Jin Feng (Grinnell College)

The International Writing Program (IWP), co-founded by American poet Paul Engle and his wife, Sinophone novelist Hua-ling Nieh Engle at the University of Iowa, invited 57 writers from mainland China, 64 from Taiwan and 29 from Hong Kong from 1979 to 2019. Bringing literary representations of the residency by Chinese writers into a productive dialogue with field research and historical analysis, the talk will show that translation functioned as a tool for not only literary exchange but also cultural diplomacy in the tumultuous “first encounters” between Chinese literature and world literature on the platforms provided by IWP.