Frontier Literature from China's Northeast
Xiao Hong, Yŏm Sangsŏp, Abe Kōbō, and Zhong Lihe—these iconic literary figures from China, Korea, Japan, and Taiwan all described Manchuria extensively in their literary works. Now China’s Northeast but a contested frontier in the first half of the twentieth century, Manchuria has inspired writers from all over East Asia to claim it as their own, employing novel themes and forms for engaging nation and empire in modern literature. Many of these works have been canonized as quintessential examples of national or nationalist literature—even though they also problematize the imagined boundedness and homogeneity of nation and national literature. Through the theoretical lens of literary territorialization, my research reconceptualizes modern Manchuria as a critical site for making and unmaking national literatures in East Asia. By revealing how writers of different nationalities constantly enlisted transnational elements within a nation-centered body of literature, my work uncovers a history of literary co-formation at the very site of division and contestation.
Publications under this project include a monograph (Territorializing Manchuria: The Transnational Frontier and Literatures of East Asia, 2023), a set of research articles, an English translation of a document concerning literary censorship in Japanese colonial Manchuria ("Censorship Reports," 2021), and a website on "History of Northeast China" that Norman Smith, Professor of History at the University of Guelph, Canada and I co-edited.
Monograph
Territorializing Manchuria: The Transnational Frontier and Literatures of East Asia (Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2023). This book is a co-winner of the Modern Language Association (MLA) First Book Award and a winner of the Columbia University Weatherhead East Asian Institute First Book Award.
Articles
“The Making and Unmaking of Nationalist Literature from the National Margin: Rereading Duanmu Hongliang’s Ke’erqin Qi caoyuan (The Korchin Banner Plains) as Borderland Writing,” Prism: Theory and Chinese Literature 18: 2 (2021).
“Censorship Reports,” translation with foreword, in Translating the Occupation: The Japanese Invasion of China, 1931–45, Craig Smith ed. al., eds., Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2021.
“Linguistic Hybridity, Transnational Connectivity, and the Cultural Territorialization of Colonial Literature: On the Case of the Manchukuo Chinese Writer Gu Ding,” in Manchukuo Perspectives: Transnational Approaches to Literary Production, Annika A. Culver and Norman Smith, eds., Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2019.
“'Borderland Translation': Manchuria and the Multilingual Translations of the Korean Short Story 'The Red Hill',” Journal of World Literature 4:4 (Dec. 2019).
“Bei hushi de ningshi: Manzhouguo nei xianman wenxue jiaoliu xinjie” (被忽视的凝视：满洲国内鲜满文学交流新解/ The Neglected Gaze: Literary Exchanges between Manchukuo Korean and Chinese literature), Shenyang shifan daxue xuebao (沈阳师范大学学报/ Journal of Shenyang Normal University) , November 2018; Tōhoku bunka no hiroba (東北文化の広場/ The Northeastern Cultural Square), 2018.
“Piaobo, aiqing he zhengyi: lun Dandi zuopin zhong de piaobozhe xingxiang” (漂泊，爱情和正义：论但娣作品中的漂泊者形象/ Wandering, love and justice: Wanderers in Dan Di’s literature), in Norman Smith, ed., Tian Lin uopin jiqi yanjiu (田琳作品及其研究/ Works by Tian Lin and the Study of Them), Shanghai: Jiaotong daxue chubanshe, 2018, 34-50.
“Weimanzhouguo Zuo Feng zazhi ji Chaoxian wenxue fanyi” (伪满洲国《作风》杂志及朝鲜文学翻译/ Zuo Feng magazine and the translation of Korean literature in Manchukuo), in Chinese. Hangzhou shifan daxue xuebao (杭州师范大学学报/ Journal of Hangzhou Normal University), January 2015, 66-72. Anthologized in Li Cunguang, ed., Zhongguo xiandai wenxue yu Hanguo wenxian bubian (中国现代文学与韩国文献补编/ Anthology of Modern Chinese Literature and Korea Continued), Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue wenxian chubanshe, 2020.
Co-editor with Okada Hideki of Wang Du, “Riben liuxue shiqi wenxue huodong fengyunlu,” (日本留学时期文学活动风云录/ Memoir of literary activities when studying abroad in Japan), in Wang Du, Ryūnichi gakusei Ō Do [Wang Du] no shishū to Kaisōroku: Manshūkoku Seinen no ryūgaku kiroku (留日学生王度の詩集と回想録：「満洲国」青年の留学記録/ Poem collection and memoir by Wang Du, a Chinese student in Japan: Records of studying abroad by a Manchukuo youth), Tokyo: Manshūkoku Bungaku Kenkyūkai, 2015, 55-114.
Website
"History of Northeast China," co-edited with Norman Smith.
Interview
"What is Manchurian Literature?" Interview with Liu Xiaoli, Ōmura Masuo, Okada Hideki and Kim Chaeyong.
Grants
ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship
Japan Foundation Japanese Studies Doctoral Fellowship
Korean International Communication Fund Scholarship
SSRC Transregional Junior Scholar Fellowship
Chiang Ching-kuo Scholar Grants
SSRC Inter-Asia New Paradigms Grant