Area, Literature, and Method

The Center for Chinese Studies at UC Berkeley presents a discussion with Jing Tsu on issues of approach, disciplinary history, and comparative Sinophone studies.

Speaker: Jing Tsu, Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, Yale University

Building on her recent work, Sound and Script in Chinese Diaspora (Harvard UP 2010), Professor Jing Tsu outlines the possibility of "New Area Studies," a focus in her current research. As the national borders of modern Chinese literature become more diffused than ever before, the methodological question of how to study national or comparative literatures, as traditions and critical paradigms become insufficient to the reality of diaspora and ethnic minorities in a global context, bears important relevance to the future of literary studies at large. Focusing on transnational alphabetization movements and the relationship between small-time literary players in the Sinophone world, this talk discusses issues of approach, disciplinary history, and comparative Sinophone studies.