MCLC: ACCL presidential election

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: Lupke, Christopher <lupke at wsu.edu>
Subject: ACCL presidential election
***********************************************************

Association of Chinese and Comparative Literature (ACCL) Presidential
Election

Colleagues:

Voting for the next President of ACCL is now open. Please email your votes
to Profs. Xiaomei Chen <xmchen at ucdavis.edu> AND Michelle Yeh
<mmyeh at ucdavis.edu>. They will tabulate the votes. Voting will be open for
two weeks (deadline: Tuesday, August 20th).
The candidates are:

Dr. Liyan Shen (Assistant Professor, University of Utah/MIT)
Dr. Shengqing Wu (Associate Professor, Wesleyan University)

I asked for statements from both candidates but thus far have only
received one from Shengqing Wu (see below). If I receive one from Liyan
Shen, I will post it forthwith.

Who can vote? There is no formal membership to ACCL. Anyone who has
attended an ACCL conference or has intentions to may vote. Interested
parties may only vote once!

Sincerely,

Christopher Lupke

================================================

Shengqing Wu Statement:

Dear Members:

My sincere thanks to the member who nominated me for this position. I
would be delighted to serve as the ACCL president, and in particular, to
have the chance to organize the biennial conference.

I participated in three ACCL conferences, held in Nanjing, Beijing and
Taipei, and admired the stewardship of our former presidents, whose
efforts lead to such large and intellectually rewarding conferences. In
terms of future venues, I would welcome any suggestions from the members.
For the time being,  I have been considering two potential sites: Hong
Kong and Shanghai. One of the greatest cities of the world, Hong Kong to
date has not been a venue for our meetings. Among the advantages we all
are aware of,  Hong Kong¹s convenient location makes it very accessible
for mainland scholars, while avoiding the red tape involved in conferences
held elsewhere outside mainland China. More importantly, hosting a
conference in a place so crucial to China¹s modern cultural landscape will
be meaningful to many of our colleagues whose work engages in critical
reflections on the crossroads of multiple regions and cultural
heterogeniety. Shanghai also has its own distinct advantages. A fun group
excursion to Suzhou, Hangzhou or another nearby Jiangnan town can be
easily scheduled. Hosting the conference in either Hong Kong or Shanghai
would readily attract participants from different continents, facilitating
intellectual dialogues and friendships. As someone who received a
substantial part of her literary education before coming to the States, I
have established a range of connections in the Shanghai-based academic
world, while in recent years, these relationships have been extended to
Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Choosing a general conference theme is very important, and given the
nature of this conference, I am hoping to make it inclusive and broad
enough to meet with diverse critical concerns. Based on my personal
research interests, I would like to continue to strengthen the dialogue
about various literary and cultural traditions, and urge scholars who work
on the pre-modern period to participate. In addition to the wide range of
independent papers and plenary sessions that are usually offered, I
propose to partially adopt the structure used by the American Comparative
Literature Association¹s (ACLA) annual conferences. That is, eight to
twelve people will be formed into groups to conduct seminars over the
course of two or three days. This structure allows participants to discuss
critical topics in depth with a cohort of those with shared interests. I
will be proactive in inviting several colleagues to envision and organize
this mini-series of panels on their particular research interests. To
ensure a good number of participants from the Chinese-speaking world, and
to make it a fruitful occasion for establishing bridges and networking, I
will make sure to advertise the call for papers at Chinese institutions,
by way of Chinese social media, and through personal connections. A
well-equipped local institution either in Hong Kong or Shanghai will host
the conference. Further, it will be vital to invite a few writers,
directors, artists, translators and publishers to participate in the
conference, so that scholars and artistic practitioners can hold joint
events and dialogues. I will also make efforts to organize readings and
film screenings in addition to the book exhibition to take place during
the conference.

Biography:

I was promoted to Associate Professor of Chinese Literature at Wesleyan
University, effective from July 1. My ongoing research concerns the
literary and intellectual history of late nineteenth-century and early
twentieth-century China, with particular attention paid to classical
poetry written in a modern context. Complementing my passion for poetry,
my scholarly interests also include the areas of the relationship between
image and text, questions of gender, and the issue of cultural
translation. My book Modern Archaics: Continuity and Innovation in the
Chinese Lyric Tradition 1900 -1937 will be published this fall by Harvard
University Asia Center. The book examines the transformation of Chinese
classical-style poetry in the first three decades of the twentieth century
and its complex relationship with the development of modern culture. By
closely examining a group of previously understudied poets and critics in
the midst of historical turmoil, and the radical social and cultural
changes of the time, this study demonstrates that classical poetry writing
in this era was neither stagnant nor inured to social change, but rather
emerged as a dynamic force that interacted with modern culture and society.

My second book project will delineate the route and topography of qing
(desire or love) as circulated among literati communities in different
genres and visual media (photography and painting) in the late Qing era.
This project has been funded by an American Research in the Humanities in
China fellowship, which will allow me to go to Shanghai this fall to
conduct six months of continuous research.

Over the past several years, I have gained experience in organizing
workshops. In 2006, I was the co-organizer (with Mingwei Song) of the
workshop ³Reconfiguring Forms, Genres, and Social Space,² which was
co-sponsored by the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard
University and the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation. Last December in Taipei, I
co-organized (with Ko Chia Cian) the workshop on ³Classical Poetry and
Literati Culture in Modern China.² Chia Cian and I also co-edited an
anthology titled Lyricism and the Reformist Era (Shuqing chuantong yu
weixin shidai), which was published by Shanghai Literature and Arts
Publishing House last year. Last month, I helped my colleague Ethan
Kleinberg run the US-China Exchange Forum on ³Comparative Enlightenments,²
which was co-sponsored by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the
journal History and Theory. While all of this experience is helpful, I do
not have direct experience running a large-scale conference like the
biannual conference. If given the honor of presiding over the Association,
I will be eager to solicit advice and look forward to working with many of
you.

Thank you for your consideration!
Sincerely,
Shengqing Wu
Wesleyan University