William and Sally Searle Graduate Fellow
About
“Refracting Species in Modern and Contemporary East Asia”
“Refracting Species” investigates how species and narrative meet. Species being commonly assigned to the realm of biology and narrative to that of culture, the two would seem only marginally relevant to each other. The project unsettles this apparent difference by approaching “species” as a word, a concept, and a collection of lives that are reconfigured by narratives or narrative-related practices, which themselves are, in turn, redefined through their engagement with “species.” My investigation of the correlation between species and narrative is grounded in the specific languages, histories, cultural products, and social phenomena of modern and contemporary East Asia. Deploying a combination of literary, historical, visual, and ethnographic analysis, this project suggests that narrative reconfigurations of “species” are not merely linguistic, but offer a unique account of the region’s modernization, industrialization, and environmental transformation.
Qingyi Zeng is a PhD candidate in Comparative Literature.
