Professor of English and American Literature at National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei. My research and teaching interests include the history of American literature, modern American novel, Travel Literature, Crime Fiction and 19th century English and American literature. I have a PhD in English and American Literature from the University of Virginia.
Subject to colonial incursions for centuries, Taiwan has long struggled to define itself. Even to... more Subject to colonial incursions for centuries, Taiwan has long struggled to define itself. Even today, after the May 2016 inauguration of President Tsai Ing-wen of the independence-supporting Democratic Progressive Party, the island is once again wracked by debate over its status: Is it an independent nation, or a province of China? Which aspects of its complex history should be seized upon to define its present and future? By some definitions “postnational,” modern Taiwan people are actively shaping their citizen-identities based on social experience and economic and cultural reality rather than unwieldy and outdated ideological constructs. In this essay I look at two recent English-language novels set in Taiwan, Francie Lin’s The Foreigner and Julie Wu’s The Third Son, which feature Taiwanese American protagonists who struggle with personal and cultural history in coming to terms with their own complex identity. Approaching these characters as “postnational” figures, I find ways in which their experience can be seen to parallel Taiwan’s own uncertain and dynamic situation.
In exploring multiple and shifting definitions of ”home” as private domestic space, as nation of ... more In exploring multiple and shifting definitions of ”home” as private domestic space, as nation of origin or adoption, and as a powerful literary metaphor for identity and security, this paper focuses on the efforts at homemaking away from home by two expatriate American women writers, Pearl Buck and Gertrude Stein. At the turn of the 20(superscript th) century, Buck, the child of missionaries in remote China, and Stein, at the vanguard of a cultural revolution in Paris, created homes away from their native America in real life and in creative work. While Buck and Stein diverge greatly in style, cultural perspective and literary reputation, they appear together in this paper because in their work both focus on issues of home and ”intimate” uses of geography and location. Each in her own way pondered issues of national and cultural origins as well, in particular her relationship with her native America and with the other places she called home. In making homes abroad, each went through...
Travel to Japan inspired in writers Lafcadio Hearn and Angela Carter new perspectives on the Goth... more Travel to Japan inspired in writers Lafcadio Hearn and Angela Carter new perspectives on the Gothic vision that played a prominent role in their work. Hearn, an Anglo-American literary journalist whose essays and short fiction in New Orleans and the French West Indies evinced a strong penchant for the macabre and the occult, found in fin-de-siecle Japan his dream home. Hearn, who became a Japanese citizen, made a name for himself that endures to the present day with his observations of Japanese life, customs and history, as well as his reworking of old legends and tales of the weird and supernatural. Nearly a century later, British novelist and short-story writer Angela Carter spent two years in Japan and produced a collection of travel articles and stories based on her experiences there. Although the travel motif has always been a feature of Gothic fiction, in this essay I analyze the Gothic mode as it appears in the travel literature Hearn and Carter produced, in which they reworked the Gothic tradition they had inherited to produce work that reveals startling insights into cultural crossing and personal identity, inflected with race, status and gender norms. New approaches to both the Self and Other emerge from their innovations to the Gothic genre from the remote perspective of Japan, a country that metamorphoses in their writing into both a scenic location and a symbolic imaginary that haunts Hearn and Carter, and their readers, in different ways.
... garden at the end, while Mr. Craven is reconciled with his son in an Eden-like setting. The t... more ... garden at the end, while Mr. Craven is reconciled with his son in an Eden-like setting. The true Edenic moment of The Jungle Books occurs in its mythic past, when the jungle people ''walked together, having no fear of one another,'' and ate only plants. After the First Tiger kills a ...
