Sinophone Challenges to Postcolonial Theory

This lecture will examine the interlinked historical formations of the Anglophone, the Francophone and the Sinophone in an effort to consider postcolonial theory comparatively as well as relationally. The purpose of the lecture is three-fold, all with methodological implications: to intervene in the predominant Anglo-Franco focus of postcolonial theory, to offer new ways of theorizing the postcolonial from Sinophone perspectives, and finally, to propose a way of considering comparison as a method that is not a comparison of discrete historical and literary formations, but a search for relationality among them.

Invited Speaker

Professor Shu-mei Shih, UCLA

Shu-mei Shih is a Professor in the Departments of Comparative Literature, Asian Languages and Cultures, and Asian American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). She has published extensively in the field of Sinophone studies, comparative studies, and world literature. Notable publications include Sinophone Studies: A Critical Reader (co-edited with Brian Bernards and Chien-hsin Tsai, Columbia UP, 2013); The Creolization of Theory (co-edited with Françoise Lionnet, Duke UP, 2011); Visuality and Identity: Sinophone Articulations Across the Pacific (U of California Press, 2007); and Minor Transnationalism (co-edited with Françoise Lionnet, Duke UP, 2005).

Photo Credits

Top banner image: Untitled by Hung Chang (c. 1959). Oil on canvas. Cover image of Sinophone Studies: A Critical Reader.

Profile image: Professor Shu-mei Shih, UCLA http://newsroom.ucla.edu/dept/faculty/brief-20180402-2653512