CULTURAL STUDIES AND COMPARATIVE LITERATURE FACULTY
E.K. Tan
Associate ProfessorPh.D. – University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign – October 2007
 |
| EngKiong.Tan@stonybrook.edu | 631-632- 7457 | 1093 Humanities |
|
E.K. Tan is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies. He received his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He specializes in modern and contemporary Chinese literature, Sinophone studies, Southeast Asian studies, Queer Asia, Postocolonial and Diaspora theory. His first book Rethinking Chineseness: Translational Sinophone Identities in the Nanyang Literary World examines the relationship between the Nanyang Chinese, their original homelands (Borneo, Malaysia and Singapore), and their imaginary homeland (China) through the works of Anglophone and Sinophone writers such as Kuo Pao Kun (郭寶崑), Zhang Guixing (張貴興) and Vyvyane Loh(羅惠賢). The manuscript identifies the methods with which these writers have reclaimed a sense of belonging to their homelands by destabilizing the notion of Chineseness. It argues that, as a Sinophone culture, the Nanyang Chinese identity is translatable, translational and relational as it traverses between the local and the global. His current book project, Queer Homecoming in Sinophone Cultures: Translocal Remapping of Kinship, proposes the concept of “queer homecoming” as critical intervention to the normative patrilineal kinship structure in Sinophone societies defined by traditional family values, such as those of Confucianism. It argues that queer homecoming as intervention to heteronormative kinship system enables the articulations of alternative kinship structures in mainstream cultural expressions (in literature, film, social and new media) to destabilize the fixity of the myth of consanguinity among Sinophone communities. Concurrently, he is working on a project that examines the impact of language policies on Sinophone cultural productions in literature and media (radio,film, etc.). He has published articles in Journal of Modern Chinese Literature, Sun Yat-Sen Journal of Humanities, Journal of Chinese Cinemas, Journal of World Chinese Literature, and others. His recent publications include “In Search of New Forms: Impact of Bilingual Policy and “Speak Mandarin” Campaign on Sinophone Singapore Poetry” in Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies and “From Exile to Homecoming: Chen Xue’s A Wife’s Diary” in Oxford Handbook of Modern Chinese Literatures (Oxford University Press, 2017).
A list of his publications can be found here.
 |
 |
 |