Jeffrey C Kinkley (Editor)

Zhou Gang is Associate Professor at Louisiana State University. She is the author of Placing the Modern Chinese Vernacular in Transnational Literature (2011), and co-editor of Other Renaissances: A New Approach to World Literature (2006). Her articles have appeared in PMLA (Periodicals of the Modern Language Association), MLN (Modern Language Notes), and other journals. Chen Sihe is a Changjiang Scholar at Fudan University, Shanghai, China, and Dean of Fudan Libraries. His major publications include A Holistic View of China’s New Literature. A New History of Contemporary Chinese Literature (chief editor) and Fifteen Lectures on Famous Works of Chinese Modern and Contemporary Literature. Zhang Xinying is Professor of Chinese Department and a Changjiang Scholar at Fudan University. His major publications on modern and contemporary Chinese literature include Shen Congwen: The Latter Half of His Life, Shen Congwen: The First Half of His Life, Nine Lectures on Shen Congwen , and Shen Congwen and 20th Century China . Jeffrey C. Kinkley, a retired Professor of History from St. John’s University, New York and John Simon Guggenheim Fellow, is currently a Courtesy Professor of History and of World Languages and Literatures at Portland State University, Oregon. His publications include The Odyssey of Shen Congwen.

This volume is about studies of Shen Congwen (1902–1988), one of the most important writers in modern China, but more importantly, it is about how Shen Congwen has been received in and beyond Mainland China. By presenting the best literary criticism on Shen Congwen in Mainland China over the past 80 years, and views of how Shen Congwen has been understood, interpreted, and appreciated in Japan, the US, and Europe, the editors propose a new way to approach the topics of canonic writers, modern Chinese literature, and world literature. This is itself a translated project. Its Chinese edition appeared in May 2017. The bilingual rendering of the best criticism of Shen Congwen from a global perspective intends to initiate and advance dialogues between Chinese- and English- language scholarly communities. We strive to explore the complexities of “worldwide” images and interpretations of Shen Congwen. By calling attention to the foreign spaces into which overseas Shen Congwens and modern Chinese literature are reborn as world literature, we acknowledge and celebrate the study of Shen Congwen and modern Chinese literature as ongoing and endless cross-cultural dialogues and manifestations.