Speaker:
Professor Liu Dong, Department of Chinese and History, City University of Hong Kong
Moderator:
Professor Daniel Elam, Department of Comparative Literature, HKU
Date: Tuesday, January 30, 2024
Time: 10:30 am (Hong Kong Time)
Venue: Room 1069, 10/F, Run Run Shaw Tower, HKU
This lecture re-evaluates the literary phenomenon of the “Chinese Northeastern Writers Group,” a group of young writers who were both exiled from and wrote about Dongbei from the 1930s to the 1950s. Well-known group members include Xiao Hong, Xiao Jun, Duanmu Hongliang, and Luo Binji. Focusing on their moments of emergence into Chinese literary circles, this project intends to account for the astonishing similarities that exist in their literary debut and life decisions. Despite distinct upbringings and backgrounds, they all fell into the “rabbit hole” of the Chinese Communist Revolution (un)intentionally. Identifying them as biomarkers makes it possible to decipher the hidden networks that help channel the exchange among people and books, as well as the transmission of knowledge and information built by the Comintern, the Chinese Communist Party, and its peripheral organizations. Narratives authored by Dongbei writers testify to the multi-dimensional interactions between the Chinese (also Global) left-wing literature movement and the Communist Revolution.
LIU Dong is Assistant Professor in the Department of Chinese and History at the City University of Hong Kong. He received his Ph.D. from Peking University, where he was also awarded the Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award (2023). He specializes in the history of modern Chinese literature, while his research interests include Chinese leftist literature, Dongbei studies, and Sino-American cultural relations. He is currently working on his first project “The Cognitive Topos of the ‘Northeastern Writers Group’: Trans-local Circulations, (Inter-)nationalist Politics and Literary Production.” He is also compiling a collection of Hu Shih’s overseas correspondence.
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