to join the Fairbank Center to pursue Taiwan-focused research in the humanities or social sciences for six to twelve months between August 1, 2025, and July 31, 2026. Affiliation for the full academic year is encouraged.
Hou Family Fellows are expected to reside in the Greater Boston area for the duration of the fellowship. Fellows will have the opportunity to engage with the Fairbank Center’s interdisciplinary community of scholars and will have access to Harvard’s world-class libraries and other resources.
In addition to maintaining their own research agenda, the Hou Family Fellows will contribute to the Fairbank Center community in ways that could include the following: Continue reading 2025-26 Hou Family Fellowships in Taiwan Studies
MCLC is pleased to announce publication of vol. 36, no. 2 (Dec. 2024). The table of contents appears below with links to abstracts and, in one case (“Pedagogical Engines”), to a full-text pdf.
and , editors
Modern Chinese Literature and Culture
Volume: 36, Number: 2 (December, 2024)
The above issue is now available online.
Note from the Editors
By and
Pedagogical Engines: Train Anthropomorphism in 1930s Chinese Children’s Magazines
By
Nietzsche’s Übermensch, Lu Xun’s Zhen de ren, and the Emergence of the Anti-fable
By and
Modernist Techniques in Wang Zengqi’s Fiction from the 1940s to the 1980s
By
Happy New Year! The Advanced Institute for Global Chinese Studies (AIGCS) and the Department of Chinese at Lingnan University are proud to announce the establishment of the Lingnan Forum on Chinese Digital Humanities. For details, go to the following link:
https://uofi.app.box.com/s/1j2p8obwye90n7pxcvkg0s99cj0541ty
Mission
The forum aims to promote the application of digital tools and concepts in literary and historical research, addressing the limitations of traditional methodologies. By conducting quantitative analyses of significant topics in literary studies, intellectual history, and related disciplines, it seeks to generate qualitative insights grounded in humanistic data. Additionally, the forum identifies research questions that challenge dominant theoretical frameworks in Chinese humanities, broadening the scope of academic inquiry.
Core Activities
Academic Symposia: Two international symposia will be held in the year of 2025.
Lecture Series: Delivered in a hybrid format, combining online and in-person sessions.
Research Focus
The forum focuses on major issues in literary studies and intellectual history, employing computational techniques to analyze Chinese literary corpora, including the usage and relationships of key terms. It also addresses topics beyond textual analysis, such as authors’ biographies literary networks, creative contexts, cultural environments, and the dissemination of ideas and artworks.
Posted by: Junzhe Wang <aigcs@ln.edu.hk>
Dear colleagues,
You are warmly invited to attend this upcoming symposium, ‘Bridging the Gap Between Museum and Migration Studies in Chinese Diasporas and Beyond’, to be hosted by the University of Westminster on 9th and 10th January 2025. The event is jointly organised by the Hub on Migration, Exile, Languages and Spaces (HOMELandS) Research Centre of the University of Westminster and the Chinese Heritage Centre of the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. It brings together academics, museum professionals, and members of diasporic Chinese communities to discuss the intersection and interaction of the movement of people and things in a global context through the prism of the museum.
This is the concluding event of the ‘Global Diasporic Chinese Museums Network Initiative’ project that has received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).
The event is free to attend but the capacity is limited. Please register via Ticket Tailor to book a place.
https://www.tickettailor.com/events/universityofwestminster9/1505137
Join us for this exciting and free event jointly organised by the Hub on Migration, Exile, Languages and Spaces (HOMELandS) Res…
Best regards,
Cangbai Wang
University of Westminster
2024 Roll-Call of Chinese Literature in English Translation
By Jack Hargreaves, published
‘Tis the end of 2024 (Where it’s gone? Don’t ask me.) and that means it’s time for the annual roll-call of Chinese-language literature published in English translation.
It has been a mixed year, with, on the plus side, there being more women authors published than in 2023, and just more works of fiction in general — more prizewinning works of fiction, too.
But there does seem to be less poetry. And when I say there are more works by women than there has been, the increase isn’t dramatic. In fact, you might say that this year is, on the whole, a return to business as usual after the post-Covid years — those weren’t fallow years, but they were lower yield.
