The Missing Ear in Taiwan Literature

A talk by Yale University's Jing Tsu.

In her talk, Professor Tsu will examine the elision between sound and script in current debates on Chinese-language literature. Comparing Taiwan's literature from two different periods (the Japanese occupation and the era of Nativist literature), she will discuss the various attempts to revive native tongues in opposition to colonial, national, and foreign languages. Departing from existing approaches to the contentious issue of Taiwan's literature, the talk will focus on the relationship between language and sound as a theoretical problem in the conception of national and anti-national literatures outside of monolingual centers of production.

*    *    *

Jing Tsu is Assistant Professor of Chinese Literature in the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures at Yale University. She is author of Failure, Nationalism, and Literature: The Making of Modern Chinese Identity, 1895-1937 (Stanford University Press, 2005) and has published in journals such as SubStance, positions: east asia cultures critique, and Journal of Chinese Overseas.