Opening “New Chinese Literature” Beyond China: Xu Dishan
In this talk, Gal Gvili will share her recent research on how South and South-East Asia shaped 20th century Chinese literature. Gal will focus a section of her recent book which discusses the Taiwan-born May Fourth writer Xu Dishan 許地山 and his literature of border-crossing and identity-searching. She will raise the question: how can students and scholars of Chinese literatures think beyond the paradigm of nation states?
About 許地山 wiki
About the speaker:
Gal Gvili is an Associate Professor at McGill University department of East Asian Studies.
Her articles have appeared or are forthcoming in The Journal of Asian Studies, Religions, Comparative Literature Studies, China and Asia: A Journal in Historical Studies, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Comparative Literature and the edited volume Beyond Pan-Asianism: Connecting China and India 1840s-1860s. Her book Imagining India in Modern China: Literary Decolonization and the Imperial Unconscious, 1895-1962 (Columbia University Press, 2022, Winner of the Harry Levin First Book Award in Comparative Literature, ACLA) examines how the image of India, in particular, Chinese writers’ multifaceted visions of Sino-Indian connections, shaped the making of a new literature in the twentieth century.
The talk will be conducted in English but questions in Mandarin are encouraged during the Q and A.