Travel to Japan inspired in writers Lafcadio Hearn and Angela Carter new perspectives on the Goth... more Travel to Japan inspired in writers Lafcadio Hearn and Angela Carter new perspectives on the Gothic vision that played a prominent role in their work. Hearn, an Anglo-American literary journalist whose essays and short fiction in New Orleans and the French West Indies evinced a strong pen-chant for the macabre and the occult, found in fin-de-siècle Japan his dream home. Hearn, who became a Japanese citizen, made a name for himself that endures to the present day with his observations of Japanese life, customs and history, as well as his reworking of old legends and tales of the weird and supernatural. Nearly a century later, British novelist and short-story writer Angela Carter spent two years in Japan and produced a collection of travel articles and stories based on her experiences there. Although the travel motif has always been a feature of Gothic fiction, in this essay I analyze the Gothic mode as it appears in the travel literature Hearn and Carter produced, in which they reworked the Gothic tradition they had inherited to produce work that reveals startling insights into cultural crossing and personal identity , inflected with race, status and gender norms. New approaches to both the Self and Other emerge from their innovations to the Gothic genre from
Subject to colonial incursions for centuries, Taiwan has long struggled to define itself. Even to... more Subject to colonial incursions for centuries, Taiwan has long struggled to define itself. Even today, after the May 2016 inauguration of President Tsai Ing-wen of the independence-supporting Democratic Progressive Party, the island is once again wracked by debate over its status: Is it an independent nation, or a province of China? Which aspects of its complex history should be seized upon to define its present and future? By some definitions “postnational,” modern Taiwan people are actively shaping their citizen-identities based on social experience and economic and cultural reality rather than unwieldy and outdated ideological constructs. In this essay I look at two recent English-language novels set in Taiwan, Francie Lin’s The Foreigner and Julie Wu’s The Third Son, which feature Taiwanese American protagonists who struggle with personal and cultural history in coming to terms with their own complex identity. Approaching these characters as “postnational” figures, I find ways in which their experience can be seen to parallel Taiwan’s own uncertain and dynamic situation.
In exploring multiple and shifting definitions of ”home” as private domestic space, as nation of ... more In exploring multiple and shifting definitions of ”home” as private domestic space, as nation of origin or adoption, and as a powerful literary metaphor for identity and security, this paper focuses on the efforts at homemaking away from home by two expatriate American women writers, Pearl Buck and Gertrude Stein. At the turn of the 20(superscript th) century, Buck, the child of missionaries in remote China, and Stein, at the vanguard of a cultural revolution in Paris, created homes away from their native America in real life and in creative work. While Buck and Stein diverge greatly in style, cultural perspective and literary reputation, they appear together in this paper because in their work both focus on issues of home and ”intimate” uses of geography and location. Each in her own way pondered issues of national and cultural origins as well, in particular her relationship with her native America and with the other places she called home. In making homes abroad, each went through...
Travel to Japan inspired in writers Lafcadio Hearn and Angela Carter new perspectives on the Goth... more Travel to Japan inspired in writers Lafcadio Hearn and Angela Carter new perspectives on the Gothic vision that played a prominent role in their work. Hearn, an Anglo-American literary journalist whose essays and short fiction in New Orleans and the French West Indies evinced a strong penchant for the macabre and the occult, found in fin-de-siecle Japan his dream home. Hearn, who became a Japanese citizen, made a name for himself that endures to the present day with his observations of Japanese life, customs and history, as well as his reworking of old legends and tales of the weird and supernatural. Nearly a century later, British novelist and short-story writer Angela Carter spent two years in Japan and produced a collection of travel articles and stories based on her experiences there. Although the travel motif has always been a feature of Gothic fiction, in this essay I analyze the Gothic mode as it appears in the travel literature Hearn and Carter produced, in which they reworked the Gothic tradition they had inherited to produce work that reveals startling insights into cultural crossing and personal identity, inflected with race, status and gender norms. New approaches to both the Self and Other emerge from their innovations to the Gothic genre from the remote perspective of Japan, a country that metamorphoses in their writing into both a scenic location and a symbolic imaginary that haunts Hearn and Carter, and their readers, in different ways.
... garden at the end, while Mr. Craven is reconciled with his son in an Eden-like setting. The t... more ... garden at the end, while Mr. Craven is reconciled with his son in an Eden-like setting. The true Edenic moment of The Jungle Books occurs in its mythic past, when the jungle people ''walked together, having no fear of one another,'' and ate only plants. After the First Tiger kills a ...
Travel to Japan inspired in writers Lafcadio Hearn and Angela Carter new perspectives on the Goth... more Travel to Japan inspired in writers Lafcadio Hearn and Angela Carter new perspectives on the Gothic vision that played a prominent role in their work. Hearn, an Anglo-American literary journalist whose essays and short fiction in New Orleans and the French West Indies evinced a strong pen-chant for the macabre and the occult, found in fin-de-siècle Japan his dream home. Hearn, who became a Japanese citizen, made a name for himself that endures to the present day with his observations of Japanese life, customs and history, as well as his reworking of old legends and tales of the weird and supernatural. Nearly a century later, British novelist and short-story writer Angela Carter spent two years in Japan and produced a collection of travel articles and stories based on her experiences there. Although the travel motif has always been a feature of Gothic fiction, in this essay I analyze the Gothic mode as it appears in the travel literature Hearn and Carter produced, in which they reworked the Gothic tradition they had inherited to produce work that reveals startling insights into cultural crossing and personal identity , inflected with race, status and gender norms. New approaches to both the Self and Other emerge from their innovations to the Gothic genre from
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