Faculty of ArtSocial Justice @ UBC Noted Scholars Lecture Series
The Intimate Public Sphere: Thinking Through the Skin
Dr. Chris Lee
Associate Professor of English and Director of Asian Canadian and Asian Migration Studies, UBC
Before 1947, the vast majority of Chinese in Canada were men, most of whom were separated from extended families in China. While the “bachelor man” is a well known figure in Chinese Canadian history an
d politics, he is curiously neglected in contemporary Anglophone Chinese Canadian literature. Rather than a clear-cut case of historical mis-representation, this absence reveals the complex intersections of nationalism, race, and sexuality. This talk traces the representation of bachelor men in works by SKY Lee and Winston Christopher Kam in order to theorize the “worldliness” of Chinese Canadian writing vis-à-vis transnational histories of Chinese migration.
Dr. Chris Lee is Associate Professor of English and Director of UBC’s new program in Asian Canadian and Asian Migration Studies. He is the author of The Semblance of Identity: Aesthetic Mediation and Asian American Literature (Stanford University Press, 2012, winner of the Literary Criticism book award from the Association for Asian American Studies) and a co-editor of Tracing the Lines: Reflections on Contemporary Poetics and Cultural Politics in Honour of Roy Miki (Talonbooks, 2013). He is the Canada Area Editor of Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures in the Americas. His current research focuses on trans-Pacific literary thought in the Cold War Chinese diaspora and the politics of realism in contemporary Chinese Canadian literature.
Date: Wednesday Nov 12, 12pm*
Location: 2080 West Mall, Jack Bell Bldg. Room 028
University of British Columbia
Directions to GRSJ on UBC Campus: http://bit.ly/R5WyjE
*Lunch will be provided for those who RSVP. RSVP here.
Co-sponsored by Department of English, John’s College and Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice