Time: 12:00PM-1:00PM
Date: 24 February 2023
Location: Online
Registration
No scholar of modern Chinese literary studies in its globalizing mode will miss the recent spotlight on Malaysian Chinese (Mahua) literature. Previously untapped, works from or about the Southeast Asian country are now read for bracing ideas on language, ethnicity and diaspora. In Malaysian Crossings, Chan shows how the minor literary formation’s grasp of its own marginality in the world-Chinese literary space constitutes the threshold—instead of a hurdle—to creating signature aesthetic imprints that foster global outlooks.
In the book, Chan describes the strategic “worlding” of modern Chinese literature that involves authorial navigation of inter-connected literary spaces. Foregrounding the inter-Asian linkages between Malaysia and other Sinitic-speaking locales (such as China, Taiwan and Singapore) in the writing practices of Lin Cantian, Han Suyin, Wang Anyi, and Li Yongping, Chan analyzes their representations of multilingual social realities, and reflections about colonial Malaya or independent Malaysia as valid literary terrain. Both sets of creative discourse underlie the literary worlds built out of the physical journeys, the interactions among social groups, and the mindset shifts entailed in creating distinctive literary languages for the place. Historicizing such “crossings” from the 1930s to the 2000s, Chan contends that new perspectives from the periphery are essential to understanding the globalization of modern Chinese literature. By emphasizing the inner diversities and connected histories in the margins, Malaysian Crossings offers a powerful argument for remapping global Chinese literature and world literature.
About the speakers
CHEOW THIA CHAN is assistant professor of Chinese studies at the National University of Singapore. His research interests include modern Chinese-Sinophone literature, Southeast Asian studies, and diaspora studies. His monograph, Malaysian Crossings (Columbia University Press, 2022), foregrounds the Southeast Asian locality as a significant laboratory for imaginative Chinese writing that fosters meaningful styles of covert globality in the literary margins. His articles are published at disciplinary and regionally-focused venues such as Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, SOJOURN: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia, as well as PRISM: Theory and Modern Chinese Literature. He co-edited the special issue of PRISM on “The Worlds of Southeast Asian Chinese Literature” (2022).As a literary translator and editor, his work has appeared in Renditions: A Chinese-English Translation Magazine.
YING XIN SHOW (Discussant) is Lecturer at the School of Culture, History and Language, and Deputy Director of the Malaysia Institute at the College of Asia and the Pacific, the Australian National University. Her work explores the history and culture of migration, decolonisation, and the impact of the Cold War on Asian societies through literature. She co-edited Revisiting Malaya: Uncovering Historical and Political Thoughts in Nusantara (2020) and authored the Chinese translation of Alfian Sa’at’s flash fiction Malay Sketches (2020;2022).
“Talks in Chinese Humanities” are co-presented by the China Studies Centre, the Disciplineof Chinese Studies , the South East Asia Centre and the Australian Society for Asian Humanities at the University of Sydney and the Faculty of Art, Design & Architecture at UNSW.Image Credit: Photo by Simon Hurry on Unsplash.