Chinese Science Fiction during the Post-Mao Cultural Thaw

Chinese Science Fiction during the Post-Mao Cultural Thaw
Author: Hua Li
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 245
Release: 2021-06-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1487537816

The late 1970s to the mid-1980s, a period commonly referred to as the post-Mao cultural thaw, was a key transitional phase in the evolution of Chinese science fiction. This period served as a bridge between science-popularization science fiction of the 1950s and 1960s and New Wave Chinese science fiction from the 1990s into the twenty-first century. Chinese Science Fiction during the Post-Mao Cultural Thaw surveys the field of Chinese science fiction and its multimedia practice, analysing and assessing science fiction works by well-known writers such as Ye Yonglie, Zheng Wenguang, Tong Enzheng, and Xiao Jianheng, as well as the often-overlooked tech–science fiction writers of the post-Mao thaw. Exploring the socio-political and cultural dynamics of science-related Chinese literature during this period, Hua Li combines close readings of original Chinese literary texts with literary analysis informed by scholarship on science fiction as a genre, Chinese literary history, and media studies. Li argues that this science fiction of the post-Mao thaw began its rise as a type of government-backed literature, yet it often stirred up controversy and received pushback as a contentious and boundary-breaking genre. Topically structured and interdisciplinary in scope, Chinese Science Fiction during the Post-Mao Cultural Thaw will appeal to both scholars and fans of science fiction.

Chinese Science Fiction

Chinese Science Fiction
Author: Hua Li
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 245
Release: 2021
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1487508239

This is the first book in English to focus on the transitional period of Chinese science fiction - a key prelude to the increasingly global stature of Chinese science fiction in the twenty-first century.

The Bloomsbury Handbook of Modern Chinese Literature in Translation

The Bloomsbury Handbook of Modern Chinese Literature in Translation
Author: Cosima Bruno
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 473
Release: 2023-10-19
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1350215317

Offering the first systematic overview of modern and contemporary Chinese literature from a translation studies perspective, this handbook provides students, researchers and teachers with a context in which to read and appreciate the effects of linguistic and cultural transfer in Chinese literary works. Translation matters. It always has, of course, but more so when we want to reap the benefits of intercultural communication. In many universities Chinese literature in English translation is taught as if it had been written in English. As a result, students submit what they read to their own cultural expectations; they do not read in translation and do not attend to the protocols of knowing, engagements and contestations that bind literature and society to each other. The Bloomsbury Handbook of Modern Chinese Literature in Translation squarely addresses this pedagogical lack. Organised in a tripartite structure around considerations of textual, social, and large-scale spatial and historical circumstances, its thirty plus essays each deal with a theme of translation studies, as emerged from the translation of one or more Chinese literary works. In doing so, it offers new tools for reading and appreciating modern and contemporary Chinese literature in the global context of its translation, offering in-depth studies about eminent Chinese authors and their literary masterpieces in translation. The first of its kind, this book is essential reading for anyone studying or researching Chinese literature in translation.

A World History of Chinese Literature

A World History of Chinese Literature
Author: Yingjin Zhang
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 553
Release: 2023-07-25
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1000895068

Providing a broad introduction to the area, A World History of Chinese Literature maps the field of Chinese literature across its various worlds, looking both within – at the world of Chinese literature, its history, linguistic, cultural, local, and regional specificities – and without – at the way Chinese literature has circulated throughout the world. The thematic focus allows for a broad number of key categories, such as authors, genres, genders, regions, as well as innovative explorations of new topics and issues such as inter-arts performativity and transmediation. The sections cover the circulation and reception of China in world literature, as well as the worlds of: Chinese literature across the globe Borders, oceans, and rainforests Comparative literary genres Translingual writers and scholars Gender configurations Translation and transmediation With a focus on the twentieth and twenty-first century, this collection intervenes in current debates on global Chinese literature, Sinophone and Sinoscript studies, and the production and reception of literary works by ethnic Chinese in non-Sinitic languages, as well as Anglophone literature inspired by Chinese literary tradition. It will be of interest to anyone working on or studying Chinese literature, language and culture, as well as world literatures in relation to China.

Unlocking the Future

Unlocking the Future
Author: Luo Xiaoming
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 207
Release: 2023-04-28
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1000876489

The book highlights the urban imagination in contemporary Chinese science fiction, in order to assess the capacity of Chinese society to conceive of the future. The author argues that ‘the future’ is a set of directional and normative ideas that forms the basis of the entire social mobilization mechanism in China, while the capacity to imagine the future is likely to be produced in response to the present challenges. By discussing the urban space, the reconstruction of time, the infrastructure, and concepts of the 'urban-rural' and civilization in contemporary Chinese science fiction, she demonstrates how contemporary Chinese sci-fi may offer potential solutions to ways of ‘unlocking’ the future. In addition, she also points out the limitations of Chinese society’s imaginative vision of the future. The book will be of interest to scholars and postgraduate students of modern Chinese literature, science fiction studies, urban studies, or cultural studies.

