Sinophone Studies Across Disciplines : A Reader

Sinophone studies―the study of Sinitic-language cultures and communities around the world―has become increasingly interdisciplinary over the past decade. Today, it spans not only literary studies and cinema studies but also history, anthropology, musicology, linguistics, art history, and dance. More and more, it is in conversation with fields such as postcolonial studies, settler-colonial studies, migration studies, ethnic studies, queer studies, and area studies.

This reader presents the latest and most cutting-edge work in Sinophone studies, bringing together both senior and emerging scholars to highlight the interdisciplinary reach and significance of this vital field. It argues that Sinophone studies has developed a distinctive conceptualization of power at the convergence of different intellectual traditions, offering new approaches to questions of plurality, hierarchy, oppression, and resistance. In so doing, this book shows, Sinophone studies has provided valuable conceptual tools for the study of minoritized and racialized communities in diverse global settings. Essays also consider how the rise of China has affected Sinophone communities and the idea of Chineseness around the world, among other timely topics. Showcasing cross-fertilization and diversification that traverse and transcend conventional scholarly boundaries, Sinophone Studies Across Disciplines gives readers an unparalleled survey of the past, present, and future of this inherently interdisciplinary field.

Howard Chiang is the Lai Ho & Wu Cho-liu Endowed Chair in Taiwan Studies, professor of East Asian languages and cultural studies, and director of the Center for Taiwan Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of After Eunuchs: Science, Medicine, and the Transformation of Sex in Modern China (Columbia, 2018) and Transtopia in the Sinophone Pacific (Columbia, 2021). Between 2019 and 2022, he served as the founding chair of the Society of Sinophone Studies.

Shu-mei Shih is the Irving and Jean Stone Chair in Humanities and professor of Asian languages and cultures, comparative literature, and Asian American studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is the author of Visuality and Identity: Sinophone Articulations Across the Pacific (2007), which has been credited as having inaugurated the field of Sinophone studies, and coeditor of Sinophone Studies: A Critical Reader (Columbia, 2013).