Speaker: SHENG, Anfeng

Professor Anfeng Sheng teaches English literatures and literary theories in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at Tsinghua University. His interests in scholarship include English literatures, comparative literature and contemporary literary theories. In addition to numerous articles, Sheng's recent book publications include A Study of Homi K. Bhabha's Postcolonial Theory (2011) and the edited volumes: Intellectual Interrogation: Interviews with Contemporary Cultural Theorists (2010) and The Construction of Literary and Cultural Theories and the Internationalization of Chinese Scholarship (2015). 

Abstract: In this talk, the speaker explores the cosmopolitan elements in Lao She's work, which are intermingled with his apparently patriotic even nationalistic narratives. The speaker wants to argue that as Lao She’s ultimate dream for the entire humanity, this cosmopolitan idealism, or the Great Unity of the world, comes from his own Manchu origin against the backdrop of the Han majority in China, his isolated personal experience as a young lecturer sojourning in London, the bitter experience of him and his family caused by the Western and Japanese invasions, his ambiguous religious believes, and his inheritance of the traditional Confucius culturing.