Author Description

"Since the initial conceptualization of Sinophone studies over a decade ago as the study of Sinitic-language cultures and communities marked by difference and heterogeneity around the world, scholarly work in the field has become more and more interdisciplinary, involving not only literary and cinema studies, but also history, anthropology, musicology, linguistics, art history, dance, and others. Nowadays "Sinophone" routinely appears as a specific marker with multiple implications that are no longer merely denotative, enabling, on the one hand, marginalized voices, sites, and practices to come into view, and, on the other hand, an expanded conversation with such fields as postcolonial studies, settler colonial studies, migration studies, ethnic studies, queer studies, and area studies. There have been vibrant debates at the definitional and conceptual level about critical issues and standpoints, such as the mis/uses of the diasporic framework (diaspora as history versus diaspora as value), the difficulty of overcoming Chineseness, the strength and pitfalls of language-determined identities, imperial and anti-imperial politics, racialization and self-determination of minority peoples, place-based cultural practices, the dialectics between roots and routes, and many others. Given that scholars in disciplines other than literary and cinema studies have begun to join these conversations, the present juncture affords an opportunity to take stock of where this inherently interdisciplinary field has been, where it is going, and where it might go in the future. Even though Sinophone studies grew out of debates in literary analysis, this book argues that its conceptualization of power is what distinguishes its contribution to multiple disciplines across a plethora of topics concerned with overturning the status quo. As the field expands beyond the tenor of purely literary concerns-including matters of categorization and inclusionary parameters-not only does Sinophone studie