Still, it’s a really exciting list of titles which includes some of my favourite reads from 2024, full-stop. I’m also confident that we’ve missed some works out, especially when it comes to poetry, so please do drop any absent titles in the comments below and we’ll make sure to add them. The same goes for any particularly glowing reviews you’ve come across, or prize announcements (we’ve mostly included winners, but please also share any shortlisted or longlisted works).
Special mentions go to translators Jennifer Feeley and Lin King for bringing us five showstoppers between them, with Mourning a Breast and Tongueless, and Taiwan Travelogue, Cloud Labour and book two of The Boy From Clearwater, respectively. Continue reading Paper Republic 2024 Roll Call
Sinologists are warmly invited to contribute to The Handbook of Trans Cinema. High-priority chapters include “Trans Cinema from China” and “Trans Cinema from Hong Kong.” Examples of films that might be examined include The Two Lives of Li Ermao《他她：李二毛的双重人生》.
The Handbook of Trans Cinema provides an encyclopedic overview of international trans cinema, with chapters examining the variety of genres of trans cinema from around the world, as well as the connections between these films and core concepts in trans studies and in film theory. Each chapter will provide a broad overview of its subject, with extensive references to both trans theory and film theory. In addition to giving surveys of the chapter’s topic, chapters will include in-depth discussion of at least three films. Abstracts for proposed chapters should include several references to both trans theory and film theory, and abstracts should list at least three films that will be explored in-depth.
The senior editor of The Handbook of Trans Cinema, Douglas Vakoch, has edited over two dozen books, including The Routledge Handbook of Trans Literature (with Sabine Sharp, 2024) Transgender India: Understanding Third Gender Identities and Experiences (2022), and Transecology: Transgender Perspectives on Environment and Nature (2020).
Interested authors should submit a 300-word abstract, a 200-word biography, and a sample of a previously published chapter or article at http://bit.ly/HandbookofTransCinema no later than January 30, 2025. Proposals submitted by email will not be accepted. Abstracts and biographies should be submitted as Word documents, and previously published chapters or articles should be submitted as PDFs. Both Word files and PDFs should contain the author’s name in the file names. Please include your email address in your biography file so we can contact you with our decision about your proposal. Continue reading Handbook of Trans Studies–cfp
Organized by An Yu 桉予, Peace and Love – 24小时直播跨年读诗, is an online poetry reading to be held from December 31st 10:00 (Beijing time, GMT +8) till January 1st 10:00 (Beijing time, GMT +8). 300 poets reading in Chinese and other languages, including Ukrainian, from 4:00 till 6:00 (Beijing time, GMT +8). I am reading at 20:00 (Beijing time, GMT +8)
For the full program, see https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/BuPUsKws1YU7QJ7UCJIEVg and my blog.
Martin Winter
Call For Proposals for an Edited Volume
Communicating China Through Translation
The philosopher George Steiner (1929-2020) famously stated that “Human communication is translation” (1978, After Babel), highlighting not only the importance of translation in human communication, but also a deeply felt interdependence between translation and communication. This interconnection encapsulates the primary (yet sometimes hidden) force of translation in communicational bids and instances between China and the world. The most representative instance is perhaps how the influential idea of Weltliteratur, or world literature, came into being. After having read a second-rate translated novel from China, Goethe came up with the notion of “world literature” that has transformed into an established academic field today. From the beginning, then, China has been implicated in the imagining of the term (and the field) thanks to Goethe’s “chance” encounter through translation. But this was neither the first nor the last instance of encounter where China and the rest of the world came into contact via the means of translation: China has long been a site of discovery, enchantment and (mis)representation in the imagination of global writers, readers, and other types of communicators.
Developed from a series of seminars held by the Translating China Research Collective at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, this volume aims to examines the key role of translation in China’s modern and contemporary communication with the world. They can be related to cultures, regions, education, technology and international relations, among others, that have yet to be examined and need to be urgently addressed against the backdrop of the China’s growing importance for the global stage. We welcome case studies, corpus-based research, larger-scale studies, qualitative-oriented criticism, quantitative-oriented research, theoretical reflections, and any other approach that engages with and adds meaningful new perspectives to existing scholarship on translating China. Continue reading Communicating China through Translation–cfp
Call for Papers: Journal of Chinese Literature and Culture
Volume 12, Issue 2
(https://read.dukeupress.edu/jclc)
Journal of Chinese Literature and Culture (JCLC) is pleased to invite English submissions for volume 12, issue 2 (12:2). We welcome high-quality, original research papers on premodern Chinese literature and all aspects of the broader literary culture. The journal also publishes work that explores the influence of traditional literature and culture in modern and contemporary China.
All papers should be submitted to ScholarOne. For information on the journal’s submission guidelines, see here.
JCLC is a peer-reviewed journal co-sponsored by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Peking University. Indexed in the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (A&HCI), the journal maintains an international editorial vision and seeks to foster exchange and collaboration between scholars in the United States, China, and across the world.
JCLC Editorial Office
Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
2090 FLB, 707 S. Mathews Ave.
jclcoffice@gmail.com
Posted by: Forrest McSweeney <fmcswee2@illinois.edu>
Prism (Volume 21, Number 1, 2024)
Guest edited by Ban Wang and Haomin Gong
Culture, Nature, and Environmental Humanities: An Introduction
By Ban Wang
TRADITIONAL ECOLOGICAL WISDOM
Dog Has No Buddha Nature: The Compulsion for Meaning, Nihilphobia, and Chan Therapy in the Anthropocene End-Time
By Chia-Ju Chang
The Life of Urban(e) Waters: Kyoto, circa 1830
By Stephen Roddy
ETHNICITY, PLACE, AND BORDER
“Natural” Disasters and Disaster Relief: Ecoethnic Politics in Alai’s Epic of Ji Village
By Huaji Xu; Haomin Gong
Mu Dan’s Encounter with Nature: The Phantasmic, the Metaphysical, and the Lyrical
By Qiongqiong Ye; Haomin Gong
Greenwashing, Simulated Green, and Beyond: Yi-fu Tuan and His Embodied Simulation of Habitats
By Xinmin Liu
Flood Dashing against the Temple of the Dragon King: The Allegorical Nature in Wind from the East (1959)
By Zhen Zhang
The Logic of the Void: Translation, Indigeneity, and Islands in Taiwanese Ecological Fiction
By Robin Visser
SCIENCE FICTION AND ECOCRITICISM
Inventing Climate Change: Nature and Nation in Late Qing Chinese Science Fiction
By Cheng Li
Ecology, (Post)Humanism, and Liu Cixin’s Three-Body Problem
By Melissa A. Hosek
Future Emotions and Senses: Chen Qiufan’s Science Fiction of the Anthropocene
By Kiu-Wai Chu
Indifference as Alienation in Chen Qiufan’s Science Fiction Waste Tide
By Yuanyuan Hua; Yunfan Zhang
Ecological Utopia and Dystopia in Chinese Science Fiction
By Ban Wang
New Publication
Hongwei Bao, Queering the Asian Diaspora (Sage, 2024)
ISBN: 9781529619683 (paperback, 168 pp., £11.99; $18.00)
The COVID-19 pandemic has intensified global geopolitical tensions, bringing Sinophobia and anti-Asian racism into sharp focus. At the same time, a growing Asian diasporic consciousness is emerging worldwide, celebrating Asian identity and cultural heritage. Yet, in the space between anti-Asian racism and the rise of Asian advocacy, the voices of queer people have often been largely missing.