Routledge Handbook of Chinese Gender & Sexuality

Routledge Handbook of Chinese Gender & Sexuality
Author: Jamie J. Zhao
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 398
Release: 2024-05-10
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1040015190

This Handbook offers a rich survey of topics concerning historical, modern and contemporary Chinese genders and sexualities. Exploring gender and sexuality as key dimensions of China’s modernisation and globalisation, this Handbook effectively situates Chinese gender and sexuality in transnational and transcultural contexts. It also spotlights nonnormative practices and emancipatory potentials within mainstream, heterosexual-dominated and patriarchally structured settings. It serves as a definitive study, research and resource guide for emerging gender and sexuality issues in the Chinese-speaking world. This Handbook covers interdisciplinary methodologies, perspectives and topics, including: History Literature Art Fashion Migration Translation Sex and desire Film and television Digital media Star and fan cultures Fantasies and lives of women and LGBTQ+ groups Social movements Transnational feminist and queer politics Paying acute attention to nonnormative genders and sexualities and emphasising the intersectionality of gender, sexuality, nationality, ethnicity and class, this Handbook offers an essential, field-defining text to Chinese gender and sexuality studies.

Fear of Seeing

Fear of Seeing
Author: Mingwei Song
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 235
Release: 2023-10-03
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0231555539

Winner, 2023 SFRA Book Award, Science Fiction Research Association A new wave of cutting-edge, risk-taking science fiction has energized twenty-first-century Chinese literature. These works capture the anticipation and anxieties of China’s new era, speaking to a future filled with uncertainties. Deeply entangled with the politics and culture of a changing China, contemporary science fiction has also attracted a growing global readership. Fear of Seeing traces the new wave’s origin and development over the past three decades, exploring the core concerns and literary strategies that make it so distinctive and vital. Mingwei Song argues that recent Chinese science fiction is united by a capacity to illuminate what had been invisible—what society had chosen not to see; what conventional literature had failed to represent. Its poetics of the invisible opens up new literary possibilities and inspires new ways of telling stories about China and the world. Reading the works of major writers such as Liu Cixin and Han Song as well as lesser-known figures, Song explores how science fiction has spurred larger changes in contemporary literature and culture. He analyzes key topics: variations of utopia and dystopia, cyborgs and the posthuman, and nonbinary perspectives on gender and genre, among many more. A compelling and authoritative account of the politics and poetics of contemporary Chinese science fiction, Fear of Seeing is an important book for all readers interested in the genre’s significance for twenty-first-century literature.

Embodied Memories, Embedded Healing

Embodied Memories, Embedded Healing
Author: Xinmin Liu
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 301
Release: 2021-10-28
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 1793647607

Embodied Memories, Embedded Healing critically engages with the major East Asian cultural knowledge, beliefs, and practices that influence environmental consciousness in the twenty-first century. This volume examines key thinkers and aspects of Daoist, Confucianist, Buddhist, indigenous, animistic, and neo-Confucianist thought. With a particular focus on animistic perspectives on environmental healing and environmental consciousness, the contributors also engage with media studies (eco-cinema), food studies, critical animal studies, biotechnology, and the material sciences.

Continuity and Change in Asia

Continuity and Change in Asia
Author: Kraus, Filip
Publisher: Palacký University Olomouc
Total Pages: 600
Release:
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 8024463482

Téma kontinuity a změn v Asii je obecně přijímané jako důležitý a složitý problém. Asie je považována za jednu z nejdynamičtěji se rozvíjejících částí světa. Rychlé proměny Asijských ekonomických, politických a sociálních či kulturních systémů poskytují řadu námětů ke zkoumání v takových oblastech, jako je antropologie, etnografie, lingvistika a literární studia, či v takových vědních oborech, jako jsou sociální, politická a ekonomická studia. Obzvláště po několika letech opatření proti šíření Covid-19 je důležité porozumět tomu, co zůstalo stejné, či co se mohlo změnit a být navždy ztraceno. The theme of ‘continuity and change’ is generally acknowledged as an important and a highly complex problem. Asia is considered as one of the most dynamically changing parts of the worlds. The quick economic, political and socio-cultural changes are generating interesting topics in those scholarly fields such as anthropology, ethnography, linguistics and literary studies, or in other fields of social, political and economic science. Especially after the years of anti-Covid 19, measures it is important to understand what remains stable or what had been changed and may be lost forever.