Coming of Age in Chinese Literature and Cinema
Sinophone Variations of the Bildungsroman
9789463720793
328 pages
Amsterdam University Press
Overview
With the inclusion of twelve original articles by established and emerging international scholars, this volume offers critical reading of literary and cinematic texts produced in China and Sinophone communities between the 1950s and 2010s. The articles portray the lineage and mutations of the Chinese Bildungsroman, providing insights into the tensions between individual and society; nation and the world; and the multiple social, ecological, and virtual realities of recent decades. Concerned with how coming-of-age narratives have persistently returned and evolved over time, the book addresses themes such as family and social change; gender, class, and generational divides, local/global politics, and the ecological and posthuman turns in Chinese/Sinophone culture. It offers a fresh look on how the transnational and transgenerational journeys of Bildungsroman and coming-of-age narratives continuously transform and reinvigorate generic conventions, to explore adolescence as a formative social force and aesthetic experience in Chinese/Sinophone literature and film.
Author Bio
Andrea Riemenschnitter is professor em. of Modern Chinese Language and Literature, University of Zurich. Her most recent book is Sinophone Utopias. Exploring Futures Beyond the China Dream (2023, co-ed.). She has published in Archiv Orientalni, AS, ICCC, Interventions, JMLC, MCLC, Monumenta Serica, etc.
Kiu-wai Chu is Assistant Professor in Environmental Humanities and Chinese Studies at Nanyang Technological University. He is a National Humanities Center Fellow 2022-23. His research focuses on environmental humanities, ecocriticism, and contemporary cinema and visual art in China and broader Asia.
Mung Ting Chung is Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Calgary. Her research interests include Hong Kong literature, Sinophone studies, and the cultural Cold War. Her first monograph, Writing Beyond Borders: Hong Kong Literary Production in the Early Cold War Era (tentative title), will be published by Brill.
