-Karen L. Thornber, Harvard University
"This book is, at once, the best possible introduction to recent debates on world literature
from the perspective of Chinese-Sinophone literatures, and a summa critica that thinks
through their transcultural drives, global travels, varied worldings, and translational forces.
The comparative perspectives gathered here accomplish the necessary and urgent task
of reconfiguring both the idea of the world in world literature and the ways we study the
inscriptions of Chinese-Sinophone literatures in the world."
-Mariano Siskind, Harvard University
In The Making of Chinese-Sinophone Literatures as World Literature, Kuei-fen Chiu and Yingjin
Zhang aim to bridge the distance between the scholarship of world literature and that of
Chinese and Sinophone literary studies. This edited volume advances research on world
literature by bringing in new developments in Chinese/Sinophone literatures and adds a
much-needed new global perspective on Chinese literary studies beyond the traditional
national literature paradigm and its recent critique by Sinophone studies. In addition to
a critical mapping of the domains of world literature, Sinophone literature, and world
literature in Chinese to delineate the nuanced differences of these three disciplines, the book
addresses the issues of translation, genre, and the impact of media and technology on our
understanding of "literature" and "literary prestige." It also provides critical studies of the
complicated ways in which Chinese and Sinophone literatures are translated, received, and
reinvested across various genres and media, and thus circulate as world literature. The issues
taken up by the contributors to this volume promise fruitful polemical interventions in the
studies of world literature from the vantage point of Chinese and Sinophone literatures.
Kuei-fen Chiu is chair professor of Taiwan literature and transnational cultural studies at
National Chung Hsing University in Taiwan. She is the co-author of New Chinese-Language
Documentaries: Ethics, Subject and Place (2015) and co-editor of Taiwan Cinema, International
Reception, and Social Change (2017).
Yingjin Zhang is distinguished professor of comparative
literature at University of California, San Diego, as well as
visiting chair professor of humanities at Shanghai Jiao Tong
University, China. He is the author of Cinema, Space, and
Polylocality in a Globalizing China (2010) and co-editor of
Locating Taiwan Cinema in the Twenty-First Century (2020).