LRCCS Noon Lecture Series | Indigenous Voices, Global Echoes: Chinese Ethnic Minority Literature and the ‘Transnational Tribal Solidarity’

Home to fifty-five officially recognized ethnic minority groups, China has witnessed a vibrant blossoming of multiethnic literature produced by its non-Han groups in the reform era. In Western scholarship, such multiethnic literary voices have remained largely silent and understudied. Drawing from her first book manuscript, in this talk, Dr. Zhang will offer a critical and timely introduction to Chinese ethnic minority literature from a global perspective. Particularly, she will demonstrate how literature produced by ethnic groups of southwest China seeks to forge a "transnational tribal solidarity:" minority poets articulate their connections to Native American cultures and Latin American literary influences. Rooted in both indigenous traditions and transnational cultural imagination, contemporary Chinese minority literature is vital for scholars of China and global multiculturalism to understand the movements, interactions, and negotiations taking place between indigenous/ethnic communities, the nation, and transnational forces in our increasingly interconnected world.

Yanshuo Zhang is a postdoctoral fellow in the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of Michigan. Her current book manuscript, tentatively titled "Beyond Minority: The Qiang and Ethno-national Imagination in Modern China," is an innovative interdisciplinary project that combines anthropological field research in the ethnic regions of southwest China with close reading of previously under-studied minority cultural articulations in contemporary China. Dr. Zhang's articles have appeared or will appear in positions: "asia critique," " Prism: Theory and Modern Chinese Literature," "Heritage and Society," among other journals. She received her PhD in Chinese Literature and Culture from Stanford University and grew up in China's multiethnic Sichuan Province.

Zoom webinar, attendance requires registration: https://umich.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_7HcSZv1IQF-hC0mcsJw-xg