Book Talk: 𝘛𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘴𝘱𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘢𝘭 𝘔𝘰𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘯𝘪𝘵𝘺: 𝘊𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘦 𝘊𝘶𝘭𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘢𝘭 𝘌𝘯𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘴 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘙𝘶𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘢 𝘷𝘪𝘢 𝘑𝘢𝘱𝘢𝘯 (1880–1930) by Xiaolu Ma

Speaker/Author: Xiaolu Ma is assistant professor in the Division of Humanities at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. She engages in research in the interrelationship of trans-Eurasian literature and culture in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She is the author of Transpatial Modernity: Chinese Cultural Encounters with Russia via Japan (1880–1930) (Harvard University Asia Center, 2024). Her research articles have been published or are forthcoming in peer-reviewed journals, including JAS, PMLA, Modern Language Quarter.

Moderator: David Wang, Edward C. Henderson Professor of Chinese Literature, Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University

Online via Zoom webinar. To join, register here. 

More about the book: Transpatial Modernity offers the first in-depth account of the triangular relationship among Chinese, Japanese, and Russian literature and culture in the modern era. Drawing on primary sources in all three languages—among others—Xiaolu Ma reveals how Chinese writers translated and appropriated Russian cultural tropes through the intermediary of Japanese writing in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. To trace the global journey of these literatures and ideas, Ma maps four case studies involving leading cultural figures including Leo Tolstoy, Futabatei Shimei, and Lu Xun. Together, they demonstrate the central role of relay transculturation—cultural exchange among at least three cultures, one of which serves primarily as an intermediary—as the key to understanding East Asian modernity. Not limited to a dyadic relationship between source and target culture, Transpatial Modernity explores the implications of cultural brokerage within complex transculturation process, thus establishing the value of a new transpatial framework for understanding literary and cultural exchange in local, regional, and global contexts.