Prof. Zhang Yingjin

A located approach to Chinese literature as world literature and tracks parallel debates on world literature and world cinema by revisiting recurring issues of invisibility, circulation, mapping, worlding, cosmopolitanism, humanism, and globalization. The first section tracks the invisible locations of China in the history of world literature. The second section discusses the emphasis on circulation in new world literature that emerged at the turn of the new millennium and its discontents. The third section examines a parallel development in world cinema and its proactive engagement with circulation and globalization as well as its self-awareness of its evolving locations over the twentieth century. The final section returns to the question of locations of China by evaluating competing positions on world literature in China and the West as well as interrogating what the periodic refashioning of literary studies in the West would mean to Chinese literature as world literature.