[19th Talk] Asst. Prof. Dr. Chan Cheow Thia: “Malaysian Crossings: Place and Language in the Worlding of Modern Chinese Literature”
Upcoming Event
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Introduction |
The nineteenth talk of the “Tan Lark Sye Lecture Series” will take place soon. The speaker Dr. Chan Cheow Thia will speak on his new published book with titled Malaysian Crossings: Place and Language in the Worlding of Modern Chinese Literature. By highlighting Mahua literature’s distinctive mode of evolution, Dr. Chan demonstrates that authors’ grasp of their marginality in the world-Chinese literary space has been the impetus for—rather than a barrier to—aesthetic inventiveness. He foregrounds the historical links between Malaysia and other Chinese-speaking regions, tracing how Mahua writers engage in the “worlding” of modern Chinese literature by navigating interconnected literary spaces. Focusing on writers including Lin Cantian, Han Suyin, Wang Anyi, and Li Yongping, whose works craft signature literary languages, Chan examines narrative representations of multilingual social realities and authorial reflections on colonial Malaya or independent Malaysia as valid literary terrain. Delineating the inter-Asian “crossings” of Mahua literary production—physical journeys, interactions among social groups, and mindset shifts—from the 1930s to the 2000s, he contends that new perspectives from the periphery are essential to understanding the globalization of modern Chinese literature. By emphasizing the inner diversities and connected histories in the margins, Malaysian Crossings offers a powerful argument for remapping global Chinese literature and world literature. |
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Speaker |
Asst. Prof. Dr. Chan Cheow Thia (Assistant Professor, Department of Chinese Studies, National University of Singapore) |
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Moderator |
Dr. Wong Siew Jye (Senior Lecturer in the Department of Chinese Language and Literature, Musician, and Writer at New Era University College) Dr. Wong Siew Jye holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Malaya. He has previously served as the Head of the Chinese Language Department at UNITAR, a research fellow at a think tank, a lyricist and composer for Universal Music, and a lecturer for literary creation courses at the University of Malaya. He is currently a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Chinese Language and Literature at New Era University College. Dr. Wong has contributed to academic works such as Fourteen Lectures on Malaysian Chinese Literature and Interpretation of Malaysian Chinese Literary Texts. He has also published several novels, including In the Future, Will You Be Well?, The Heartbeat Hidden Beneath the Cold Mecha, Moments Frozen in Time: Are You There?, The White Dwarf Fence, The Hacker Incident Files: The Invisible Killer, Eye of Heaven (3 volumes), and Seeing GModerators, among others. Many of his literary works have been featured in domestic and international literary journals. In addition to his literary achievements, Dr. Wong’s songs and lyrics have been included in albums by well-known domestic and international singers. |
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Information |
Date: 28 June 2023 (Wednesday) |
Trailer (Video)
Lecture Postscript
The 19th session of the "Tan Lark Sye Lecture Series," organized by the Institute of International Education, New Era University College (IIE, NEUC) and the Tan Lark Sye Institute, was held on 28 June. The guest speakers for this event was Asst. Prof. Dr. Chan Cheow Thia, from the Department of Chinese Studies at the National University of Singapore. It was attended by more than 100 people.
The keynote speaker, Asst. Prof. Dr. Chan Cheow Thia, is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chinese Studies at the National University of Singapore. Dr. Chan holds a bachelor’s degree from the Department of Chinese at Fudan University, a Master of Philosophy in Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (Sinology) from the University of Cambridge, and a Ph.D. from the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures at Yale University. His primary research interests include modern and contemporary Chinese literature, Sinophone studies (with a focus on Singaporean and Malaysian literature), diaspora studies, and Southeast Asian studies.
This lecture was titled “Malaysian Crossings: Place and Language in the Worlding of Modern Chinese Literature”. Dr. Chan introduced Malaysian Chinese (Mahua) literature to explain a unique way in which modern Chinese/Sinophone literature shapes and improves the world and its own creative conditions ("worlding"). This method involves writers adopting various writing strategies to connect different literary spaces across multiple scales. Dr. Chan highlighted how creators, through practice, negotiate the inter-Asian connections between Malaya/Malaysia and other Sinophone regions, focusing on how their works portray multilingual social realities and how they reflect on colonial Malaya or post-colonial Malaysia as legitimate literary subjects. These considerations permeate the literary worlds constructed in Mahua literature, incorporating the authors’ travel experiences, their mental shifts in creating unique literary languages for their local context, and the interactions between different communities. Dr. Chan argued that alternative perspectives generated in marginal spaces are crucial for understanding the globalization of Chinese/Sinophone literature. He also emphasized the internal diversity of the margins and the historical cross-regional connections, suggesting a re-mapping of global Chinese/Sinophone literature and even world literature. The event was moderated by Assistant Professor Dr. Lew Siew Boon from NEUC. It received enthusiastic feedback, with the audience actively participating in the Q&A session and eagerly engaging in discussions.