This book addresses that gap. Exploring a range of contemporary case studies from art, fashion, performance, film, and political activism, Bao offers a powerful intersectional cultural politics—anti-nationalist, anti-racist, decolonial, feminist, and queer—that challenges dominant narratives and amplifies marginalized voices.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 – Visualising the Rabbit God: Reclaiming Queer Asian Heritage
Chapter 2 – Decolonising Drag: When Queer Asian Artists Do Drag
Chapter 3 – Queering Chinoiserie: Performing Orientalist Intimacy
Chapter 4 – ‘Secret Love’: Curating Queerness and Queering Curation
Chapter 5 – Digital Video Activism: Popo Fan’s Cinema of Desire
Chapter 6 – Imagining Queer Bandung: Creating a Decolonial Queer Space
(Readers can get a 25% discount when they order the book from the Sage website using the discount code SSSJ25: https://uk.sagepub.com/en-gb/eur/queering-the-asian-diaspora/book284796)
Posted by: Hongwei Bao <hongwei.bao@nottingham.ac.uk>
The North American Taiwan Studies Association will hold its in-person conference at Stanford University from June 30 to July 2, 2025. We are pleased to announce that our latest Call for Proposals, themed “Toward an Otherwise in Taiwan and Beyond,” has been released. The submission deadline is January 15, 2025. For more details, please visit the Call for Proposals: https://www.na-tsa.org/2025-call-for-proposals.
Center For Taiwan Studies
The University of Texas at Austin | cts@austin.utexas.edu
MCLC Resource Center is pleased to announce publication of “Six Poems by Mu Cao,” translated by Hongwei Bao. The translations, along with the original Chinese poems, appear below and at their online home: https://u.osu.edu/mclc/online-series/mu-cao/. As previously announced on the blog, Mu Cao is a recent winner of the Prince Claus Impact Award.
By Mu Cao 墓草
Translated by Hongwei Bao
MCLC Resource Center Publication (Copyright December 2024)
Photo credit: Fan Popo.
[Translator’s note: The following poems are presented with Chinese version first, followed by its English translation. The dates at the end of the poems indicate when the poems were first written. The author’s and translator’s bios can be found at the end. I have opted to present all the translated lines in lower case.]
蚂蚁
为了停留在人世间
我强暴地压抑自己
为了感觉生命的存在
我把自身和一只蚂蚁比较
我看到蚂蚁用强忍的牙齿
向野兽说话
我看到另一只冷漠的蚂蚁
带着他的技术
去远方流浪
（2006年9月11日）
ants
to survive in this world
i forcefully suppress myself
to feel the existence of my being
i imagine myself to be ants
i see an ant challenge a beast
clenching its unyielding teeth
i see another ant
take his craft
and leave, drifting in an unknown world
(September 11, 2006) Continue reading Six Poems by Mu Cao
Call for Papers
Sino Queer Translation: Sexualities across Languages, Cultures, and Media
Edited by Hongwei Bao and Yahia Ma
In recent years, there has been a proliferation of scholarly works examining the relationship between queerness and translation, including the translation of queer texts in different languages and the development of non-normative strategies in translation. Much of the existing work primarily focuses on translations of/between English and Indo-European languages, literatures, and cultures, including Queer Theory and Translation Studies (Brian James Baer, 2021), Queering Translation, Translating the Queer: Theory, Practice, Activism (edited by Brian James Baer and Klaus Kaindl, 2018), and Queer in Translation (edited by B. J. Epstein and Robert Gillett, 2017), Queering Modernist Translation: The Poetics of Race, Gender and Queerness (Christian Bancroft, 2021).
Despite the dominance of scholarship on translations between Indo-European languages in the field, there are some scholarly works looking at queer aspects of Chinese literature in English translation and queer translation in the context of the Sinosphere. For example, James St. Andre’s book Translating China as Cross-Identity Performance (2018) looks at the translation of Chinese texts into English and French from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries from the perspective of cross-identity performance, using queer metaphors such as drag; Ting Guo and Jonathan Evans’ work focuses on translational and transnational queer fandom in China and queer female teen dramas in translation (Guo and Evans, 2020, 2024). Other examples include the discussion of how the concept of queer has been translated, circulated, and received in Chinese and Sinophone contexts (Song Hwee Lim 2008, 2018; Andrea Bachner 2017; Hongwei Bao 2020, 2024; Wangtaolue Guo 2021), Leo Tak-Hung Chan’s (2018) study of parodic Japanese manga versions of the Chinese classic Xiyouji 西遊記 (The Journey to the West), and Yahia Ma and Tets Kimura’s (2024) analysis of Li Kotomi’s queer novel Hitorimai /獨舞 (Solo Dance) in three languages from the perspective of self-translation, rewriting, and translingual address. Continue reading Sino Queer Translation–cfp